If stage four’s time trial wasn’t the death knell of Pauline Ferrand-Prévot’s Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift bid, then Wednesday’s fifth stage to Belleville-en-Beaujolais almost certainly was.
Dropped on the penultimate climb with around 30km to go, the defending champion ended up shipping more than two and a half minutes to her GC rivals – Marlen Reusser (Movistar), Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney (Canyon-Sram), and the stage winner Demi Vollering (FDJ United-Suez). The damage, compounded by the 2:13 she lost in the time trial, means she now sits exactly five minutes adrift of Reusser in the yellow jersey. It’s a mountain even she will find hard to climb.
The first question Ferrand-Prévot faced back at her Visma-Lease a Bike team bus was the obvious one: Is the GC now over for her? “I have to be honest, yes,” she said. “I mean, I haven’t seen the gaps yet, but yeah, I think it’s over. Now we have to refocus, change the plan maybe. We have to make a new plan.”
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It was testament to Ferrand-Prévot’s professionalism that, on the day she likely lost the Tour, she held herself with grace and composure. “I did my best,” she smiled to each of her team-mates as they came to console her after the stage. In between hugs, she took off her gloves and handed them to a little boy in a PSG football kit.
“Pauline, tu es la meilleure,” one fan shouted – Pauline, you’re the best. She then took the time to give autographs to anyone who asked for one, even stopping to compose a selfie with a family to make sure all three of the children were in the frame.
“I can’t say I’m sad or disappointed, because I didn’t feel bad today,” she said. “To be honest, I felt quite good.”
It was on the steep Col de Durbize, the category-two kicker where Vollering attacked, that Ferrand-Prévot fell out of contention. “Until the climb, I felt good,” she said. “And on the climb, I was still feeling good, but I was just not strong enough to follow. They were just stronger today.”
A loud gasp filled the press room when the TV screens showed the moment Ferrand-Prévot was dropped. Journalists halted their typing and watched as the gap quickly ballooned. Within 4km, it was 40 seconds. Even with the help of her Visma team-mate Sarah Van Dam, Ferrand-Prévot couldn’t close the distance to the front trio, and the time continued to grow. At one point, it looked like it might tip over three minutes.
“I didn’t really look at the gap,” Ferrand-Prévot said. “I just said, ‘Ok, I’ll just fight until the end and we will see.’ There’s nothing I can do more than pushing on the pedals as much as possible.”
The number that mattered in the end was five minutes – the gap to the yellow jersey.
“Five minutes is… oof,” Reusser, the race leader, said in her press conference. “I mean, you never say never, but to get five minutes back is hard. I wouldn’t wish for me to have to go for five minutes now.”
Ferrand-Prévot’s sports director Rutger Thijssen was more optimistic. “I think anything can happen,” he said. “We know in high performance sports that the dice can tumble, which can happen in two or three days. In short, it’s difficult, but I won’t say that it’s directly over.”
Ferrand-Prévot, the runaway winner by almost four minutes last year, now sits 17th overall, with four stages remaining. Her team-mate Femke de Vries is eighth, 3:11 behind Reusser.
“Maybe now I will have the chance to go for a stage win,” Ferrand-Prévot said. “We have to discuss with the team, but if I cannot help Femke to have the best result possible, I will do it.”
Many expected we would see the defending champion on the attack on Mont Ventoux on Friday. That scene may still happen yet, but the circumstances have now changed. Barring a miraculous comeback, Ferrand-Prévot will not win this Tour de France Femmes.
“Because I won last year, now I say, ‘Ok, it will not change my life to win it again’,” she had said ahead of the race. On Wednesday in Belleville-en-Beaujolais, she already seemed at peace with that prospect.
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