The women’s sport has seen a huge expansion since the Tour’s return in 2022, and the hallmark race brings in new fans and followers each summer, but sometimes the attention on the sport can fade slightly once the winner has packed away her yellow jersey and headed home.

However, there’s so much going on in the women’s peloton beyond the Tour as the season continues, be it the rest of the WorldTour season, the upcoming World Championships, or the transfer market.

So what have we got to look forward to in the remaining weeks of 2026, and which stories can you expect to see filling the pages here at Cyclingnews? From transfers to big races still to come, here's six compelling storylines to keep an eye on for the rest of this year.

The remaining races of 2026

As the Tour de France Femmes finds its place in our collective memories, thoughts naturally turn to the next races where we can see the top riders competing, and the calendar has not been kind, with only nine days of WorldTour racing left this season. Despite this, we only have to wait until next week to see some of the Tour de France stars in action again.

The Tour of Britain Women starts on Wednesday, August 19, with Tour de France stage winner Kim Le Court-Pienaar (AG Insurance-Soudal) set to return after winning the opening stage last year. Also listed is green jersey winner Lorena Wiebes and her SD Worx-Protime teammate Lotte Kopecky, and they’re not the only big names. A punchy course with something for everyone is what has attracted such a stellar field, and we’re almost certain to witness five days of entertaining racing.

The final European race on the WorldTour calendar comes at the end of August, on the rolling roads around Plouay with the one-day Classic Lorient Agglomération, which always provides tense, unpredictable racing and a good start list. After that, the WorldTour takes six weeks off before heading to China for the Tour of Chongming Island. With its bridges for climbs and nailed on bunch sprints it can be a bit of a snooze-fest, but new regulations around teams’ attendance at races means we should have better teams and a higher level of competition.

The paucity of top-level racing after August somewhat undermines much of the momentum the Tour de France bestows on the sport. However, there are reasons for it, with the Tour de Romandie Féminin being cancelled due to a lack of funds and the Simac Ladies Tour dropping down the race hierarchy and becoming the Eneco Tour Women.

Luckily, we do have a series of second-tier races coming up with the Pointe du Raz Ladies Classic, La Choralais Fourmies, GP Region Stuttgart, while the Italian pair of Giro dell’Emilia Internazionale and Tre Valli Varesine are always excellent competitive events.

And of course there are the World Championships, this year held in Montréal in September.

Can Demi Vollering finally win a rainbow jersey? 

Demi Vollering (FDJ United-Suez) has won two Tours de France, the Giro d'Italia Women and Vuelta Femenina, and a host of top Classics. She’s the sport’s leading name, arguably its best climber, up there with the leading time trialists, and she even has the punch to mix it in a sprint finish, but she’s never won the rainbow jersey. Could this be her year?

She’s come close more than once, improving each year from 56th place in her 2019 debut. She was seventh in 2021 and has never finished outside the top 10 since. She was second to Lotte Kopecky in Glasgow in 2023, but when Kopecky won again in Switzerland the following year, the Belgian out-witted Vollering in the final before out-muscling her in the sprint.

But Vollering is a far more savvy rider these days. Gone are the moments of poor positioning and she is far less willing to do all the work, but there are still moments when she plays the game and loses.

Last year she was part of a group of favourites that stared each other into the abyss, as Magdeleine Vallieres took the jersey. More recently, on Mont Ventoux during the Tour de France Femmes, she and Marlen Reusser concentrated only on each other, paying the price as Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney (Canyon-SRAM) rode away to stage victory and into yellow.

At 180km, this year’s Worlds course is the longest in the race’s history, more than 120km further than when Elsy Jacobs became the first woman to win the rainbow jersey in 1958, and three times the length of the last women’s World Championships held in Montréal.

The opening 60km are almost flat, with the vast majority of the 2,400m of vertical ascent coming during eight laps of a lumpy closing circuit, which is sure to make for a tough, attritional final. Whether it’s a pure climber’s course or not is open to conjecture, but Vollering seems to fit the bill any way you look at it.

Kate Courtney hits the road

Kate Courtney has long been a star of the mountain bike world, the American winning a host of the most illustrious off-road races, including multiple US titles, Cape Epic, the overall World Cup and two rainbow jerseys. At last year’s Leadville Trail MTB 100 she smashed the course record en route to taking the title at her first attempt.

However, rather than returning to Leadville to defend that title and take on the amended route, Courtney is beginning a new challenge on the road. She made her debut in UCI-level road racing earlier this year, riding for the US national team at the Tour Feminin in Czechia, finishing 13th overall and winning the final stage in the 2.2 level event.

After adding another stars and stripes jersey to her collection at the US Road Nationals in June, the 30-year-old signed with Demi Vollering’s FDJ team, taking personal sponsor Red Bull with her, on a deal taking her through to the end of 2028, past her home Olympic Games.

While some riders find the switch to the road difficult, that has not been the case for Courtney, whose programme has been greatly helped by the team’s approach. After riding two lumpy, 1.1 races in France, guiding teammate Eva van Agt to victory in one of them, she headed to Belgium, essentially on a mission to learn, riding three kermesses, winning two and finishing second in the other.

A flick through Courtney’s Instagram illustrates that she knows how much she still has to learn, and we will see just how much that is next week when she starts the Tour of Britain Women. Whatever she has to learn, Courtney is clearly born to race bikes and her progress on the road will be fascinating to follow.

Will anyone topple Lorena Wiebes?

We’ve known it for a while now, but if a race finishes in a bunch sprint and Lorena Wiebes is there, the SD Worx-Protime rider is almost certain to win. She is without doubt the best and most consistent sprinter in the peloton. We know it, her team know it, and her rivals certainly know it too.

But, like all things, her dominance is certain to end sometime – the big question is when.

This year does not yet count as a vintage season for Wiebes. Last year she added 25 victories to her burgeoning palmarès; this year there have only been 15 so far. And we’ve even seen her lose a bunch sprint for the first time in almost two years as Carys Lloyd (Movistar) won the Ronde van Brugge. And of course, there was that disqualification from the Giro d’Italia for a bike weight infringement after crossing the line first.

She hardly seems vulnerable, though – just look at her two stage wins at the Tour de France, both of which included more than 1,500m of vertical ascent, and both of which were conquered with relative ease.

Other than her aura of invincibility, another thing working in Wiebes’ favour is the lack of form among her rivals. Elisa Balsamo (Lidl-Trek) has struggled this year, Lara Gillespie (UAE Team L’IMAD) hasn’t yet clicked, and after a promising start to 2026, Charlotte Kool (Fenix-Premier Tech) has tailed off drastically, failing to finish the Tour after finishing OTL on Ventoux.

With a couple of Tour of Britain stages likely to finish in a bunch kick, the other sprinters have chances of toppling Wiebes in the coming days, and the Tour of Chongming Island routinely provides three sprints. Away from the top tier, La Choralis Fourmies is one for the fast women and the Eneco Tour Women will have multiple chances. But these are chances for Wiebes too and no one would bet against her adding significantly to her 133 wins.

"There will be a point that I will be beaten in a sprint and probably the media thinks a lot about that," she told us at the UAE Tour, where she won three stages. "But then for me just focus on the good things and keep on improving and keep on being the best version that I can be."

Where will some of the top names land?

Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney and Paula Blasi were two of the biggest stars of the Tour de France Femmes, but could be two of the biggest names on the transfer market this season, too.

After winning Amstel Gold Race and the Vuelta earlier in the year, Blasi finished fifth on her debut at the Tour, one of three riders from UAE Team L'Imad in the top 10. This despite media questioning of not only the squad’s leadership on the road, but also the Spaniard’s continued presence on the team.

There has been speculation over Niewiadoma-Phinney’s future too, with her contract at Canyon-SRAM expiring at the end of this year and a move away apparently on the cards.

She’s been with the German team since 2018, having begun her career at Rabobank-Liv in 2013, and has flourished there, and while she is not a regular winner, when they come, her victories tend to be huge statements. A move away would be a huge loss for the team, but she’s the real deal and will be an excellent addition to whichever team she joins.

On the other hand, the inexperienced Blasi is more of a risk for any team willing to buy her out of her contract at UAE, which officially expires at the end of 2027. After starting her career in triathlon and duathlon, she burst onto the cycling scene last year following a season racing at club level in her native Spain.

Moving to UAE’s development team, she was soon promoted to the WorldTeam, winning the mountain time trial at the Tour de Romandie Féminin. This year her development has continued, with Amstel Gold Race her own statement win, followed by the general classification at the Vuelta.

There have been plenty of other wins since then too, and she’s clearly a huge talent, but whether she can justify the prospect of being the sport’s first million-Euro woman remains to be seen.

After such a brilliant 2026 Tour what will next year's route serve us?    

This year’s Tour was a microcosm of the women’s sport itself. At the start of the week Demi Vollering was the nailed-on favourite to win overall and though she achieved that, wow, was it exciting.

I don’t believe in constantly judging women's cycling against men's cycling, but it's worth noting that five riders wore yellow across the nine stages of the Tour de France Femmes against the three during the 21 stages of the men's Tour. The sprint days were barely that, and other than the Mont Ventoux day, the rest of the stages consisted of punchy days, the route certainly contributing to the spectacle.

So what of next year?

The route for the 2027 race will be revealed, as usual, alongside the men’s in late October. What we do know is that the opening stages will be held in the north of England, which will hopefully provide some lumpy stages through the Peak District before the team time trial in London.

However, we’ll have to wait to see what happens when the race returns to home soil. After such a successful 2026 organisers might be tempted to try a repeat, packing the race with punchy stages of varying degrees, but variety is key. Like last year there need to be editions with more than one visit to the high mountains, some seasons with a time trial and some without.

What they should not do, and what they have already acknowledged, is make the race too hard.

"We can make the race harder, but do we want to? Not necessarily," race director Marion Rousse said at the conclusion of this year’s event. "I don't favour constantly raising the level of difficulty, but that's a personal point of view.

"I've had experience as a TV media analyst and sometimes, when it's too tough, that kills off the suspense because riders just look at each other until the last climb."

We’ll let you know what they decide.

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She has logged six race days this season, racing to 39th at the Tour of Flanders, and her latest outing came at Paris-Roubaix Femmes, where she crashed out of the race on the Orchies sector of cobbles.

She suffered shoulder damage in the crash, only learning in June that she'd need to undergo surgery as non-surgical rehabilitation wasn't successful. In addition to that, she was diagnosed with RED-S (Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport), and imaging picked up a collapsed nasal valve.

Dygert scheduled surgeries on her shoulder and nose "as close as possible to shorten my overall recovery time and keep moving forward with the progress I'd been making with my shoulder," she said.

She called the double surgery "the worst best decision I've ever made", comparing the pain of the process to her left quadriceps laceration suffered at the 2020 Road World Championships time trial.

"I have to say, my leg accident is hard to top on the pain scale, but this combination came in at a very close second," Dygert wrote in a post on Instagram.

