The race
The race spends the first two and a half days in Switzerland, with a lumpy stage 1 to a modest uphill finish that could suit a breakaway or a sprinter with decent climbing legs. The next two days are for bunch sprint finishes, leading to Tuesday’s spicy stage 4, a 21 km individual time trial that ends in Dijon, home of the eponymous mustard.
Stage 5 has 2,900 metres of climbing and eight classified climbs, three of them Category 2s, with the longest one, the Côte de Cenves (9.6 km @ 4.5%), right after the start. But the action should explode on the slopes of the last one, the Mont Brouilly (3 km @ 7.7%). Brouilly is also the name of one of the better Beaujolais wines, which is made from the Gamay grapes that grow around the mountain’s base and on its slopes.
Stage 6 contains six categorised climbs and will almost certainly be won by a non-GC rider from a very competitive breakaway, because the GC favourites will be saving their legs for Friday’s stage 7 and the summit finish atop Mont Ventoux (15.7 km @ 7.7%). There’s lots of climbing on the stage so expect a small group of riders on the final climb, which will probably decide the TdFFaZ winner – because stage 8 is for sprinters and the four climbs of the Col d’ Èze (7.7 km @ 5.9% for the first three ascents and 6 km @ 7.6% for the final climb, from another approach) on the final stage are not selective enough to make for large gaps.
Will it be Vollering?
Demi Vollering (FDJ United–Suez) has come back this year from last year’s TdFFaZ defeat by Pauline Ferrand-Prévot by winning the Volta de la Comunitat Valenciana, the Giro d’Italia Women, Liège-Bastogne-Liège Femmes, La Flèche Wallonne Femmes, the Tour of Flanders, and Omloop Nieuwsblad. That record reminds me of a certain Slovenian cyclist of the male persuasion who has just won the fifth Tour of his career. I think, like Tadej Pogačar, she will win this Tour.
She is strong, fast, highly motivated, and smart. She has always been the best woman cyclist, but has made some bad decisions, has had some bad luck and so had never really put fear into the hearts of her rivals as Pogačar does. This year, though, she may have. And she has a great support team, with Franziska Koch, who never seems to tire, the brilliant 20-year-old French champion Célia Gery, Évita Muzic, and Juliette Berthet. I like her chances.
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Or Ferrand-Prévot?
Ferrand-Prévot (Visma–Lease a Bike) is a one-race rider, using the entire year to prepare for the TdFFaZ. Last year, she came out of training very lean and mean and dominated the decisive climb of the Col de la Madeleine, beating Vollering by more than 3 minutes. That must have shaken and awakened Demi.
In a press conference on Wednesday, Ferrand-Prévot told reporters that she has been planning her title defence ever since October, when the route was made public, and she is confident that she will repeat. “I was speaking with my trainer just before, and I think everything is like we expected it to be,” she said. “My goal since the beginning is to be able to be 100% for the Tour de France. I never really had in mind to win all the races [this season]. I know that I needed specific preparation to be able to win races. I just picked my battles, and I chose the Tour de France.”
Like last year, her last race before the TdFFaZ was the Vuelta España Femenina, which means that she is coming into the race without having raced in 83 days. (Hello, Remco Evenepoel!) She said she did a lot of recons and spent a great deal of time on a time trial bike, since her last ITT dates back to 2021. In addition to her familiarity with the Ventoux climb (“I really like to know where I’m putting my wheels, so I went there quite a few times to do some recons,” she said), she lives year-round near the Col d’Èze and uses it as her training climb. And she thinks that there will be “suspense until the end.”
The other contenders
That would suit the other contenders, such as Paula Blasi (UAE Team ADQ), Marlen Reusser (Movistar), Kasia Niewiadoma (CANYON//SRAM), and Anna van der Breggen (SD Worx–Protime). I know that Elisa Longo Borghini is probably UAE’s designated leader, but the 23-year-old Blasi is the in-form rider on that team, having won seven races this year, including the Vuelta and the Amstel Gold Race. She beat van der Breggen and Niewiadoma in the Vuelta and is getting stronger with every race. I don’t think that she’s strong enough to beat the two favourites, but she could finish on the podium.
World and European time–trial champion Reusser has apparently tweaked her skills and added climbing to her repertoire, as she demonstrated in this year’s Tour de Suisse Women, in which she beat 2024 TdFFaZ champion Niewiadoma on the final-stage summit finish by 7 seconds and by 2:02 in the final GC. If she can limit her losses to Vollering and/or Ferrand-Prévot on the Ventoux, she could make it interesting on stage 9.
Niewiadoma has not won a race all year and was well beaten in the Vuelta (by Blasi) and the Tour de Suisse (by Reusser). She is having a bad year by her standards and would have to find some special resources to fight for the yellow jersey.
Finally, van der Breggen is near her best and led the Giro this year until her 36-year-old legs couldn’t keep up with Vollering’s pace on the three categorised climbs of the final stage, which ended with a four-rider sprint to the finish (which Vollering appeared to gift to home favourite Longho Borgini). Her moment of truth will come on the Ventoux.
As for the green jersey, look for Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx–Protime) to dominate that competition, not only because she is the best sprinter in the world and has won 131 races (more even than Pogačar), but also, and especially, because she was controversially disqualified from this year’s Giro for riding a bike that was adjudged to be too light. Her team protested, claiming that the commissaires had made an error, but the decision was final. In addition, Team SD Worx–Protime complained that the UCI did not engage in dialogue or respond to inquiries regarding the specifics of the decision. So Wiebes will definitely have some venom in her legs.