\n<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Wiebes, who also won Italian classic Milan-San Remo, as well as five stages and the points classification in the Giro d\u2019Italia, described 2025 as her \u201cbest season to date\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have tried to have more of a free mindset, like I had in the Giro,\u201d Wiebes, of Team SD Worx Protime, said. \u201cThis season has already been really good, even if I hadn\u2019t won in the Tour de France. It doesn\u2019t feel like we have a lot of pressure from the team.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a big relief to feel good and that I was able to ride and to keep my head up,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
She admitted too that she had ridden at the front of the peloton \u201cmostly to stay safe \u2026 It\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Dutch professional is the most high-value rider in the women\u2019s peloton and her \u20ac1m transfer to the French team FDJ-Suez was built around her winning this year\u2019s Tour.<\/p>\n
However, some rival teams were privately dismissive of FDJ-Suez team manager Stephen Delcourt\u2019s comments about a lack of respect shown towards Vollering by others in the peloton, in the aftermath of her crash.<\/p>\n
<\/span>Demi Vollering credited her FDJ-Suez team with helping her through the stage.<\/span> Photograph: Szymon Gruchalski\/Getty Images<\/p>\n This was Vollering\u2019s second high-speed crash in the Femmes, following her very similar fall in last year\u2019s race, six kilometres from the finish of stage four to Amn\u00e9ville, while wearing the yellow jersey.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I was on the ground,, \u201cI had some throwback of last year,\u201d she said, \u201cbut luckily this time it was in the five kilometre rule.\u201d<\/p>\n However, she still blames her rivals for not honouring the tradition of waiting for the race leader when they\u2019re down, and her former teammates, at SD Worx, for racing ahead and abandoning her to her fate.<\/p>\n This time though, with Vollering\u2019s 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 \u201chard impact\u201d for Wednesday\u2019s longest stage of the race, from Chasseneuil-du-Poitou Futuroscope to Gu\u00e9ret, which includes three categorised climbs in the final 35km.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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\u2019Italia, described 2025<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12931,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[4538,6636,6369,2918,6635,85,2143,6634,6423],"class_list":{"0":"post-12930","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-admits","9":"tag-anxieties","10":"tag-femmes","11":"tag-france","12":"tag-postcrash","13":"tag-strikes","14":"tag-tour","15":"tag-vollering","16":"tag-wiebes"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12930\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}