And that’s exactly what the 37-year-old Visma–Lease a Bike veteran did: she climbed all the mountains while early points leader Charlotte Kool (dsm-firmenich PostNL) could not.
Kool won the stage 1 and stage 2 bunch sprints, beating her arch-nemesis Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx-Protime) when the latter’s derailleur malfunctioned on stage 1 and then by a whisper on stage 2. That put an end to a disappointing season for Kool, who had registered just one win and 10 second places, almost all of them behind Wiebes, until that stage 1 victory. And she looked to have a dominant lead in the points classification race, leading Vos by 100 points to 69. But when the roads turned lumpy, beginning with stage 4, she faltered badly.
Kool began to lose touch with the peloton on one of the first climbs and staggered to the finish line in 134th place on stage 4. That pattern continued on stage 5, where she finished 128th and on stage 6, where she came in 127th. The inevitable end came on stage 7, the first stage in the high mountains, when Kool abandoned the race due to fatigue.
In the meantime, Vos – a strong climber – had made up ground quickly by targeting intermediate sprints so that by the time Kool quit the race, she was no longer wearing the green jersey. When Vos crossed the finish line atop the Alpe d’Huez, she had a commanding lead of 170 points to 110 over Wiebes and had won her second TdFF Škoda Green Jersey, after also winning it in 2022.
“Of course, winning the green jersey in the Tour de France it’s really special,” she was quoted as saying on the race website. “That’s been a tough week. With the team, we went for it and when the green was an opportunity, we took it and I’m very happy that we brought it until the Alpe d’Huez.”
Ironically, she had told Cycling Weekly at the start of the race that her main goal was winning stages and that the green jersey “is not the first ambition.” However, she was either not at her best for the first two bunch sprints or was looking to exploit a breakaway on the hilly stages 4 and 5 for her stage wins. But champions are able to adapt to changing situations and she must have realized that Kool would take no more points.
Vos also benefited from the strategy of SD Worx, whose manager, Danny Stam, had said, “For [Wiebes] to take the first yellow jersey if she wins at home would be nice. But we are not going to waste forces to defend that jersey then. Final victory prevails. So the green jersey is not immediately our focus either.”
As a result, the team went home with the bitter taste of two second places in the green jersey and the race for the yellow jersey, where Demi Vollering (lost out to Kasia Niewiadoma) by a scant 4 seconds. While a delighted Vos celebrated atop the final podium, proudly wearing her Škoda Green Jersey.