"Less than three weeks after shoulder surgery, I was rear-ended (I was not at fault) and ended up with whiplash through an already-recovering shoulder, which extended my recovery and still under review as it’s impossible to know what damage could have been done with the limited amount of mobility I have and inability to have another MRI as it would just be a mess from surgery.

"Then, the following week, I underwent nasal surgery—which ended up being more extensive than originally planned. Significant deviated cartilage and bone were removed, including deeper portions of my septum and maxillary crest.

"My septum was reconstructed using my own cartilage, with grafts placed on both sides to repair and stabilize my nasal valves. Both inferior turbinates were also reduced to improve airflow, and splints were stitched in place afterward."

Dygert, whose contract with Canyon-SRAM draws to a conclusion this winter, said that the car crash only added to the difficulty of recovering from a pair of surgeries so close to one another.

"Each surgery on its own would have been annoying enough, but combining the two recoveries with a car accident in the middle has made this one of the harder stretches I’ve been through in a while.

"I know that in a few weeks, this will all be worth it and eventually just another memory."

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The 29-year-old is Visma's first confirmed incoming transfer for 2027, and she joins Marta Lach on SD Worx's outgoing list. She has joined Visma-Lease a Bike on a two-year deal.

This year, Markus – sister of Lidl-Trek racer Riejanne – has enjoyed her strongest season since joining SD Worx from Parkhotel Valkenburg back in 2023.

Her spring Classics highlight was a top-10 finish at In Flanders Fields, while the following month she scored her first win in four years, leading an SD Worx 1-2-3 at the Antwerp Port Epic Ladies with a 26km solo move.

She narrowly missed out on becoming Dutch road champion in June, taking second in a two-up sprint with future teammate Lieke Nooijen, and she finished eighth at last month's Baloise Ladies Tour.

"What appeals to me about Team Visma-Lease a Bike is the knowledge and expertise that are present within the team," Markus said.

"I am looking forward to learning from that and continuing to develop myself. With support from The Athlete’s FoodCoach and an approach that is strongly based on science, I believe I can still take steps forward here."

Markus comes from a speedskating family. She was a junior world champion before following Riejanne in switching over to cycling. Younger sister Roos, meanwhile, has stuck to skating. She only turned pro in 2022, so her rise to the top of the Women's WorldTour has been rapid.

If her palmarès didn't already show it, Markus said that the Classics are her forte. Her favourite race is Paris-Roubaix, where she has twice finished in the top 20 and took 21st this year.

Three years ago, she was in the winning breakaway at the Hell of the North, but slipped and fell on the Roubaix velodrome, eventually finishing 19th as Alison Jackson went on to score a famous victory.

"I really love Classics, echelons and tough races. I am a bit of a powerhouse rider. I really enjoy it when a race becomes difficult and the strongest rider wins. As a rider, I am above all a team player. I want to win together with the team and always get the best out of myself," Markus said.

"I would like to continue developing in the classics, but I also really enjoy being a reliable foundation within the team, someone the team can always count on."

Markus's biggest dream is to win Roubaix, she said, while Visma-Lease a Bike manager noted that she can be a key rider for the team during the spring Classics.

"Femke is a rider who has proven herself over several years in Classics and races where the difference is made through strength and race intelligence," he said.

"We have seen that she performs well when the race is made hard and the conditions are challenging. That is something we can use well in the spring."

Analysis

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Le Court-Pienaar heads to Britain on the back of a stage victory at the recent Tour de France, the AG Insurance-Soudal rider sprinting from the breakaway to win stage 6, into Tournon-sur-Rhône.

SD Worx-Protime rider Wiebes was also successful in France, winning the two opening stages, wearing the yellow jersey for two days and winning the points classification green jersey. She will be joined by teammate and former double World Champion Lotte Kopecky who is sure to be looking for a second general classification win after taking the 2024 title.

Last year’s overall winner Ally Wollaston will also be present, the New Zealander leading a strong FDJ United-Suez squad, which includes their Scottish climber, Lauren Dickson among their number.

Wollaston is coming off the back of a strong performance on the track at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow and will be a contender for the flatter stages.

Le Court-Pienaar won the opening stage of last year’s Tour of Britain, but was forced to abandon after crashing on stage 3 and has a score to settle with the race.

"I'm looking forward to racing the Tour of Britain again," she said. "Last year was a mix of emotions for me personally, so I'm looking forward to coming back and making this edition a good one from start to finish."

With the form she showed in France and her abilities on shorter punchy climbs, the Mauritian champion is certainly one of the favourites for the general classification.

The Tour of Britain Women begins in Cockermouth, Cumbria in England’s far north-west on Wednesday, August 19, and concludes in Royal Leamington Spa on Sunday, August 23.

After what’s likely to be a sprint day on the Lancashire coast, two stages in Wales are most likely to decide the general classification, with stage 3 finishing on the climb of The Great Orme, before tackling the hills of mid-Wales the following day.

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She admitted the mistake and took the hit, confirming to Cyclingnews hours after the race that she had "misunderstood the rules" for elite riders and took a bottle at an aid station for non-elites, adding, "I'm not proud of my mistake but I am proud of my performance."

A three-time US Gravel National Champion with former road race titles at USPro and Pan American championships, Stephens enjoys riding any bike on any terrain. This year she returns for 'another' debut at Leadville and aims for the podium. She said it was a race she's wanted to win for more than 15 years, but with a busy road calendar that paid the bills didn't have room for it until recently.

In 2026, she's committed to the Life Time Grand Prix. For her, Leadville isn't just a race in the series, it's the one she wants to win.

"Leadville's always kind of been a dream race of mine. So to get to race it last year was just so special. I'd always said I would race it when I stopped racing full time, and I know I still race full time, but I'm not racing professionally over in Europe, so it's just a current chapter in my career," Stephens explained to Cyclingnews from her high-elevation training base near Telluride, Colorado last week.

"It was a big goal of mine last year to win it, and finishing third was amazing. And yeah, this year I'm back to try to win."

It was in 2009 that Lauren Stephens awakened a desire to race, and win, Leadville Trail 100 MTB. She had just watched a documentary, 'Race Across the Sky: the Leadville Trail 100', and was captivated by the film that featured incredible climbing, a dominant women's winner Rebecca Rusch and the men's showdown between Lance Armstrong and Dave Wiens.

"Before I was racing and just getting interested in cycling, I remember going to the theatres to watch the movie about Leadville, and just being like, wow, I want to do that one day. Gosh, that was almost 20 years ago," she said.

She is fifth overall in the Life Time Grand Prix going into Leadville this year, with a large spread of 18 points to leader Sofia Gomez Villafañe. The Colorado race begins the back half of the series with ample opportunities to move higher in the standings. She opened the year with a runner-up to Villafañe in the sprint at Sea Otter Classic on dirt, and on the road won GC titles at Redlands Bicycle Classic, Tour of the Gila and won The Growler at Levi's Gran Fondo.

After finishing 15th at Unbound Gravel 200, her first time at that distance after winning the 100-mile event previously, Stephens went second to Kate Courtney at the USPro road race championship. Now it's Courtney's turn to race on the road in Europe and Stephens stays in the US for off-road endurance.

"When you look at Unbound being 200 miles, it's a different animal. A seven-hour race is much more in my wheelhouse, and being such a climbing race as well," she said, noting that her expansive time with road riding has been a solid base, as well as six weeks at elevation.

After USPro Nationals in mid-June, she went straight to Colorado rather than her home in Dallas, Texas, a notable difference of nearly 8,000 feet (2,430 metres). She raced Foco Fondo, winning for a third time, and trained around Telluride. The smoke from wildfires was not as noticeable in that area, and she was glad Life Time could make Leadville happen, even with the elimination of some climbing.

"It's unfortunate about the fires. The new course was pretty much what we expected they would come up with, and so I wasn't really surprised by it. We still have Columbine, so it's still a climbing race, Stephens said.

"But not having Powerline at the end definitely changes the race quite a bit. I think it makes Columbine even more important. In general, the way the race was raced before, Columbine caused attrition, caused splits, just by the nature of it being such a long, hard climb and at such high elevation. Powerline was the place where you could make your final attack; now, not having Powerline, I think makes Columbine harder."

She said wind is also a factor on some of the wide-open parts of the route between Turquoise Lake to the north and the Twin Lakes to the south at the base of Columbine. And with 20 miles to go at the end, fatigue came into play on the 20% gradients of the 3.4-mile stretch of Powerline, where she tried to get away from runner-up Melisa Rollins, though Courtney was long gone.

"Powerline was basically a wall. Now, there's nothing crazy, but after such a long day, everything's hard. I mean, we're still at almost 10,000 feet of climbing."

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The Colorado event marks a shift in the series back to the flat bars – with Chequamegon MTB Festival and Little Sugar MTB next on the agenda in September and October. This mountain bike endurance race can throw a spanner in the works with nearly 10,000 feet of climbing, and altitude adaptation is rigorously tested across even a modified course, with the start in Leadville at 10,152 feet above sea level.

The changes to the route due to wildfire damage may cut out more than 4,000 feet of climbing from the original route, but the remaining elevation gain, including the traditional climb, and tricky descent, to Columbine Mine at 12,424 feet above sea level will push riders to the limit.

The prize purse had been doubled to $60,000, with race winners, regardless of affiliation of the Life Time Grand Prix, taking home $10,000 each. The closely-packed ranks of the Grand Prix competition deliver another incentive, as the series hits a third round of six.

In the men's competition Specialized Off-road teammates Matthew Beers and Keegan Swenson are currently on top of the leaderboard, each with 54 points, while Alexey Vermeulen is third with 46 points while Brendan Johnston, with 42 points, and Cobe Freeburn, sitting on 40 points, rounds out the top five.

Sofia Gomez Villafañe heads the women's leaderboard with 60 points and then it's Cecily Decker in second on 48, with Rosa Klöser, Hayley Preen, Lauren Stephens and Paige Onweller all within seven points of Decker. As Villafañe said in a recent episode of The Cooldown podcast "we're in for a proper battle at Leadville".

Read on for a list of riders that are expected to be vying for the top spots as that 'proper battle' unfolds.

Women's Elite

Melisa Rollins (Liv Racing Collective)

With last year's winner Kate Courtney not on the start line, the person who naturally steps into the limelight as a key rider to watch is 2024 winner Melisa Rollins, particularly as she was also second to Courtney last year. However, it hasn't exactly been an easy season for Rollins after going second at RADL GRVL in South Australia. In March, whilst in the midst of training for a tilt at the Cape Epic with Courtney as her partner, a broken left elbow and injured right wrist derailed her plans, then there was a torn triceps, and finally, when she got back on the bike again, she was sideswiped by a car.

However, she'd had a tough start to 2025 as well – crashing and breaking her wrist in Otway Odyssey in late February – but still was delivering podium form by the time Leadville came around. What's more, she's already proven she's firing despite the brutal run, returning at SBT GRVL in late June and delivering at the US XCM National Championships. That means Rollins will be stepping onto the start line at Leadville with the extra boost of doing it not just as a former winner, but also in the jersey of a national champion.

