A year on from finishing fifth overall to add to her haul of Grand Tour top-10s, Niamh Fisher-Black (Lidl-Trek) is expecting, or even hoping, to replicate that performance at this year’s Tour de France Femmes.
In fact, the New Zealand rider has been forced to adjust and temper her ambitions going into this year’s edition, with the course “taking away from the general classification” for a rider of Fisher-Black’s abilities.
A lightweight climber, Fisher-Black has excelled in climb-heavy Grand Tours before, with top-10s in the Giro d’Italia Women, Vuelta Femenina and Tour in the last two years. But whilst this year’s Tour route is headlined by Mont Ventoux, there are plenty of hilly, punchy stages too, and a time trial that looks to be Fisher-Black’s biggest hurdle to a solid GC assault.
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“I think I go into this race with maybe slightly different goals from previous stage races,” she explained to Cyclingnews on Friday.
“Just the way the parcours is, I want to race a little bit more to my strengths, and that’s maybe taken away from the general clarification a little bit. And I think with the team we have here, it’s about searching [for a stage win] as well. So we’re optimistic about the week ahead, but I hope to maybe approach it a little bit differently.”
“It’s mainly just the time trial. It’s not a strength of mine and I know that.” she answered when asked where the specific challenges lay for her, though she was realistic that the race won’t only be won or lost on that day.
“The thing is with the parcours that we have in the Tour de France this year, the time is probably not going to be made on the time trial day; it will be in the last few days. So I am still looking. It’s a very open race and a lot can happen, so we’re pretty optimistic about it.”
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Even if the course is not ideal, Fisher-Black has proven that her GC potential is very much still there this year, riding to fifth overall in the Giro d’Italia Women despite not having her best week, and going on the attack on the final stage.
“In the end, it finished nicely, but it was honestly not my best week on the bike,” she explained. “I was struggling with some issues, so I have taken quite a bit of time now to work on it, and hopefully we can come back this week a bit better. It’s been a long period, but it’s nice to sort of reset and build back up again.”
The positive thing may be that instead of Lidl-Trek pinning their main hopes on a GC campaign for Fisher-Black, they’re coming to this race with a strong line-up of stage-hunters, including Lucinda Brand and Elisa Balsamo, plus future GC contender Isabella Holmgren.
To win a stage would likely be more rewarding than a 5th to 10th finish on GC.
“A stage win [at this race] still evades us as a team and also myself, so for sure that’s a big goal,” Fisher-Black said. “I would definitely be happy coming out of the week with that.”
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