Despite her solid winning margin on Ventoux, the time Niewiadoma-Phinney had already lost \u2013 largely in the time trial \u2013 means that she goes into stage 8 with only a 15-second advantage over Vollering and with Reusser at 39 seconds.<\/p>\n
As much as Niewiadoma-Phinney probably just wanted to celebrate her victory on Friday night, attention very quickly turned to whether she can wear yellow on Sunday evening in Nice too, and she knows that big challenges lie ahead this weekend.<\/p>\n
“I’m super, super happy that we have a strong team,” she said. “We have Antonia [in 5th overall and leading the youth classification] that shows what an incredible climber she is. So I definitely feel confident having her on my side. I definitely expect a massive fight for basically everything \u2013 bonus seconds, sprints, everything \u2013 because the gap is so small.”<\/p>\n
Anything can still happen, but so far Canyon-SRAM have been able to execute their Tour de France to perfection, with Rolf Aldag explaining to reporters post-stage that even Niewiadoma-Phinney’s attack was planned to the metre. With that in mind, their goal remains the same this weekend as it has been every day.<\/p>\n
“The first day our goal was to win the Tour de France, the second day the presentation was like ‘win the Tour de France’, third day, ‘win the Tour de France’. After the time trial we said ‘OK, we lost only a minute, well the goal is to win the Tour de France’,” Aldag explained.<\/p>\n
“So this morning, it was like ‘How do you make this happen?’ and that’s another question, but you have to agree on why we are here. That’s winning the Tour de France.”<\/p>\n
The desire and ambition will obviously only intensify now that their rider is actually wearing the yellow jersey, but Aldag had complete faith in the team’s plan and preparation, which so far has seen Niewiadoma-Phinney out-climbing almost every rider in the bunch, including defending champion Pauline Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot (Visma-Lease a Bike).<\/p>\n
“We didn’t win yet because there’s still some kilometres to ride, but at least we showed that this was always the plan and that we want to go for it and that Kasia and her coach believe in this and made the work,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It’s not really that you write it up in November and say ‘Hey, let’s win the Tour de France’ and then you get lazy and you don’t do the training and you don’t eat the right food and you don’t do the altitude …. This is Kasia, she commits 100%, then you can easily live with the result because you know you can’t do better. The outcome is the outcome, you can’t do better, because she will be perfectly prepared.”<\/p>\n
All eyes will be hotly anticipating the outcome, though, with stage 8 perhaps not the biggest concern \u2013 though teams might still make it a fight \u2013 but stage 9 is set to offer up final-day fireworks with a punchy 99km circuit around Nice and the Col d’\u00c8ze.<\/p>\n
While Saturday is perhaps the lesser of the two challenges remaining, Aldag was completely aware of the threats that lie ahead, and what it will take for Niewiadoma-Phinney to become the first rider in five editions to deliver repeat victories at the Tour.<\/p>\n
“So tomorrow we just see what’s going to happen, ride in the front, stay in the front, make sure nobody from the top 10 goes anywhere,” he explained.<\/p>\n\n\nWe’re going to defend with everything that we have and everyone that we have.<\/p>Rolf Aldag, Canyon-SRAM<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\nSunday, then, will be the day that this Tour is well and truly decided, but Canyon-SRAM have every reason to be confident and assured going into the final weekend in the driver’s seat.<\/p>\n
“Then of course Nice is going to be a big, big battle, but then always keep in mind that it feels like we might have the third or fourth strongest [rider] in the race with Antonia Niedermaier, so let’s see how that unfolds,” Aldag said.<\/p>\n
“We know Demi is super explosive, I would have loved to have had 40 seconds, not 15 [on GC] but it is what it is and we deal with it. So theoretically anything could happen, even with bonus sprints Demi would get there, but we’re going to defend with everything that we have and everyone that we have, and I’m pretty sure that the team will not sit up or give up. None of the riders will like to sit in the back and see what’s going to happen. it’s all-in for trying to win the Tour.”<\/p>\n
Support our unrivalled coverage of the Tour de France Femmes and women’s cycling by subscribing to Cyclingnews. In return, you get unlimited access to high-quality journalism, with breaking news, race analysis, and expert insight from inside the women’s peloton. Plus, the Cyclingnews app lets you follow the action wherever you go! <\/strong><\/em>Join today.<\/strong><\/em><\/u><\/a>Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For a rider who is almost known for always being the runner-up, never the winner, it seems wild to think that Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney is potentially on the cusp of becoming the first ever two-time Tour de France Femmes victor. And yet, that’s exactly where she stands after a phenomenal day on Mont Ventoux. When the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":256680,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6804],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-256679","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256679\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}