Lauren Stephens (Aegis x Leaders of Enchantment)

If you look at the results of Leadville in 2025 you will not see Lauren Stephens sitting near the top of the results list, even though she crossed the line with the third-best time, nor did she get to step up to the podium. That's because after the race was run Stephens was disqualified for mistakenly taking aid outside a designated crew location. Therefore, while on the results sheet it may not have looked like much of a debut at the event, what she delivered with her legs is a clear indicator of her potential to be a fierce competitor at the event.

In fact, the events of last year may even add a little more fuel to the fire, which is clearly burning brightly anyway this season. The US Gravel champion has also come second on the road in the battle for the national title the past two years, plus she has delivered a strong run of other results so far this season. That includes overall victory at both the Redlands Bicycle Classic and Tour of the Gila Women as well as second at Sea Otter Classic Gravel and third at SBT GRVL. It's a path to Leadville that bodes well for 2026, particularly as she's bound to have studied the tech guide in meticulous detail this time.

Sofia Gomez Villafañe (Specialized Off-road)

It would be the height of foolishness not to have Sofia Gomez Villafañe near the top of any contenders list, given her run of results across the years and particularly this season where she is yet to deviate from the top step. Right from Santa Vall in Spain in February through to UCI Gravel World Series event Castellon Gravel, The Mid South, Sea Otter Classic, The Traka 200, Unbound Gravel 200 and SBT GRVL, Villafañe has reigned supreme. The question now is will she carry all that gravel prowess through to Leadville.

The mountain bike events haven't exactly been the three time Life time Grand Prix winner's strong suit in previous years but you'd be really pushing it to call that discipline a weakness. Villafañe is after all a two-time Cape Epic and did win at Leadville in 2023. Plus last year the Specialized rider was fourth and was second in 2024, so has never been far from the front, it just that sometimes she hasn't been right at the very front. That, however, could well change in 2026, after all she has won everything else.

Cecily Decker (PAS Racing)

Last year Cecily Decker proved her ability to perform at the top of Leadville as, after finishing last in the pro women's category in 2024, in 2025 she'd gone all out to target the race which didn't suit her. The former US Ski Team racer, who last year finished second to Villafañe at the Life Time Grand Prix, has now proven she's got what it takes to target the top spots.

It's been another strong year so far for Decker, with an early -season podium at The Mid South and the rider is once again sitting second in the LTGP between her eighth at Sea Otter and powerful third overall at Unbound at the end of May. After stepping onto the podium for a second year running at the brutal test in Kansas, there was a patch of illness. However, she was back racing late June and stepped straight back to the podium at Big Horn Gravel, and this time it was the top step.

After a solid fifth at SBT GRVL, she also then went on to claim the Leadville stage race in late July. Decker has been out doing a recon of the fire-modified Leadville 100 MTB course this week and, given her current form, and what she achieved last year, it's clear she'll be heading into this edition as one of the key riders to watch.

Others to watch

It's also hard to look past Sarah Lange as a possible contender. Firstly, she has finished fifth at the event the past two years, and Lange was also clearly building some strong form at SBT Gravel, when she came second after being caught by Villafañe. Then there is also Haley Preen, not only the South African gravel champion but also wearing the national marathon mountain bike jersey as well.

Paige Onweller, who was in the top 10 at Leadville last year, has also been putting some flying form clearly on display in recent months. After her fourth at Unbound Gravel 200 she then swapped to the road for the USPro National Championships and was third in the time trial and then, even after being caught following a long solo effort, she still managed to hold on for sixth in the road race.

Another rider to watch is Rosa Klöser, as it will be fascinating to see how the gravel and road rider adapts to another discipline when she takes on her first Leadville. The German 2024 Unbound 200 winner has proven time and time again she is not afraid of a challenge but this is unquestionably a big one, not least of all because she is coming straight from an arduous effort on the road at the Tour de France Femmes, where she also became unwell.

Men's elite

Keegan Swenson (Specialized Off-road)

If Keegan Swenson wasn't a marked rider before, he's even more so in 2026 - going for a record-tying sixth consecutive victory in Colorado and doing so this time with the marathon mountain bike World Champion's rainbow stripes for team Specialized Off-road. But he isn't really concerned about the other elite riders, it's all about a self-admitted 'obsession' with winning Leadville and going faster.

"Leadville, it's one of the most iconic mountain bike races in the world. It was always one of those races that I really wanted to win, and then it kind of became an obsession of how fast I could go and how hard I could push myself. So every year I'm trying to find ways to push a little harder, whether it's fitness, or equipment, or tactics. It's a lot of work, it's never easy. You've just got to be stubborn," he said with a laugh in the ROAD iD YouTube film, Unseen Miles.

The 32-year-old suffered a hip injury in February which disrupted his early season, then cranked up the engine for a podium at Sea Otter Classic, an epic fifth place at Unbound Gravel 200, and a fourth win at SBT GRVL. He'll have one Specialized teammate along for company in Leadville, Matt Beers, the duo tied in first place on the Life Time Grand Prix men's leaderboard. Look for the twosome to set a wicked pace, the larger frame of Beers doing some major miles to slingshot Swenson to a sixth win.

Quinn Simmons (Lidl-Trek)

Just four days before Saturday's early-morning race start, an unexpected entry by WorldTour rider Quinn Simmons (Lidl-Trek) spiced up the elite men's start list. However, it's not as big a surprise as the first time the Colorado native competed in Leadville was in 2019, and that time as an unproven 18-year-old he outsprinted Lachlan Morton and Peter Stetina to take second place.

Simmons now returns as a three-time USPro road race champion, and fresh off his fourth Tour de France, winning a Best Teammate special prize for a second time as selected by a race jury. He was often in breakaways at this year's Tour, landing second place on stage 4 and helping Lidl-Trek teammate Mads Pedersen secure the points classification title. Look for Simmons to go on the attack, often, and treat this mountain bike challenge as a hilly one-day Classic.

John Gaston (STRAFE-Specialized)

Last year's runner-up to Swenson was mountain bike specialist John Gaston, who was 15 minutes behind the race leader though just 51 seconds away from going under the 6-hour mark. He was four minutes faster than 2024, when he also went solo for second place. In fact, he has been on the podium each of the last four years, so it would be no surprise to find the 39-year-old back in the hunt.

Winter has been the main focus for the 39-year-old from Aspen, Colorado, who has competed most often with 12,000 vertical feet in ski mountaineering for more than a decade and most recently won the US Skimo Nationals. He mixes some mountain biking in summer, and comes in fresh to Leadville again, as he does not compete in any off-road cycling series.

Brendan Johnston (Giant)

Brendan Johnston had a "devastating" DNF at Leadville last year, thanks to a huge rock that destroyed his rear wheel just 20km in on the Powerline descent. This summer 's US campaign finds him firing on all cylinders again, with a fourth-place finish at a muddy Unbound Gravel 200, which was one spot better than 2025 but "significantly more savage". That effort boosted him to fourth position in the Life Time Grand Prix headed into Leadville.

He has settled into a lead role in the Life Time Grand Prix, finishing in the top 10 for three seasons, saying in an Australian Gravel interview, "Now that I'm established, it feels like a home away from home" to be in the US often for the races.

Racing on Australian soil on two separate trips, he won both UCI Gravel World Series races, extending his streak in that collection of events to six consecutive victories. In the US, he has a road podium in The Growler at Levi's Grand Fondo, a gravel win at the Salty Lizard in Utah, and two weeks' acclimation in Colorado ahead of Leadville. The six-time Australian cross-country marathon MTB champion is back with confidence on a new Anthem full-suspension bike with new Giant mountain bike wheels, and among the Grand Prix riders behind Swenson looks to make a move at this long-distance Colorado race.

Others to watch

Among the elite men in the Life Time Grand Prix, there are a large number of riders who can survive the altitude, power across Columbine and overcome encroaching fatigue to kick pavement at the finish. Tops among this group is versatile Simon Pellaud (Cervelo-Assos-Maxxis), who is seventh overall in the Grand Prix with eight points separating him from four other riders.

The Swiss-born rider who has lived in Colombia for many years was third in his Leadville debut last year. An early season knee issue has been resolved and he comes in with a solid base of road racing, fifth overall at a UCI stage race in South Korea and eighth at Swiss road nationals. Just a week ago he had a dominant win at the UCI Gravel World Series race in Colombia.

The US duo of Alexey Vermeulen (ENVE) and Cobe Freeburn (Trek Driftless) are two of the riders being chased by Pellaud, Vermeulen in third overall and Freeburn fifth. While they both finished in the top 15 last year in Leadville, it was Freeburn's debut after going third at SBT GRVL. He's from Durango and started out racing mountain bikes, though he focused on the shorter cross-country races and not the six-hour endurance events.

Vermeulen has the experience at Leadville, going second in 2023, outsprinting Gaston that time, and going fourth in 2022. This year he was third at Sea Otter Gravel and second at SBT GRVL.

Big moves are needed by Andrew l'Esperance (3T Bike-Maxxis-Pearl Izumi) and Toby Røed (Trek Driftless) to crack the Grand Prix top 10, the Canadian rider in 11th and the Norwegian living in Colorado in 17th. L'Esperance has his racing roots on the mountain bike and can improve from sixth place last year. He most recently had a solid ride at The Rift with fourth place. Røed had a late start to his season, missing Sea Otter Classic, but he comes in as the new Norwegian gravel champion. Based on his fourth and eighth place finishes the last two years at Leadville, he's looking for an even better finish and grab Grand Prix points as well.

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The Italian improved as the Tour went on, going from seventh place in Poligny to fourth before the final weekend, and then third overall after Marlen Reusser was dropped and crashed on the final stage in Nice.

She ended her race 4:19 down on Vollering, 3:01 off Niewiadoma-Phinney, the majority of the time shed in the hills of the Jura on stage 5 and up Mont Ventoux two days later.

Speaking to La Gazzetta dello Sport, Longo Borghini said she believes she can close those gaps, especially given the disrupted year she had leading up to August.

"I'll be back at the Tour to win it next year. Considering the problems and the setback I've had, I don't think the gap is that wide," she said.

"It has been a bit of a strange year for me so far. In spring, I lost a month to bronchitis. I spent a great deal of time playing catch-up, like at the Giro d'Italia Women, which went well with fourth place and a stage win, but not brilliantly.

"Even at this Tour, I was chasing the leaders a lot, but at a certain point, the pieces of the puzzle started to fit together better."

Speaking in her post-Tour press conference, Longo Borghini said she "never stopped believing" in making the Tour podium, adding that it was the "cherry on the cake" of her race. She told Gazzetta that she took immense pride in her achievement.

"The feeling on the final day was incredible, a real adrenaline rush," she said.

"[I'm proud of] the fact that I started in fourth place, but I wanted – and had to – go all out. I was only interested in the podium, nothing else. All-in."

The result came after sleepless nights at the Tour, where Longo Borghini's doubts saw her consider abandoning the race, she said.

"I'd wake up and think about the details, what hadn't gone right, the fact that things could end up even worse the next day, even about withdrawing from the Tour and from cycling altogether.

