included in the Tour de France Femmes for the first time<\/a> for this year’s ‘queen stage’.<\/p>\nNiewiadoma-Phinney began the 146.8km ride from La Voulte-sur-Rhone third in the general classification, one minute and 17 seconds behind race leader Marlen Reusser, with Demi Vollering second.<\/p>\n
And the Polish Canyon-SRAM rider, who won the Tour in 2024, launched an attack with 9km of the Mont Ventoux climb remaining.<\/p>\n
As the 31-year-old pulled clear of her rivals on stage seven, it became a battle for the leader’s yellow jersey.<\/p>\n
She ultimately reached the summit finish one minute and 16 seconds before Dutch rider Vollering, with Reusser 30 seconds further back and defending champion Pauline Ferrand-Prevot more than 10 minutes down.<\/p>\n
Niewiadoma-Phinney now holds a 15-second lead over Vollering with two stages remaining while Swiss rider Reusser is 39 seconds adrift in third.<\/p>\n
“I’m blown away with what just happened,” said Niewiadoma-Phinney. <\/p>\n
“This victory goes to so many people that were with me along this very long road without proper big wins.<\/p>\n
“It was so funny, as we started to climb Mont Ventoux I looked to my right and saw my parents. They made a surprise visit and I could see my dad crying. I was like ‘I just need to make them proud’.” <\/p>\n
Saturday’s penultimate stage is the longest of this year’s race, with the mostly flat 171.9km ride from Sisteron to Nice set to suit the sprinters.<\/p>\n
That will leave the general classification rivals to battle it out for the title on a 99.2km mountain stage beginning and ending in Nice on Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Katarzyna Niewiadoma-Phinney produced a thrilling solo ride to the summit of Mont Ventoux to claim her first Tour…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":730749,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-730748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=730748"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730748\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/730749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=730748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=730748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=730748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}