It’s just after midday in the river-banked commune of La Voulte-sur-Rhône, and Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney is daring to believe. “I’m not going to lie,” she begins, speaking to a TV crew at the start of stage seven of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, “the dream of mine is to win at the top of the climb. Mont Ventoux is so iconic that it would be a career-defining moment.”
It seems like a bold statement. Niewiadoma-Phinney, remember, has not made a habit of winning races; until Friday, she had never won a stage of a Grand Tour, and had only collected three victories in seven years. A win on Mont Ventoux? She’s more likely to lose time to her GC rivals, some scoff at the thought. But they’re fools for underestimating a former Tour champion.
You see, Niewiadoma-Phinney has done her homework. She’s reconned the climb three times, familiarised herself with all of its 16km of tarmac, and though she doesn’t tell the interviewer, she’s got an audacious plan: attack with 11km to go, and solo away.
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If all the right notes are played in time, she’ll soar from third to first overall, and end the day in the yellow jersey.
Fast forward five hours. Niewiadoma-Phinney is lying on a concrete slab under the red-tipped transmitter tower at the summit of Mont Ventoux. She kisses her fingers and crosses her chest. She then sits up, and beams with a big, toothy smile.
A member of the race organisation is waiting beside her to take her to the podium, built on top of the coarse limestone gravel. The Canyon-Sram rider started the day trailing yellow by a minute and 17 seconds. Not only has she won the stage, but she now leads by 15 seconds. Here’s how she did it.
(Image credit: A.S.O./Gaetan Flamme)
“Kasia is, you know her, a little bit all or nothing,” Rolf Aldag, Canyon-Sram director of sport, tells Cycling Weekly outside his team bus. It’s an attitude that has seen his rider come agonisingly close to victories (like her third place on stage five), but also makes her easy to bring on board with a plan. Canyon-Sram’s big Tour de France plot was hatched last November; in a presentation to the team, they declared they were coming to win.
“There was no other logic,” says Aldag. “If you have a former winner, someone who’s always been on the podium, you can’t go there and say, ‘Let’s see what happens. Maybe fifth is a good place.’”
The race started well. Seventh on day one, Niewiadoma-Phinney kept pace with GC favourites Demi Vollering (FDJ United-Suez), Pauline Ferrand-Prévot (Visma-Lease a Bike) and Marlen Reusser (Movistar) on days two and three and then, amazingly, put in a career-best time trial performance on day four to stay within contention. Bolstered by the performance, Aldag began to sketch out a blueprint.
“[Newiadoma-Phinney and I] just randomly met at breakfast. Nobody was there. And I was like, ‘Well, what do you think? What is your self-belief? Where can we support? Do you trust yourself?’” he recalls.
On Ventoux, there was one clear option: “If we wanted to go for yellow, we couldn’t wait until they attacked. We needed to get out of the forest alone, with a decent gap… It was exactly as planned.”
At the foot of the climb, Niewiadoma-Phinney looked to her right and spotted her parents, who had come to surprise her. “I could see my dad crying,” she said, “and I thought I just needed to make them proud.”
It was only a few kilometres later that she made her winning move. It came just inside 10km to go, a counter to an acceleration by Vollering, that saw Niewiadoma-Phinney peel to the left, kick ahead, and immediately draw out a 10-second lead.
Vollering and Reusser looked at each other, but neither closed the gap. Within 2km, it grew to almost a minute. “They were playing games,” Aldag smiles. “That was exactly what we were hoping for.”
(Image credit: A.S.O./Billy Ceusters)
Niewiadoma-Phinney, too, had it all worked out. “My big idea was to make it to Chalet [Reynard] with 6km to go on my own, because I knew with the wind we had today, if someone was chasing behind they would try to stay on the wheel as much as possible,” she later revealed.
“Once I made it to Chalet, there was a lot of headwind, but I knew in the back they would just play the game.”
At that same point, a motorbike passed her and flashed her the time gap on a chalkboard. It showed she was closing in on taking the yellow jersey. She kicked out of the saddle, dropped back down low, and ploughed on through the lunar expanse.
“From the recon, I knew that the more speed you take into the corners, the more you get out of them, so I just tried to keep the momentum going,” she said.
Her team-mates shouted encouragement into their radios, hoping to do the same. “I really had no doubt that she would win it,” Antonia Niedermaier said post-stage. “I told her, ‘Kasia, you’re the strongest. I believe in you. You’re the queen.’”
Riding shotgun in the follow car, Aldag was also feeling confident. “We’re nearly at 2,000m. I think Kasia is super efficient here, and it’s day seven of the race. This is something you cannot forget,” he says. “Same day, same race, but on stage two would probably be a different outcome. But she’s so fatigue-resistant.”
Polka dot flags lapped against the snow marker posts that lead to the summit. By the finish line, fans teetered on their feet, blown by the gusts that traced down the final straight. Their eyes gazed back across mountain, and suddenly Niewiadoma-Phinney appeared, alone in the distance, charging around the final corner.
Vollering and Reusser chased behind, but the gap was too big. By the time they passed under the gantry, Niewiadoma-Phinney was already strewn out beyond it on the ground.
(Image credit: A.S.O./Billy Ceusters)
Niedermaier, sixth across the line, was the first to congratulate her. “You’re the queen,” she told her team leader, this time to her face, as the pair sat cross-legged and hugged.
Niewiadoma-Phinney laughed between gasps for air. “I said winning here would be a career-defining moment,” she recalled. “I feel like I can retire now.”
That retirement, however, will have to wait a few more days at least. Now back in the yellow jersey she took home in 2024, Niewiadoma-Phinney has two stages left to race, and a 15-second lead to defend. “I definitely expect a massive fight for everything,” she says. “Bonus seconds, basically everything. The gap is so small.”
Fortunately, she knows what it takes. Two years ago, when she won the Tour, she did so by just four seconds – the smallest winning margin in the history of both the men’s and women’s races. This year’s finale could be even closer.
“Nice is going to be a big, big battle,” says Aldag, looking ahead to the weekend. “I would have loved to have 40 seconds, not 15, but it is what it is and we deal with it… It’s all in to try and win the Tour.”