"But obviously, you can take that as hyperbole. I think everyone has strange thoughts at night from time to time. It was nice, then, to see how I reacted."

Following her Tour success – her best result to date in four starts – one big goal for 2026 lies ahead for Longo Borghini. She's set to lead the Italian selection at the Road World Championships.

The road race in Montréal is set to be the 15th of her career, among which she has scored three bronze medals. Vollering, the favourite to take the rainbow stripes on a hilly course, is once again in her sights.

"Now it's all about the Road World Championships, where Demi will always be the woman to beat. On September 26 in Montréal, I want to be ready."

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Wout van Aert will be among those lining up, with the Visma-Lease a Bike racer venturing into gravel again after winning the UCI Gravel World Series race Marly Gravel in May. His focus will soon be on the road again, though, at the upcoming Vuelta a España.

Van Aert will have plenty of competition in the national title chase as among those set to line up in the elite men's field are defending champion Niels Vandeputte (Alpecin-Premier Tech Development Team), Tim Merlier (Soudal QuickStep), who was third at the event last year, along with gravel regulars Greg van Avermaet and Daan Soete (Ridley Racing) who is fresh from winning Heathland Gravel on Sunday.

Elite women's defending champion Marthe Truyen (Fenix-Premier Tech) will be back, as will last year's runner- up and teammate Lotte Claes, who in June claimed the national time trial title. The 2024 gravel champion Alana Castrique (AG Insurance-Soudal) will also be on the start line, as will road and cyclocross racer Julie Brouwers.

The men's elite race will be run over 163.2km, three laps of the course that starts and finishes in Grobbendonk while the elite women's race takes in two laps for 108.8km.

The national title holders also qualify for the UCI Gravel World Championships, to be held in Nannup, Western Australia on October 10 and 11. Before that, however, is the European Gravel Championships on August 30, which will be in Houffalize.

The Belgian Championships are among the growing number of nations to hold a national title race for gravel with Jasper Stuyven and Truyen claiming the first titles in 2023. Then in 2024 Castrique was joined by Gianni Vermeersch – the first gravel world champion in 2022.

A livestream of this year's race will also be available on Pickx.

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The September event in Trinidad, Colorado was last included as part of the series in 2024, and there have been six events in the season the past three years following the cancellation of the Crusher in the Tushar race due to wildfires two seasons ago.

For the year ahead, riders in the series must start a minimum of six of the seven events, which in 2027 will be Sea Otter Classic Gravel, Unbound Gravel 200, Leadville Trail 100 MTB, Chequamegon Mountain Bike Festival, Rad Dirt Fest, Little Sugar MTB and Big Sugar Gravel.

The process for deciding the 25 athletes in the men's and women's competition is also changing in 2027, with the aim being to "create a performance-driven-path" that also improves the abilities of athletes to plan for what's ahead.

"The Grand Prix is about identifying the best all-around off-road racers, and competing across gravel and mountain bike racing reflects that," said Kimo Seymour, President of Events and Media at Life Time. "Establishing the field earlier also gives athletes greater certainty as they plan their seasons and partnerships.”

Automatic selection for this season only applied to the top five and the top overall Under 23 rider from 2025. Then there were 16 selected athletes, and three wild card entries – with more added in the case of selected athletes dropping out. Places were confirmed after the second event, Unbound, in late May.

For 2027, the rules will be adjusted so the top ten athletes from 2026 gain automatic selection, along with the top U23 rider. The remaining 14 spots will then be decided based on the results from among the Pro category at the mid-April Sea Otter Classic Gravel and Sea Otter Classic Fuego XL.

“Our goal is to continue raising the competitive standard of the Grand Prix while creating a clear pathway into the Series for athletes to pursue,” said Seymour.

“The top athletes from this season will earn their opportunity to return, the next group will have the chance to race their way in at Sea Otter, and from there we’ll have 25 women and 25 men taking on seven of the most demanding off-road races in the country.”

The leaning toward performance-based, rather than discretionary, selection, is also not where the changes end. A new Pro category vetting procedure is also set to be introduced for 2027. Riders will have to apply for access to race in the Pro category at Life Time events, as part of a process which will be introduced in September.

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"The 19-year-old Dutch rider joins the squad with immediate effect from Team Picnic PostNL and will continue her career in the colours of AG Insurance-Soudal Team," the statement read.

"The move has been completed by mutual agreement with Team Picnic PostNL, allowing Megan to embrace a new chapter in her career."

Arens, who turned 19 in March, rode with two different Dutch club teams as a 17-18 junior, earning spots on the national team for Road World Championships both years. In her Worlds debut in 2024, Arens had top 10s in both the time trial and road race. Then last year rode a dominant time trial to win the rainbow jersey by 35 seconds, and followed with a UCI junior victory at Chrono des Nations.

She jumped into elite races this year with Picnic-PostNL, earning a most aggressive award on the opening stage at Itzulia Women and riding to seventh on the final stage at Tour de Suisse Women, and in both races was third in the youth classification.

"I’m really excited about joining AG Insurance-Soudal, and I’m very grateful to the team’s management for giving me this opportunity," Arens said.

"Watching the team perform at the Tour de France Femmes has once again shown me what a strong and ambitious team it is. I’m looking forward to being part of this group, continuing to develop and hopefully contributing to many great results together in the biggest races and Grand Tours in the years ahead."

Two months ago, AG Insurance-Soudal added 25-year-old cyclo-cross rider Amandine Fouquenet to the roster. She had previously raced on the road for Arkéa-B&B Hotels for six seasons, scoring a number of top 10s in one-day races at her home Bretagne Ladies Tour stage race.

Fouquenet will be on the Tour of Britain Women start list, while it was not yet known where Arens would make her first appearance for her new team. Both riders show potential as the French squad looks to develop young talent.

"We're very pleased to welcome Megan to our team. She has already shown that she is a rider with a lot of talent and potential, and we believe she fits perfectly within our philosophy of developing young riders," said Jurgen Foré, general manager of AG Insurance-Soudal.

"Over the past few years, we've built an environment where riders can grow step by step, and we're convinced Megan has everything she needs to continue that progression with us."

Cyclingnews will cover all of the 2026 cycling transfers from around the men's and women's pelotons with news, analysis, and an updated transfer index, to make sure you don't miss a thing this transfer season.

The climb to Columbine Mine, elevation 12,424 feet above sea level, remains the main pinnacle on the out-and-back course, as it has since the first race in 1994. This year, this climb, and the tricky descent with rough double-track dirt and two-way traffic, will be even more pivotal as the finishing climbs were removed. With no Powerline climb with 20 miles to go, and its menacing sections above 20% gradient, the new return to Leadville will be about positioning and proper hydration once at the bottom of Columbine with 43 miles to go.

The opening half of the race is where riders face 60% of the total 9,897 feet of elevation gain, thanks to the nearly seven-mile ascent of Columbine. There's still St. Kevin's climb, which is gravel on the outbound direction, but in total nearly 4,500 vertical feet of climbing is gone.

The route goes on the east side of Turquoise Lake this year, so it takes out Hagerman Pass Road, Sugarloaf Mountain and the leg-burning Powerline final climb. The reroute now has more pavement in this area for a reconnection with St. Kevin's, a gravel climb on the way out and a paved climb on the return side.

There is still room for drama on three miles of uphill gravel on County Road 36 leading to the sharp right turn on pavement for the finish in downtown Leadville, at 10,152 feet.

Elite riders will have two designated Feed Zones this year, completely separate from age-group riders. Each can be accessed twice, from outbound and then inbound directions.

These Elite Feed Zones were established by Life Time for safety, and a parking pass is required for access. All riders must take feeds from the right side, for both outbound and inbound feeds, meaning the crews will have to transition to the opposite side of the area for the second half of the race.

Feed Zones at 2026 Leadville Trail 100 MTB for elite riders

• Pipeline at mile 26.1 outbound, mile 742. Inbound
• Lost Canyon at mile 42.5 outbound and mile 58.7 inbound

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They were spread across nine teams in the peloton, with debutants and veterans among the crowd, along with a world champion and a GC contender.

The 13 North Americans at the Tour is a high watermark for the continent in five editions of the race, up from 11 at the Tours of 2022 and 2023. Three South American racers also took the start, another record. That meant a total of 16 from the 147 starters hailed from the Americas.

We tracked down several of the North American racers at the Tour to find out about their seasons and check in on how their races were going. Here are their stories.

Returning to the Tour after overcoming RED-S

First up was Canadian racer Kiara Lylyk. The 22-year-old raced the Tour, her second, for small French outfit Mayenne Monbana My Pie, alongside US rider Natalie Quinn. However, her campaign came to a premature end ahead of the Mont Ventoux stage after suffering from back pain during the week.

When Cyclingnews spoke to her ahead of stage 2, Lylyk said that she was happy to make the start in Lausanne, having spent much of 2026 recovering from RED-S (relative energy deficiency in sport).

The syndrome occurs when athletes fail to take in enough energy to support what they expend during exercise, disrupting hormone production and causing a range of negative impacts, including fatigue, reduced immunity, early osteoporosis, and menstrual disorders.

"I had very last-minute notice of the race, so I just did the best with what I had. It's been a really rough year for me, coming back from RED-S. Just to be here and start is a big accomplishment. I'm just happy to be here," Lylyk said.

"I got my period back for the first time in three years, so that was the win of the year for me. Just getting better in training. I didn't think that was going to happen this year, so I'm just happy."

Conversations about RED-S took centre stage at last year's Tour, with several riders talking about the importance of menstruating and having open and positive conversations about rider weight and health.

Cédrine Kerbaol, Kim Le Court-Pienaar, and Emma Norsgaard were among those to broach the subject last summer. A host of other riders, including Cat Ferguson, Kaia Schmid, Veronica Ewers and Chloé Dygert, have also discussed their battle with RED-S.

"I think the team is much more aware of it. We've had a couple of cases of girls losing their periods and having RED-S. I think someone like Chloé Dygert talking about it is really important because she said, 'Yeah, you can be doing all the things right, and you don't even realise if it's not intentional'.

"It's important to recognise, and sometimes you can't focus on winning the bike race – it's just about being healthy."

Tour de France Femmes debutant turned GC star

Lylyk was joined at the race by five other Canadians, including 21-year-old Isabella Holmgren, who raced to a very impressive eighth place with Lidl-Trek. Holmgren, now in her third year as a pro, is the reigning Tour de l'Avenir champion and finished as best young rider with a seventh-place finish at the Giro d'Italia.

Highlights of her race included a fifth place in the hills to Belleville-en-Beaujolais and a sixth place in the Nice finale, not bad for someone who treated the Tour as a learning experience.

"The main goal was just to learn. It's my first Tour, and I've never experienced something like this before. We have the best team, and it's so nice to learn from all of the girls and have them there to support," Holmgren said after the race.

"I think stage 5 is probably one of the best stages that I had, but also for the team. We had three girls in the breakaway, and we were racing super aggressively. I was disappointed with Ventoux [she finished 10th – Ed.] but on that day it was everything that I had, so I need to be happy.

