2025’s breakthrough rider Kim Le Court-Pienaar and her AG Insurance-Soudal team are hoping to build on the success of last year’s Tour de France Femmes to reach even higher heights this summer.
Last year, Le Court-Pienaar had already made history well before the Tour with her Monument win at Liège-Bastogne-Liège, less than two years into her road racing career, and then took things even further with a stage win and four days in yellow at the Tour.
Her general classification ambitions faded in the final weekend as she switched her focus to riding for Sarah Gigante, who finished sixth overall with Le Court-Pienaar in 16th, but with the Australian out of action this year, it will be down to the Mauritian rider to lead the team’s overall ambitions.
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Despite the heights we have seen Le Court-Pienaar reach over the last two years, the 30-year-old is confident that she still has more to give and performances to unlock.
“To be honest, I think I’m still discovering myself as a rider and as a leader and in general as a road cyclist,” she told Cyclingnews and other media on Tuesday afternoon, from her base in Girona after a three-week training camp in Tignes.
“I’ve been in this sport two and a half years now, and I still don’t feel like I’ve found myself yet. Of course we have an idea of what my potential and capabilities on the road bike are, but I feel like we’ve not reached my absolute potential yet.”
Where the limit of her potential may be, no one quite knows, but when it comes to the Tour, she believes that a top five is possible, and her team know they are able to deliver a rider to a solid GC finish, even if perhaps they aren’t looked at as favourites.
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“I think we’re coming in, as I said, with a bit more experience and a bit more ambition. Now we know what we can do, and we know we’ve done it before and we want to do it again,” she explained.
“Of course, stage wins will be the first objective, and then of course we want to aim for the highest [GC] result possible, which would be top five. Anything above that is obviously a bonus, but we have to take it as it comes.
“We’re not the team that everyone would look at, and I think everyone else has much more experience than we do of doing this and going for the GC and things like that. We’re going in a bit more as underdogs, and we just want to do the best we can. We know we can; we’ve trained hard for it, we have the potential, so now we just have to see what comes out of it.
Returning from injury
The one hiccup to Le Court-Pienaar’s build-up to a hopefully triumphant Tour return was the crash she suffered at the Tour of Flanders, which left her with a broken wrist, missing her favoured Ardennes Classics and several weeks of training and racing.
“It wasn’t really quick, unfortunately,” she said of her recovery. “It wasn’t really smooth sailing, but now we’ve put everything behind us, and it’s over now. Now it’s just dealing with still some rehab of the wrist and making sure everything’s fine. I’ve got a good team behind me, so they’re looking after me pretty well, making sure that my rehab and recovery goes well. So I’m putting that behind me; it hasn’t been a smooth road mentally or physically, but good things are to come now.”
There were already positive signs at her comeback race, the Tour de Suisse, where she finished fourth, before doing the double at the Mauritian National Championships ahead of her final altitude training camp.
“For me to go to Suisse was a bit of a challenge, mentally and physically, because I had no idea where I would be and what my level would be at the time,” she said. “But Suisse was more like ‘Let’s not stress about it, let’s see what my body can do,’ and with a month and a half of training, where I am and what my pace is and what we need to improve before the Tour. So it was more a test and more training than anything else. Then in Tignes it was more of the little last adjustments of preparation for the Tour.”
We know well how Le Court-Pienaar and her Belgian squad can perform in the Classics, but a nine-day Grand Tour will offer up new challenges and demands. After missing out on many of the Classics, Le Court-Pienaar is only more motivated to make the most of the Tour.
“I think I’m quite different in terms of physiology and also mentally,” she said of her shape coming into August compared to the spring.
“In a Grand Tour you’ve got more opportunities, but it’s also quite scary in a way, because you need to stay healthy for nine days, you need to make sure you’re on top of your game for nine days, you need to make sure mentally you’re still in for the fight and that the mental side doesn’t go down. So there’s a lot of different mental and physical aspects in terms of an athlete. I would say I’m still the same person, I just have more hunger now because I’ve missed a lot of races and I’ve missed out on a lot of opportunities in the beginning of the season.”
That hunger and ambition also comes from the experience and growth of the team, which came along quite rapidly after what, Le Court-Pienaar admits, was a Tour even above their expectations last summer.
“We gained a lot of experience all at once last year over the nine days, so I think we can take a lot out of that. Last year, we also went for stage wins and to see what we could do out of it, and it was a great year, but it was also kind of a ‘Wow, OK, we knew we could do something special, but we didn’t know it was going to be that amazing’. So it was a more of a bonus, shock to the system, and this year we come more with our heads on shoulders, we know what’s to come and we know what our potential is as a team.”
Not only does the AG Insurance-Soudal team have potential and strength by the bucketload – Le Court-Pienaar will be joined by the likes of Urška Žigart, Mireia Benito and Justine Ghekiere – but her teammates also have full faith in their leader.
“As Kim said, now we know what can be done, what we can realistically achieve, and this is super motivating for me, because as a domestique of course I would always give my 200 per cent for the team, but knowing that we can achieve amazing things here, it’s always an extra,” Benito added.
“When you’re suffering, then you can do a bit extra, that you don’t even know that you had in you, and I think this is going to be the case for this Tour de France. Everyone is super motivated and clearly here for one goal. If we ride like the way we usually ride, as a Wolfpack, I think we will get really nice results, and for sure we will give our best.”
AG Insurance-Soudal for the 2026 Tour de France Femmes
- Kim Le Court-Pienaar
- Justine Ghekiere
- Shari Bossuyt
- Mireia Benito
- Letizia Borghesi
- Urška Žigart
- Lore De Schepper
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