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Apologies for the lack of thread yesterday, liife got in the way. Looks like I missed a the right stage as Annameik van Vleuten hit warp speed and made so much time she's already won next year's your as well.
Smaller teams and an attritional tour so far blunted the rest of the peloton with only Demi Vollering able to be anywhere near the leader. Listening to The Cycling Podcast this morning it seems everyone was absolutely on the limit.
On to today:
Not much going on for the top 2 steps of the GC today, but the race for third is still on with Juliette Labous and Cecille Uttrup Ludwig snapping at Nieuwadoma's heels. Not only will the riders be battling fatigue, but the crazy steep gravel at the top of La Planche.
I'm still fairly excited to see the womens' peloton racing on one of the famous set-piece climbs. Lets hope theres some stories to be told at the end of the stage.
I have to say I was a bit disappointed with yesterday. Hyped up as the Queen Stage and I had to sit through 40 mins of Orla, Adam and Dani x 2 talking about it in breathless overly loud voices before coverage [b]finally[/b] started and the race was already in bits with no indication at all of how it had panned out. After that it was a case of the camera flitting from front to back with little explanation of what we were seeing other than a solo TT out front and a number of groups sitting there with no changes.
Not knocking AvV's ride at all although it did seem to be largely expected that she would do that. But if ever there was a stage needing live coverage from start to finish, it was that one.
I've just watched the highlights, then turned them off and gone to the replay of the full race so i can watch The Breakaway where they discuss the race
I've still got NO ******* IDEA what the hell happened to Marianne Vos. Started the day leading by 3 minutes, finished 21 minutes after Annamiek van Vleuten. Bad day? Mechanical? Just didn't fancy riding any more? I am struggling to believe there's been no mention of her performance at all
Bad day? Mechanical? Just didn’t fancy riding any more?
One of the few things that Vos isn't exceptional at is climbing - she can obviously climb in much the same way that Cav can obviously climb - it's just not a strong point for either of them. I think it was always expected that she'd concede the jersey yesterday.
Great work from Vollering trying to hang on there
The camera bike behind AvV just fell over!
Such a slow speed that he couldn't hold it. That climb is absolutely brutal. Great battle for 3rd on the stage!
Not as much of a lead for AvV as we might have expected. Good race
Good climbing from Demi Vollering as she was taking back time (albeit slowly) from Annamiek van Vlouten on those brutal final ramps.
Just caught the highlights on catch-up. Really pleased to see the other teams trying to put pressure on AvV even if in the end she crushed them all in a giant pestle and mortar made entirely of watts.
Really cool to see how much the polka-dots mean to Vollering as well.
There's a great (as always) recap of the race over on inrng:
https://inrng.com/2022/08/tour-de-france-femmes-review/
I think this is a really important part:
It was also greatly satisfying for all the other things it represented. The Tour de France Femmes is back for the first time since 1989. Yes there have been races in between but if you’d visited the Grande Boucle Feminine a decade ago you’d have seen a modest race that was amateur, in the kind sense, in terms of organisation. This was very much the Tour de France, visually it looked like the men’s race with the same hoardings at the top of a climb, the same finish arch, the same farmer field displays, the same Cochonou bob hats from the caravanne, the same mass of camping cars, the same TV production.
For all its shortcomings, the race represents something new. The tour is taking this very seriously and not just tacking something onto the mens race here.
I've honestly loved watching it and can't wait to learn more about the womens' peloton as the sport grows.