"It makes me really hungry. I know that the level is really, really high, but I want to be there in the future, so I'm definitely very motivated."

Other Canadians at the Tour included EF Education-Oatly's Magdeleine Vallieres Mill, the surprise World Champion still looking for her first win in the rainbow stripes. She raced to a solid 18th place overall, with 16th place on the final day her personal highlight.

"I think we've been in the mix every day, and we've had a really good team and strong team every day doing really good work together," she told Cyclingnews ahead of the final stage. "It's been nice to have some extra cheers because of the jersey, super special, and the atmosphere has been super good."

National time trial champion Nadia Gontova, racing for Liv-AlUla-Jayco, was thrilled to show off the Canadian colours in the Dijon time trial, meanwhile.

"It's been super cool and really special getting to ride in the National Champs kit and on my new bike here at the Tour," she told Cyclingnews.

"I don't think I quite had the legs I was hoping for, but it was still super cool, and I really enjoyed the atmosphere. It's really nice to get to debut it at the Tour. Super cool."

Elsewhere, Cuba was represented by veteran racer Arlenis Sierra, who was part of Movistar's effort to score overall victory with Marlen Reusser. The team took their first yellow jersey since Annemiek van Vleuten's 2022 win, but the Swiss racer sadly dropped off the podium with a final-day crash on the Col d'Eze.

A self-coded training app already yielding results

Olympic champion Kristen Faulkner came to the Tour equipped with a special black-and-gold Cannondale SuperSix EVO with EF Education-Oatly, and a home-built training plan, too.

The 33-year-old US rider, a Harvard comp-sci graduate, spent a chunk of last off-season designing her own training app with the help of artificial intelligence. Earlier this year, she said that "The research I needed about my body did not exist. So I built it with AI."

The app collected a smorgasbord of biometric data, including heart rate, power numbers, sleep and menstrual cycle tracking, and bloodwork, and she credited it with her trio of triumphant rides, one on the road and two on the track, at the Pan American Championships.

Faulkner's top result in France was a strong sixth place in the mid-race time trial, while she ended the Tour in 26th overall, a career high.

"It was a really fun project for me. I feel like it's helped me a lot to understand my body better, understand how I'm performing and adapting, what works, and what doesn't. It's something that I still tune into a lot and find a lot of value from," she told Cyclingnews, before noting that she hasn't had a lot of time to put into the app since the season began.

"It may be something I return to in the off-season again. At this point, I'm trying to figure out what I do with this because I built something really valuable, but I'm still a full-time athlete. That's kind of an open-ended question for myself."

So far, it's been a personal project, and Faulkner hasn't been able to set aside the time to make the app available to others, including any teammates that may have expressed their interest in it.

"I think there are definitely opportunities to bring it to the team; I have nothing against that at all. I don't want to create something that other people are relying on me for when I can't be available during race season," she said.

Clearly, what Faulkner has created is working well for her so far, and it'll be interesting to see the returns in 2027 after another off-season of coding and tweaking.

Inspiring a nation on a historic Tour debut

The Tour de France Femmes welcomed its first-ever rider from Mexico this year as Romina Hinojosa made history for Lotto-Intermarché.

The 23-year-old, who made her Grand Tour debut at last year's Vuelta, battled to the end of the Tour after her team lost four of their seven riders in the opening three days of the race. Hinojosa herself was almost an OTL on stage 2, only narrowly beating the time cut by 1:41 in Geneva.

She improved as the race went on, though, making the breakaway along with one of her two remaining teammates, Sandrine Tas, on the road to Mont Ventoux. Her Tour drew to a close in Nice with a visit from her boyfriend, a certain Isaac del Toro, who waited in the team bus paddock for her to cross the line.

A day earlier in Sisteron, Hinojosa told Cyclingnews of her pride at representing her nation on cycling's biggest stage.

"I'm definitely very proud of it. I think I could go back and be like, 'Wow, I’m shit'. But no, actually I’m really proud," she said.

"This is the highest level, and seeing my progress, my personal ups and downs that I’ve had in the past years, I think I should be really proud of myself right now. So yeah, definitely going to work harder, but for now I’m really happy."

The Tour had taken its toll on both her and her Lotto teammates, but they kept on battling and smiling, Hinojosa said. Highlights for the team, the Ventoux breakaway aside, included Linda Riedmann's 10th place in Geneva and former speedskater Tas racing to 16th in the time trial.

"It’s definitely been a hard Tour de France. My first one, but it’s been hard. Every day I keep going on with a smile, and I really think it has made a difference in how I approach every day," Hinojosa said.

"I have been getting stronger day by day, so definitely next time I’m here I will be better prepared, but for now I’m really happy with everything."

American riders and teams racing aggressively and scoring GC results

Alongside EF Education-Oatly, Human Powered Health were the second US squad present at the Tour. They brought one US rider with them this time around as Lily Williams headed to France for the fourth time in her career.

This year, the 32-year-old has chased down some big results, including second places on stages of the Giro d'Italia and Tour de Suisse. Last week, she was part of a stage-hunting-turned-GC-focused team as Dutch racers Thalita de Jong and Nina Buijsman excelled in the hills and mountains. Their reward in Nice was 13th and 16th in the final standings, a top result considering that hadn't been their target in Lausanne.

"I think it’s impossible to plan for top results here. It’s just the biggest, hardest race of the year," Williams told Cyclingnews ahead of the penultimate stage.

"So I think we’ve kind of gotten better and better as the week goes. Thalita is 11th in GC, and we’ve had people in the finales on multiple days playing for the stage, so we’re just going to keep trying the last stage."

Williams had a major role to play for De Jong in the finale, too, after the Dutchwoman went over the limit on the opening climb, putting her GC spot at risk.

"Lily did an amazing job in the downhill to bring me back to the first group, but I also knew I gave so much that the climb would be really hard," she said.

"Luckily, we had a nice group; we did not go full because all the leaders were in front. We managed well to get to the finish line, but it was tough."

Elsewhere, a trio of North American battlers could be found aboard French squad St Michel-Preference Home-Auber93. The team has ambitions following Premier Tech's arrival as a sponsor late last year and the team's upcoming decision to go all-in on women's racing.

Former Paris-Roubaix winner Alison Jackson of Canada was joined in the team by American duo Caroline Wreszin and Heidi Franz, the latter making their Tour debut.

Jackson and Franz wouldn't make the finish of the race, but they and the team were frequently seen attacking along the way.

"For us, the breakaways are so important. This year especially, we've really tried to establish a more aggressive tactic in the team, and I think that's gone really well so far this season. Especially here on the world's biggest stage, we need to be present in those moves," Franz said.

"Visibility is super important. We might have a little bit less pressure. We can race a bit more instinctively because we don't have an out-and-out GC favourite. I think that gives us some freedom to race instinctively and aggressively without feeling like we have a lot to lose. We have more to gain by being aggressive and trying things rather than being conservative and holding back just in case. That's our mentality."

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The French champion, teammate of eventual winner Demi Vollering, was confronted by their chief rival, Niewiadoma-Phinney after stage 8, with the Canyon-SRAM racer accusing Gery of 'blocking' her at a key moment in the finale.

"I lost all respect for them," said Niewiadoma, who added: "I feel like if they want to compete, they should compete fair play."

Vollering and the FDJ United-Suez team management came to the defence of Gery, but the rider herself kept silent on the matter. She did not speak to the media at the start of the final stage the following morning and has remained silent on social media since the race began.

However, comments have now surfaced via the French cycling website Direct Vélo, who spoke to Gery after the podium ceremony in Nice on the final day, but only published their story on Tuesday afternoon.

"It was really difficult to go through, but hey, voila, that's how it is," Gery said.

FDJ United-SUEZ had indicated that Gery had received a wave of abuse following the incident, with team director Lars Boom even talking of death threats.

"She got a lot of nasty messages, which makes me always very angry, especially because she's such a young girl still," said Vollering. "We should always protect young people from these kinds of stupid actions from people who don't think and just send a message."

Gery did not address the impact of the wider reaction beyond that brief comment she made. However, she did indicate that she could look back on the race with positive feelings.

"It really does me good to finish in this way," she said after Vollering had soloed to the stage and overall victories on the final day, which also put a nail in the coffin of any speculation that the incident had an impact on the final result of the race.

"It does me even more good and gives me even more pleasure that Demi won given what happened alongside it.

"I'm really happy," she added. "It was a superb experience with the victory at the end of it. It's the dream scenario."

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In the nation, which has a population of 28 million, national broadcaster SBS said more than six million tuned in to watch the men's and women's editions of the French Grand Tour, which ran from July 4-26 and August 1-9 and was delivered free to air by a commentary team led by Matthew Keenan, but also including key cycling figures such as Cadel Evans, Caleb Ewan and Grace Brown.

The Total TV reach – a tally of individuals reached for the minimum period of 60 seconds for TV and 15 seconds for Broadcast Video on Demand – for the two races combined was 6.15 million. That was 5.21 million for the 21-stage men's race won by Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) and 1.51 million for the 9-stage women's race won by Demi Vollering (FDJ United - SUEZ).

That compares with a Total TV Reach of 5.57 million last year, with 5.19 million for the men's race and 1.8 million for the women's race, according to figures put out by the broadcaster in 2025.

That signifies an increase in the men's race, which overlapped with the FIFA World Cup for two weeks, but a decline in the women's race, which perhaps shouldn't be a surprise, given that in 2025 there was the additional draw of Sarah Gigante. The young Australian was, at one point, threatening to take a podium spot, finished second on the Queen stage and also came sixth overall.

SBS Sport also said its Tour de France third-party platform performance grew by 450%, with 660 million views on SBS Sport social media platforms across both races. That included a 405% increase for the Tour de France and an 812% increase for the Tour de France Femmes.

The SBS report follows news from broadcaster France Télévisions that 23.2 million in France watched at least a minute of the Tour de France Femmes coverage, while 45.6 million viewers watched at least a minute of the men's race.

The viewership numbers come at a time when calls are increasing for the delivery of live coverage across all stages of the women's race – with three broadcast live in 2026 – which would bring it in line with the broadcast of the men's event.

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The unconventional path, however, is well-trodden territory for the rider who made a late entry into competitive cycling while still a PhD student. She went from being a commuter to a local racer in 2022, became a gravel racer in 2023 and then quickly rose to the top of the gravel world in 2024 by winning Unbound 200 on debut. Klöser then also joined Canyon-SRAM on the road in 2025 and quickly proved her competence in another discipline, debuting at Paris-Roubaix in her first season and finishing a more than respectable 31st, all while still delivering gravel results near the top of the standings.

There was no getting comfortable in 2026 either, with Klöser adding a spot in the six-event Life Time Grand Prix Series to the agenda, along with her first-ever Grand Tour. True to form, it was the biggest of them all – the Tour de France Femmes.

"What an incredible experience and bike race to be part of, especially with an incredible Canyon-SRAM team. Beyond proud of our double GC trouble Kasia Niewiadoma & Antonia Niedermaier but also all my other extremely strong and talented teammates," said Klöser in an Instagram post after Niewiadoma finished second overall and Niedermaier fourth.

