Following the first major GC skirmish of the Tour de France Femmes, tackling 10 sawtooth hills of the Jura on Wednesday, Thursday’s sixth stage through the Ardèche hills brought about fewer changes at the top of the standings.
That’s not to say that the top teams in the race didn’t give it a go on the road to Tournon-sur-Rhône, however, with the likes of Movistar and UAE Team L’IMAD sending riders on the offensive as Kim Le Court-Pienaar jumped back into the top 10 with her second stage victory in as many summers.
UAE leader Elisa Longo Borghini also gained time, while FDJ United-SUEZ, team of the race’s standout favourite Demi Vollering, were aggressive too.
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Stage 5 winner Vollering, still second on GC with a 12-second deficit to her former teammate Marlen Reusser, was among those on the move, even if she ended her day finishing among the rest of the favourites. Her teammate, 20-year-old Célia Gery, was out front on several occasions, too, eventually infiltrating the lead group en route to a fifth place at the line.
So what exactly was FDJ’s strategy the day before the expected ultimate GC showdown of Mont Ventoux? Team manager Stephen Delcourt was on hand to explain after the stage.
“What we want is really to play for the stage win,” he said outside the FDJ team bus on the banks of the Rhône.
“If we have the possibility that, for example, Demi attacks and drops Marlen, for sure Célia will wait for Demi and play the game.
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“We have a few cards; it’s a big advantage for our team. They are really, really amazing and we want to play overall, but if we have an opportunity to win a stage like yesterday, it’s really beautiful.”
In the end, back-to-back stage wins weren’t to be for FDJ, though that’s not to say that the race isn’t going pretty much perfectly for the team.
The past week has seen Vollering outpace her main GC rivals on the hilltop finish in Lausanne, limit her time trial loss to Reusser to just 17 seconds, and put 2:35 into reigning champion Pauline Ferrand-Prévot on stage 5.
The biggest test of the race will come on Friday, as Vollering heads back to the climb “where it all started”, but so far, the team couldn’t really ask for much more.
“We are where we want to be. Marlen is really, really strong, but we know that after Tour de Suisse that she can be really, really good and no, we want just to focus on the recovery tonight and play the move to win tomorrow,” Delcourt told Cyclingnews.
“All can happen [on Ventoux]. I think last year Pauline was in exceptional shape and she made the difference with Sarah Gigante. For sure, Demi is not at the same level as last year, and for that we want to be confident.
“We have the best rider in the world and tomorrow she wants to win, and we will do our maximum to jump Marlen and Kasia.”
Gery, the rising star of the team and seemingly the FDJ rider with the most freedom this Tour besides Vollering, will be back in her key lieutenant role tomorrow as the race hits the Giant of Provence.
She said that she gave her all to add another stage win to the team’s tally in Tournon-sur-Rhône, but admitted that her early efforts to make the break may have cost her later on.
“Towards the end, I was obviously running out of fresh legs because I’d given it my all at the start of the stage trying to get into a breakaway,” she said after the stage.
“I thought a big breakaway might have formed so that the general classification leaders could have a slightly easier day. But that didn’t happen.
“So then I tried to break away on the descents and put in a lot of effort; I hung on through the climbs and, well, to be honest, by the end I had nothing left in my legs, but I gave it my all in the sprint with what I had left.”
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