At last year’s Tour de France Femmes, the French public had double the reason to celebrate alongside Pauline Ferrand-Prévot’s overall victory, as Maëva Squiban raced to a pair of stunning breakaway victories in Ambert and Chambéry.
The 24-year-old Breton surprised even her teammates last summer, with Dominika Włodarczyk exclaiming “What’s going on? Is it April 1 or August 1?” at the team bus after Squiban’s second win. Her triumphs came after disaster struck UAE Team ADQ early in the race as Elisa Longo Borghini and two other riders were forced out of the Tour due to illness.
This time around, things were very different for the squad, now named UAE Team L’IMAD. They headed to Lausanne led by a trio of GC hopefuls in the form of double Giro champion Longo Borghini, last year’s fourth-placed finisher Włodarczyk, and La Vuelta Femenina champion Paula Blasi.
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With such a strong lineup – all three finished among the top 10 in Nice, and Longo Borghini savoured a long-awaited podium – Squiban rode a support role from the Grand Départ to the grand finale. That was no problem for her, given their final achievements.
“This year I was 100% here to help my teammates and my leaders, not to play my own card, which is what I did. So, of course, I was not in the front to play for victory like last year, but I think I did my job. Elisa is on the podium in the end, which was our goal, and now it’s done,” Squiban told Cyclingnews in Nice.
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She spoke well after the race had finished, having watched third-placed Longo Borghini take the stage on the Promenade des Anglais before taking the stage herself as UAE celebrated winning the team classification. After that came several minutes of signing jerseys for a crowd of children cheering her name at the UAE team bus.
“It’s a nice prize for us,” she said of the team prize. “And all the girls and sports directors can be on the podium, not only the winner or the leader. I’m happy with this one.”
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Squiban played her role to great effect during the Tour, evident in the team’s successes come the end of the race. UAE directeur sportif Cherie Pridham told Cyclingnews that with this year’s Tour being harder than previous editions, and with a host of GC leaders on board, it was natural for her to take a different role.
“It’s a different race altogether, a much harder Tour de France Femmes, and a Tour where we had clear objectives. If the opportunities arose, of course, she could take those when it suited and didn’t impact the GC targets.
“Maëva is a very talented rider, but very specific. She knows when she can be good. She’s French – why not be proud in France, you know?”
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Squiban and her UAE Team L’IMAD teammates celebrate winning the Tour de France Femmes team classification in Nice (Image credit: Getty Images)
During the nine days of the Tour, Squiban got a handful of chances to race in the breakaway after all, though obviously the results weren’t the same as last summer’s.
On stage 5, an arduous race through the Jura hills to Belleville-en-Beaujolais, she made the breakaway, which only went clear 50km into the day alongside Włodarczyk. She was caught with 30km to go before dropping back to help Longo Borghini and Blasi limit their losses as Demi Vollering surged to stage glory up ahead.
Stage 8 saw her out in the break all day alongside Lidl-Trek racer Loes Adegeest, the pair carrying a near-four-minute lead into the final 30km. That fell swiftly on the run to the final climbs around Nice before Squiban’s hopes of scoring a third stage victory were ended by a crash on the descent of the Côte de Colomars, 17km out.
“I’ve hardly got any grazes. It’s just that I took a bit of a knock and it was a bit bumpy all over. Then, yesterday, I’m not quite sure what happened. I slipped at the front; I don’t know if I took the bend wrong or if it was slippery,” she told Cyclingnews and DirectVelo, before adding that she and Adegeest might’ve had a shot at glory had she stayed upright.
“I think it would have been touch and go. We just needed to get over the top of the steep hill alongside the leaders – that was pretty much the aim.
“Then again, if we started saying ‘what ifs’, we could win every stage. But I’m still happy to have spent the day at the front. 135km in a pair was quite long, but it was fun.”
Squiban raced to the line, and, following examinations at Nice hospital, she was cleared to race on and complete the Tour for a third time on Sunday.
“Let’s just say that the Tour demands respect. I wanted to finish. As I hadn’t broken anything, I thought to myself, ‘Right, I’ll give it a go, and if it works out, great. If it doesn’t, so be it,’ ” said Squiban, who showed her fighting spirit with an attack on the Col d’Eze on the race’s final day.
“Today it was just to be sure I was still in a group after the first climb, because I knew that if I was in a group for the time limit, it would be OK. So, I just wanted to be sure to be in a group. Yesterday was not exactly what we planned, but in the end it was a good day. I like being in the front in the Tour.”
Squiban’s upcoming races include “some races close to my home in Brittany,” most likely the Kreiz Breizh Elites Féminin and Classic Lorient Agglomération at the end of August, where UAE are set to race.
After that, she’s hoping to be called up for the European Championships in Ljubljana and World Championships in Montréal, having made her Worlds debut last year.
“I’m still waiting,” she said of the call-up news. “And after that, holidays.”
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