"Thanks to all the girls & staff - who supported me through my first Grand Tour!"

Despite her limited road experience – racing ten race days with Canyon-SRAM in 2025 and six this year before taking on the Tour de France Femmes – Klöser was clearly up to the challenge.

"Personally, I was flying the first three days and was really happy with how I could support the girls in positioning and being represented in the breakaways, as well as covering moves or even doing leadouts, also had my first TT race ever, unfortunately caught a cold around stage 5 & kissed the tarmac on a downhill just 3 km out from Ventoux on stage 7," said Klöser. "Therefore, stage 8 & 9 were survival and without my teammates in mind I would have stopped, but we made it all the way to the line in Nice."

There, Klöser crossed the final finish line with teammate Chiara Consonni, taking 111th place on stage 9 and 43rd overall, though the prize at the end was substantial regardless. She had made it through her first Tour de France Femmes and contributed to her teammates' impressive results.

"Ultimately, I came to learn and support the girls as best as possible, I LEARNED that I have a lot to learn (also I guess I will become a slave of heat training and better recovery/sleep management)," said Klöser.

Sleep and recovery, however, may be two things that aren't so easy to fit in over the next few days as another, arguably even bigger, leap into the unknown awaits on Saturday.

While Klöser has spread her wings on gravel and on the road, committing to the six-event Life Time Grand Prix series also meant committing to another discipline, given three of the six races are mountain bike events and the first of these is Leadville Trail 100 MTB.

That means many of Klöser's rivals have been brushing up on their mountain bike skills during the series hiatus after Unbound at the end of May. On the other hand, the rider who is now in third place on the series leaderboard has been heading into her debut with time on the tarmac, negotiating the ebb and flow of the peloton rather than that of the rough terrain.

What's more, there has been little time for recovery after finishing the Tour unwell and even less time to check out the unfamiliar course, recently altered due to wildfires, given she has just finished racing in France and has to throw a ten-hour flight into the mix.

Still, Klöser has proven she is a rider who knows how to perform on debut, even in challenging circumstances. Plus, she's already managed to cram Paris-Roubaix and Sea Otter Classic Gravel in within the space of four days at the beginning of the season and then topped it off by turning around and going back to Europe to win The Traka 360 two weeks later.

It may be hard to know where Klöser will sit on the race and series leaderboard after Leadville on Saturday, but one thing that her record clearly shows is that she won't be afraid to dive right in and embrace the challenge of the 102-mile, high-altitude mountain bike race.

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The Women’s WorldTour team refers to her as a 'Classics powerhouse', as evidenced by her finishing speed on a variety of terrain and conditions. She has won Festival Elsy Jacobs à Garnich each of the last three years and has a total of 16 victories across eight pro seasons.

The now 29-year-old has been among the top five most productive riders for SD Worx-Protime the last two seasons, earning 10 podiums.

“I’m really good in the Classic races, especially the crazy ones, like Antwerp or Roubaix, but I also really like sprints after a hard race. I’m very ambitious, always fighting until the end,” she said in a Human Powered Health press release.

"I would really love to use this potential, and I hope in Human Powered Health we can really use it as an advantage. It’s an international team, and the happiness that I see between the girls, and the mentality to push forward, and to be happy on the bike drew me to the project. This environment seems to be a good one for me.

"I believe that with the team, we can achieve a lot. Also to grow as a person and as a rider.”

That allure of the US-based WorldTour squad led to a call between her agent and Human Powered Health General Manager Ro de Jonckere. The reaction was immediate, as De Jonckere said, "we did not hesitate for a second".

"The deal was done within 24 hours, which says a lot about how strongly we believe in Marta and what she can bring to this team. She is an incredibly strong and versatile rider, with all the qualities we love to see in an athlete," De Jonckere said.

"As we continue our commitment to building Human Powered Health into a top WorldTour team, Marta is one of our key signings for the next two seasons. We feel she fits our philosophy perfectly, and we are very excited to have her join us.”

She was a fan of the Olympic Games as a child and has gone on to represent Poland twice, in 2024 finishing 10th in the road race in Paris and adding a top 20 in the time trial.

Lach gained experience with her versatile style at SD Worx-Protime, from cobbled one-day races, such as Nokere Koerse where she won last year, to stage races, taking second on a stage and the overall mountains classification at the Tour de Suisse Women.

"I’m grateful for the past, for these people that I’ve had the chance to meet along the way, and I look back on this time with gratitude. Now, I’m excited to take the new step of my career,” she added.

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"They could probably get creative [with a harder new route], but I just think it would be too challenging. I mean, this race is too big," Rollins told Cyclingnews about losing key sections at Powerline as well as Sugarloaf Mountain and Hagerman Pass Road.

"I mean, the iconic Powerline not being part of the race is devastating, but it's even more devastating that the mountain is on fire. One of my friends lives at the base of Powerline and their family was evacuated, away for the last month and a half.

"I could probably make a course that would be sick and usually close to 14,000 feet and 100 miles, but it just isn't realistic. I think we all were worried if Leadville would be able to happen. They have to do what they can to make it possible. So I'm happy that they were able to put out a course in general."

Last year Rollins broke the 7-hour mark in the 104-mile race, however, that still left her over 10 minutes behind winner Kate Courtney (She Sends Racing), who set a new women's record in 6 hours, 48 minutes, 54 seconds. Rollins' time of 6:59:15 also broke Annika Langvad's 10-year marker. Her runner-up spot overall had an asterisk, as she was the top rider in the Life Time Grand Prix field.

The top step at Leadville is open as last year's winner opted to pursue a pro road career, Courtney signing a pro contract with FDJ United-SUEZ and jumping into the European fray in mid-July, already winning two of five races.

For Rollins, a return to the top step at Leadville would be epic, as she has only completed two races since March. And the points she earns at Leadville would also mount her return in the Grand Prix.

Poor air quality comes and goes each day as winds blow wildfire smoke across the western US, but Rollins adjusts her rides accordingly. What the smoke can't conceal is her eagerness to recapture a Leadville title and show off her first-ever US national championship jersey, and a decked-out Liv Pique ride.

"The smoke has a cycle of blowing in and out every day. I have a pretty good wind prediction app that gives pretty good windows to ride. So it hasn't actually affected me at all," she told Cyclingnews about recent training.

"The only disruption to my training was having a broken limb. There were a few breaks in the elbow, one main break now with a plate, and then a partially torn triceps a few weeks later. That has kind of been the lingering problem for me. And my left arm is two pounds lighter than my right arm, so I'm still weak on the left side."

In March, Rollins injured her left elbow and right wrist just days before starting with Courtney in a two-rider team at Absa Cape Epic in South Africa. The US rider travelled home to Utah for surgery. A month later, she partially tore a triceps muscle on one of her first rides back outside, and another month later was delayed when she was sideswiped by a car on another attempt to ride outside.

She was able to make the trip to Emporia, Kansas at the end of May, but only pedalled for a few hundred metres before pulling out. The start at Unbound Gravel 200 allowed her to stay in the exclusive invitation-only field of the Grand Prix, with the last four races required.

She completed SBT GRVL in June in a return to racing after 156 days away, though "it wasn't the comeback I wanted" with the 2025 champion finishing in 20th place. She did not find the podium, but confidence in group riding again and good health.

From a string of injuries, Rollins now hopes to go on a string of success. In July, she went to Roanoke, Virginia for the USA Cycling Endurance Mountain Bike Nationals and came away with the stars-and-stripes jersey as the elite women's cross-country marathon winner.

"I'm actually really, really proud of winning it because it was one of my big goals for this year," Rollins said. "Everybody sets goals every year, and whether or not they go the way you want them, it doesn't always happen. So I'm really proud of this one, and getting to wear the jersey and ride the bike at Leadville."

Leadville is the third race in the Life Time Grand Prix, and the first of three consecutive mountain bike events in the series. Rollins used her win in Leadville two years ago to finish second overall in the series, and last year she was third overall to three-time series champion Sofia Gomez Villafañe (Specialized Off-road). This year is a lot different.

After two rounds this season, Villafañe has a solid lead over Cecily Decker (PAS Racing) and Rosa Klöser (Canyon-SRAM), and Rollins has to climb out of last place among the field of 25 riders. The top four of six races count in the LTGP standings, so Leadville is the start of her series, and the climb for Rollins is to get back on the Leadville podium.

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Last summer's edition, which saw home success with Pauline Ferrand-Prévot capturing the yellow jersey and Maëva Squiban winning two stages, set record viewing highs that have now been pushed even higher.

A 32.9% average audience share across all nine stages set a record unmatched in the previous four editions of the race, while "23.2 million French people watched at least one minute of the race," reported France Télévisions.

A peak audience of 5.1 million viewers tuned in to watch Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney soar to a stage win and the yellow jersey atop Mont Ventoux with an average audience share of 41.5%. The final day in Nice brought in 3.5 million viewers.

The race's nine stages averaged 2.6 million viewers, down 100,000 on 2025, though that's to be expected given the lack of home success and Pauline Ferrand-Prévot's withdrawal.

Elsewhere, online video viewership on france.tv and franceinfo also rose (4.5 million views, up 18% on 2025), as did views on the broadcaster's social media channels (60 million, up 6%). There was also improvement in youth audience viewing figures, with the audience share among 15-to-34-year-olds rising to 24.7%.

"The fifth edition of the Tour de France Femmes has reached a historic milestone in terms of audience share, consolidating the lasting place of women’s cycling in the French broadcasting landscape," read a statement from France Télévisions.

The news comes amid calls for the race to be broadcast in full to match the men's edition, which began full coverage of all stages back in 2017. This year's edition of the Tour de France Femmes saw three stages, including the Lausanne opener, the hilly stage 5, and the finale in Nice, receive start-to-finish broadcasts.

During this year's race, Cycling Weekly reported that riders were disappointed by the situation, which notably missed the start of Sigrid Haugset's record-breaking 88km winning effort on stage 3 to Poligny.

Race director Marion Rousse said that she has held discussions with France Télévisions on the subject. She sounded a note of hope for future implementation of full-stage coverage.

"What’s certain is that I’ve discussed this at length with France Télévisions, and we’re giving serious consideration to broadcasting all the stages in full in the future because the women deserve it, and because it works well in terms of audience figures," she said.

"We’re currently giving it real consideration, which is a step forward. Things are moving in the right direction."

Meanwhile, UCI President David Lappartient hailed the Tour's progress, in particular the TV viewing figures and ASO's ambitions.

"The TV audiences are also very high," he told WielerFlits.

"I think it's important to consolidate the popularity of this race, to also have live TV from the start to the finish. That was the case today, but it will not be the case for all the other stages.

"But we can really see that the organiser ASO is trying to improve every year and do something more every year. I really see a bright future for women's cycling and the Tour de France Femmes."

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But, amid the revelry on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, Longo Borghini had an important message to share in the post-race press conference.

