Lorena Wiebes took her second stage win in the 2025 Tour de France Femmes on the Avenue John Kennedy in Poitiers, after again fending off compatriot Marianne Vos in an uphill sprint.
Wiebes, who also won Italian classic Milan-San Remo, as well as five stages and the points classification in the Giro d’Italia, described 2025 as her “best season to date”.
“I have tried to have more of a free mindset, like I had in the Giro,” Wiebes, of Team SD Worx Protime, said. “This season has already been really good, even if I hadn’t won in the Tour de France. It doesn’t feel like we have a lot of pressure from the team.”
While Wiebes celebrated another sprint success, pre-race favourite Demi Vollering was just happy to get through the day, after a heavy crash close to the finish of stage three, almost ended her race.
Vollering, winner of the 2023 Tour de France Femmes, finished the stage in the main group, a feat which had looked unlikely before the start in Saumur, when she winced her way through a pre-race warm-up and was visibly in pain.
“It was a big relief to feel good and that I was able to ride and to keep my head up,” she said. “That’s the biggest relief. From now on we will see, day by day. I was a bit anxious for the final because it was kind of similar to yesterday, so you feel tension. A crash like that takes its toll on you. Again, no time loss, and now I think the shock is over.”
She admitted too that she had ridden at the front of the peloton “mostly to stay safe … It’s better to spend energy in the front of the peloton than be behind. My team did a very good job with keeping me in front of the bunch. When I was a bit anxious they were always next to me.”
The Dutch professional is the most high-value rider in the women’s peloton and her €1m transfer to the French team FDJ-Suez was built around her winning this year’s Tour.
However, some rival teams were privately dismissive of FDJ-Suez team manager Stephen Delcourt’s comments about a lack of respect shown towards Vollering by others in the peloton, in the aftermath of her crash.
Demi Vollering credited her FDJ-Suez team with helping her through the stage. Photograph: Szymon Gruchalski/Getty Images
This was Vollering’s second high-speed crash in the Femmes, following her very similar fall in last year’s race, six kilometres from the finish of stage four to Amnéville, while wearing the yellow jersey.
“When I was on the ground,, “I had some throwback of last year,” she said, “but luckily this time it was in the five kilometre rule.”
However, she still blames her rivals for not honouring the tradition of waiting for the race leader when they’re down, and her former teammates, at SD Worx, for racing ahead and abandoning her to her fate.
This time though, with Vollering’s committed FDJ-Suez team around her, things were different. But it will still be a tall order for her to be fully recovered from what she described as a “hard impact” for Wednesday’s longest stage of the race, from Chasseneuil-du-Poitou Futuroscope to Guéret, which includes three categorised climbs in the final 35km.