Her consistent performances throughout the race saw her take third behind Demi Vollering and Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney, and nine days of racing between Lausanne and Nice proved all is well at the very top level of the sport. However, Longo Borghini had a warning about cycling's lower levels – the ranks of the amateur, under-23, and junior racers.

"What I would like to see is the base to be a little bit more wide, let's say, and to not see small teams disappearing, because otherwise we will not have a change of generation. Young girls will not have a chance to have experience," Longo Borghini said.

With her Tour podium, she only added to one of the most impressive palmarès in cycling. It stands alongside a pair of Giro d'Italia titles and Olympic bronze medals plus wins at Paris-Roubaix, the Tour of Flanders (twice), and Strade Bianche.

None of that would've been possible without the support she received as a junior racer, however.

"I did the third year of juniors because I was not good. I never did a single European Championship or World Championship as a junior, and now I'm standing on the podium of the Tour de France," she said.

"Who knows – maybe out there, there is a strong girl that didn't get the chance to go into a development team at the moment and is still riding maybe in Continental or not in a UCI team. I would like to see more races for young girls, under-23, in the future."

In Longo Borghini's native Italy and another traditional cycling powerhouse, Spain, the number of UCI teams has fallen dramatically in the past three years. Italy has gone from seven to five, while Spain has gone from 10 to just two.

Several teams, including Eneicat-Be Call, Massi-Baix Ter, Farto-Kiroot, Cantabria-Rio Meira, AR Monex, and BTC City Ljubljana, have dropped from the Continental rank to club level in recent years, limiting riders' access to international and higher-level races.

In Spain in particular, the problem comes down to small teams being unable to match the UCI's minimum salary rules.

"The problem is that they put a minimum salary for Conti teams that is too high for teams. At the same time, the salary for Conti teams is a national rule, so every country is going its own way, resulting in clear discrimination," Eneicat-Be Call rider Alessia Missiaggia told Cyclingnews earlier this year.

It remains to be seen whether the lower levels of women's cycling can be strengthened as Longo Borghini hopes, but she did acknowledge that, at the top level, things are better than ever.

Greater competition than ever before has led to climbing and power records being broken, as well as increased attention and viewing figures.

"The level of women's cycling in general is very high at the moment. At the Tour de France, it's always funny because all these numbers come out about watts per kilo and time of climbing and stuff like that. But in every Grand Tour, if we can call them like this for us, we are breaking records," she said.

"Also at the Giro last year, 5.3 watts per kilo was done, but nobody spoke about it because it was not the Tour. I'm very happy that here, at least, we are speaking about the fact that women are fast on the bike. We are reaching a great level in general in cycling."

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Blasi, 23, has already won the Vuelta Femenina, Amstel Gold Race and Volta a Catalunya in her first full season, and those breakthrough results raised expectations enormously about what she could do in her first-ever Tour de France, which she completed in fifth overall.

However, a lack of initial clarity, pre-race, about her exact role in a very strong UAE Team L'IMAD line-up combined with intense media speculation. It finally faded away as the team centred increasingly on the defence of Elisa Longo Borghini's top placing overall, and as Blasi told TV3 at the time, what had been a 'massive ball of stress' lifted from her shoulders.

Apart from Blasi's top-five finish, her squad came away with top spot in the teams prize and third place overall for Longo Borghini, and seventh for Domenica Włodarzyck, as well as a second place overall in the BYR ranking for Blasi, a classification she led for the first four days.

"It's been a real roller coaster," was how the Catalan described her first impressions of the race on Tuesday to AS.

"There were days when things went badly, others that were a bit better. I think I really got back on terms on stage 6, but I suffered from the stress you live through in the bunch as well.

"It was my first Tour, and truth to tell, it's not like any other race. You have to get used to it."

As a natural optimist, Blasi argued that she would like to believe the Tour is a race she can win. But she also said it was more challenging than she had expected, too.

"I've realised I'm not as close [to the very top] as maybe I thought. When they attack, I was lacking that extra little percent or two it takes.

"So I've got homework to do, and I hope to have done it in time for the next times round."

Blasi told AS that rather than form in itself, though, she realised that she had wasted a lot of energy due to poor placing. That was a steep learning curve that she mastered though, or as she said, "between the rider who turned up for stage 1 of the Tour and the one now… there's a world of difference."

"From day 1, you're going all out, full gas. I was actually surprised by that, and I told myself - hey, what happened to all that preparation you had?

"I was suffering from day 1, and that was, in theory, the easiest stage." But then I realised positioning was fundamental. If you aren't in the right place and you're too far back, then you need to shift double the amount of watts. So that's something I've learned."

Overall, she said, "I have to trust myself more, because when the high mountains come, the legs are there."

Having multiple cards to play in the shape of herself and Longo Borghini, the two strongest riders in UAE in terms of results, was a big advantage, she said. That was particularly the case as the race was very anarchic at times, and "the minute things started getting hectic, people were losing their teammates and ending up isolated. I think having two riders up there was a big plus."

Overall for Blasi, while the results throughout the Tour have given her a lot of confidence in the future and showed she has a role to play in cycling's top event, she also insisted she has to keep her feet firmly on the ground and not get overly ambitious too soon.

"It was my first Tour, all but my first year in the WorldTour so I don't think I can ask for much more," she said. "And I'm also getting more realistic.

"I wanted to show myself that the legs I had in the Vuelta could also count in the Tour, that it wasn't just a fluke."

Grand Tour racing in 2026 is now behind her, but as a bronze medallist in last year's World's U23 Road Race, Blasi promised that she would be heading to Canada this September to try and up her game there in Spanish national colours, too. Or as she put it to AS with her usual optimism, "That's definitely going to happen."

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Here, we go through the peloton team by team, analysing their performances across the nine days of racing. We'll take a look at the highlights, the areas for improvement, and we'll be giving each team a one-word review.

We haven't ranked the teams ourselves but we have structured this in order of the prize money list – more on that subject here. In the past we've used the teams classification as our order but the prize money feels like a better reflection of the impact each team had upon the race.

FDJ United-SUEZ

• One-word review: Awe-inspiring
• Achievements: Overall victory, three stage wins, six stage podium finishes
• Room to improve: Barring the tactical miscalculation on Mont Ventoux, not much

FDJ United-SUEZ have come a long, long way since the team first began as Vienne-Futuroscope, and even if they hadn't achieved anything in the TdFF, victories in Strade Bianche, Flanders, Liège, Paris-Roubaix and the Giro this season already make it one of their best.

And now? As if becoming the first ever French team to win the Tour de France Femmes outright – and having the first double winner in Demi Vollering – wasn't notable enough, they were the only team to take more than two stage wins, again thanks to Vollering's hat-trick of victories.

It's worth wondering what French champion Célia Géry might have achieved, had she been given her own options. But instead this was a one-card bet – and given Vollering's track record, you can hardly blame them – that paid off enormously.

On Tuesday, their newly reinforced position at the top of the UCI team ranking will be confirmed, but regardless of what happens now in the rest of the season or what preceded it, August alone has made this year a runaway success. (AF)

Canyon-SRAM

• One-word review: Inspirational
• Achievements: Second overall, fourth overall, one stage win, white jersey, one day in yellow, four stage podium finishes
• Room to improve: Overall victory, but they barely put a foot wrong

What more could Canyon-SRAM have achieved in this year's race, beyond winning? "You need brains and legs for the Ventoux," rival Elisa Longo Borghini wisely pointed out, and Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney's all-out effort to claim yellow and the stage win fully reflected that.

Firstly, a brilliant strategic combination of attacking from distance to ensure her rivals would hesitate behind her on the tougher upper slopes; secondly, having the legs to pull it all off.

If Niewiadoma-Phinney was the highest-profile individual success, at 23, Antonia Niedermaier's fourth place and best young rider win mark her out as the top future achiever of the race. Twice second overall and twice best young rider in the Giro, Niedermaier's Tour success puts the German in a whole new league.

During the race, FDJ and UAE were the most active squads throughout the mountain stages. But top climbing performances by non-specialists like Zoe Bäckstedt right up to the last day – where the time-trialling star set a new best-ever 20-minute power number on the second climb of the day – were testament to Canyon's collective strength and team spirit no matter the terrain. (AF)

UAE Team L'IMAD

• One-word review: Consistent
• Achievements: Third, fifth, and seventh overall, team classification, two stage podium finishes
• Room to improve: Not much to note here, aside from scoring a stage win or two

After much speculation in the media about their team leadership structure, in many ways, UAE Team L'IMAD's victory in the team prize provides the ideal answer to whether they were operating as a cohesive unit. But arguably an even clearer response came on Mont Ventoux, where Elisa Longo Borghini and Paula Blasi worked perfectly together to limit the gap on early attackers on the climb, then reel in a flagging Marlen Reusser.

Longo Borghini reaching the Tour podium on the final day might have been helped in part by Reusser's crash on stage 9, but by the point she fell, the Movistar rider was already reportedly struggling.

UAE's one real gap was a stage win: Maëva Squiban's nasty crash late on stage 8 arguably did away with their biggest opportunity, while Longo Borghini chasing down the late breaks on stage 6 possibly tired her out too much for the finale.

Yet for the Italian national champion, claiming third overall after so much bad luck in the Tour constituted the best result possible, given Niewiadoma and Vollering's superiority. And getting three riders in the top ten with Longo Borghini, Blasi, and Polish national champion Dominika Włodarczyk is another testament to their strength in depth. (AF)

SD Worx-Protime

• One-word review: Contrasting
• Achievements: Two stage wins, green jersey, three stage podium finishes, two days in yellow
• Room to improve: Lotte Kopecky was quiet aside from one day in the break, while Anna van der Breggen was unfortunate to fall ill

Lorena Wiebes delivered exactly as was expected of the number one sprinter in the world on not one but two occasions, with stunning victories on the opening two days also allowing her to wear yellow for 48 hours. As a result, it feels harsh to criticise SD Worx-Protime. After all, in a race where just six teams of the 21 actually won stages (and only three more than one), dominating the opening weekend was an impressive result.

That said, that incredibly positive-looking scenario came rather unstuck as soon as the GC stages and hilly days kicked in. Anna van der Breggen's low-key performance due to not feeling well from the start, according to the squad, finally saw the Dutch veteran abandon. And if Lotte Kopecky had succeeded in bridging across to Haugset on stage 3, rather than falling short by 10 seconds, there's no knowing what would have happened given her natural speed.

The presence of Wiebes on the final podium as points winner was another major triumph, particularly after such a difficult last stage for sprinters through the mountains of Nice. But whilst it's hard not to fall into the dangerous habit of taking Wiebes' sprint wins for granted, such is her strike rate, compared to that near-certainty, the more unpredictable elements of the race for SD Worx left more than a few question marks.

It was a Tour of marked contrasts, then, even if the final balance was positive. (AF)

Lidl-Trek

• One-word review: Potential
• Achievements: Eighth and 10th overall, one stage podium
• Room to improve: They were never far from the thick of the action, but didn't quite convert that into a big win

Teams will often resort to the "it's not just about the results" line when they fail to achieve much concrete, but in the case of Lidl-Trek, the bare numbers – two places in the lower half of the top ten on GC and one top-three podium finish – certainly don't do justice to what they achieved.

Riding her first Tour de France and making it to eighth overall at the age of just 21, for Canadian Isabella Holmgren, for example, feels very much like the starting point of something much bigger, particularly after taking two top-ten finishes in the Giro d'Italia despite her comparatively young age. A 39-kilometre break for Riejanne Markus on stage 2, only caught almost within sight of the finish, and a 100-kilometre break for Loes Adegeest on stage 8, reeled in well inside the host city of Nice, were equally promising.

Niamh Fisher-Black's fourth place in Nice was another good reminder of Lidl-Trek's determined bids for success, as was Elisa Balsamo's runner-up spot on stage 1. Three combativity awards for Lidl-Trek also spoke volumes about their collective commitment, of which getting three riders in the break of the day on stage 5 (one of them Holmgren) was another prime example. If the results didn't come, it wasn't for lack of effort – or for lack of signs that in the future, things could well work out differently. (AF)

EF Education-Oatly

• One-word review: Tenacious
• Achievements: One stage podium, sixth overall.
• Room to improve: All-round consistency. They needed a stage win to give their race that extra shine

As Pauline Ferrand-Prévot's GC bid withered and died, French interest inevitably moved to the next best-placed overall racer from the home country. And while EF's GC leader Cédrine Kerbaol left no room for doubt that she was in fine form, capturing sixth overall in Nice, the absence of fireworks on a scale with Ferrand-Prévot's lone Alpine raid perhaps made the Breton's race seem a little underwhelming from the outside.

Yet at the same time, while Kerbaol did turn in a fine attack on Ventoux midway up at one point – and Noemi Rüegg's work for Kerbaol on the same climb was testament to their strong cohesiveness as a squad – probably the most impressive ride by Kerbaol came in terms of her bounce-back before that.

After she lost time on the anarchic stage through the Beaujolais, Kerbaol then went on the rampage on stage 6 and came within a whisker of challenging Kim Le Court-Pienaar for the stage.

It was France's best result for an individual day in the race. And even if it didn't succeed, it certainly pushed her back into the top positions overall: indeed, with seven top-ten finishes throughout the week, that kind of resilience was what most characterised her performance in the Tour – and her team's. (AF)

AG Insurance-Soudal

• One-word review: Singular
• Achievements: Ninth overall and a stage win
• Room to improve: The success was rather one-dimensional

With a stage win and a spot in the top 10 of the general classification, AG Insurance-Soudal got what they came to the Tour de France Femmes for. Kim Le Court-Pienaar was responsible for both and was very much the star of the show for the Belgian team. Shari Bossuyt was fourth on stage 2, but otherwise the rest of the squad, including Urška Žigart and Lore De Schepper, were quiet.

But Le Court was not, and in fairness to the others, much of the workload revolved around guiding the Mauritian into position on most days. After placing second on the opening day and fifth two days later, Le Court-Pienaar bagged her win in thrilling style on stage 6, making a late charge across to the breakaway, negotiating a tricky tactical finale, and sprinting it out in fierce fashion. It was a storming win on a thrilling day.

That wasn’t the end of it, though. The win put her into ninth overall, and that’s where she remained after a final three days of aggressive GC action that included a top 10 on Mont Ventoux. The rest of the team might have been quiet enough, but after her breakthrough 2025 – which featured a stage win and 16th overall at the Tour – Le Court-Pienaar is still very much a rider on the rise. (PF)

Movistar

• One-word review: Sad
• Achievements: A stage win plus three days in yellow
• Room to improve: Finishing the job

Movistar’s Tour de France ended on a downer, as team leader Marlen Reusser crashed on the final day, finished outside the top 100, and slipped from third to 14th overall. Reusser had already been dropped on the second ascent of the Col d’Eze, so her podium position was already in doubt, and that would still have counted as a disappointing end, but as she trailed home, she no longer had the chance to truly fight for it.

Reusser had enjoyed a great Tour, winning the time trial and spending three days in yellow, even if it came to an end in frustrating fashion amid a tactical duel with Demi Vollering on Mont Ventoux. But Vollering was so strong on the final two days that the podium was realistically the ceiling. For a rider who has podiumed the other two Grand Tours but still seems to face doubts over her GC credentials, a Tour podium would have been a fine achievement, but she can still take plenty of heart after what has been a disrupted season.

As for the rest of her team, Liane Lippert might have hoped to sprint a little better than sixth place from a break on stage 6, but otherwise the squad was mostly rallying around Reusser, with all the talk of a very positive spirit in the team, which only heightened the sense of sadness at the end. (PF)

Visma-Lease a Bike

• One-word review: Dire
• Achievements: Three stage podium finishes, 12th overall
• Room to improve: A proper GC bid

When you have the defending champion, who won with such staggering superiority 12 months ago, it’s hard to describe this as anything other than a shocker for Visma-Lease a Bike. Off the pace in the time trial and three minutes down on the following stage, Pauline Ferrand-Prévot’s yellow jersey defence was over even before Mont Ventoux, and her race was over the following morning.

The Frenchwoman made suggestions that her level was just as good as last year – and that of her rivals had simply risen – but it didn’t explain the gaping gulf, and there were further question marks after she pulled out with an unspecified illness. Elsewhere, there wasn’t quite enough to make a success of it all. Marianne Vos could only manage a couple of podium placings in the early stages, while Femke De Vries tried to step into the GC shoes but eventually placed 12th after struggling on Ventoux.

The ride of Visma’s race came from Lieke Nooijen, who was second – and only four seconds off the win – in the time trial. Marion Bunel was 11th on Ventoux and still very much a climber for the future, but in the here and now, Visma’s Tour was always going to be judged against the defending champion, and she fell completely flat. (PF)

Fenix-Premier Tech

• One-word review: Single-minded
• Achievements: Polka dot jersey, one stage podium
• Room to improve: After a convincing mountain classification win, the team may well be thinking about upping the stakes across the board in future

After losing the overall in the mountains competition to Justine Ghekiere two years ago on the last day possible, it's fair to say that Puck Pieterse had a mission to accomplish in the Tour this year. And even if there was no stage win like in 2024 to make her triumph even more special, wearing the polka-dot jersey from stage 3 right the way through to the finale on the Tour with the most elevation gain is no mean achievement.

She also took her team's only stage podium finish, placing third on stage 6 behind Kim Le Court-Pienaar and Cédrine Kerbaol. Having made a point of getting in her first break on the very hilly stage 5, Pieterse confirmed afterwards that it was her main goal of the race, and indeed, her final total of 55 points was the highest for any Queen of the Mountains winner, and well clear even of the all-conquering Demi Vollering. (AF)

Uno-X Mobility

• One-word review: Exemplary
• Achievements: One stage win, one day in yellow, one stage podium finish
• Room to improve: Beyond moving into GC contention, nothing

When it comes to Grand Tour participation for anything other than a major GC team, how do you improve on an 89km solo breakaway that ends with a rider, Sigrid Haugset, both clinching the stage win and taking the yellow jersey? The answer is simple: you can't.

The Norwegian national champion's lone blast for glory wasn't just the longest successful break in the Tour de France Femmes to date; it instantly converted Uno-X's participation into a major collective triumph. In a year when smaller teams were finding it exceptionally difficult to break into the big time across all the Grand Tours, this was proof that it was still possible.

It was hard not to feel sorry for Lotte Kopecky, coming so close to Haugset before suffering so badly from cramps that she had to give up. But at the same time, Haugset's persistence – a plan nine months in the making – was a triumph for the underdogs in an era where it's increasingly hard for nonconformists to hit the jackpot. There were plenty of memorable wins in this year's Tour de France Femmes, but this one was right up there at the top of the class. (AF)

Human Powered Health

• One-word review: Focussed
• Achievements: Thalita de Jong and Nina Buijsman racing to 13th and 16th overall
• Room to improve: De Jong admitted to going over her limit on the final stage, dropping two places on GC

The American squad headed to France with ambitions of stage results, but they pivoted to a GC focus after strong rides from Thalita de Jong and Nina Buijsman, who improved as the race went on.

De Jong had four top-13 places on stages, including ninth to Belleville-en-Beaujolais after time spent in the breakaway, and 12th on Mont Ventoux. Buijsman, meanwhile, was 13th on Ventoux and 12th on the finale in Nice.

"I came in as a helper, trying to go for some stage results, and quickly turned into a GC rider. I had some really good days and raced focused. Everything I did, I tried my best. I am proud of that," said De Jong after the race. (DO)

Cofidis

• One-word review: Solid
• Achievements: Two top 10s for Malwina Mul, while Nikola Nosková won the combativity prize on stage 1
• Room to improve: Mul aside, the team were less visible when the race headed into the harder hills in the latter half of the race

French squad Cofidis weren't a standout force throughout the race, but they did put together some solid results and days out in the breakaway early on.

Polish neo-pro Malwina Mul finished ninth on both stages 2 and 3 to Geneva and Poligny, plus an 18th place on the arduous finale over the Col d'Eze.

Nikola Nosková was their other top performer, the Czech rider getting out in the breakaway on the opening day and on the road to Tournon-sur-Rhône on stage 6. 21-year-old Ema Comte, another neo-pro, made the break on stage 2.

"We were a little frustrated that we didn’t take the polka-dot jersey on the very first day. We could have held onto it for several days, but oh well… We knew the rest of the race would be a bit more complicated. We were really competitive, and Malwina finished this Tour de France strong. I think we were on a positive roll all week long," said directeur sportif Mélanie Briot. (DO)

St Michel-Preference Home-Auber93

• One-word review: Battling
• Achievements: Three top 20s and 19th overall by Emilie Morier, plus a day in the break for Alison Jackson
• Room to improve: A stage top 10 and more breakaway action

The upwardly mobile team were this year replete with a new Premier Tech sponsorship on their jerseys and former Paris-Roubaix winner Alison Jackson among their strengthened squad.

Last time out, they were among the minnows of the race, making headlines for their riders battling the time cut. This time they came with their ambitions set higher, as Jackson told Cyclingnews before the race.

Things didn’t work quite as they had hoped, with the French squad eventually limping to Nice with just three riders remaining. Unlike Lotto (see below), however, three of their withdrawals came on the final day rather than early on, meaning they had plenty of opportunities to leave their mark.

In the end, it was Emilie Morier who scored their top result with a 14th place on the final day, while she also finished 15th on Mont Ventoux and 19th overall. Jackson’s best outing came on stage 1, where she raced in the breakaway. (DO)

Laboral Kutxa-Fundación Euskadi

• One-word review: Attacking
• Achievements: Fourth on stage 3
• Room to improve: Ostolaza is a strong rider who is capable of a good GC result if she can avoid crashes and the resulting time loss in future

The Basque squad were hard to miss at the Tour as they raced around France in one of the more attractive kits in the peloton – a patchwork pink and green number. They were visible out in the breakaways, too, with Ukrainian champion Yuliia Biriukova, homegrown rider Idoia Eraso, and Paula Patino all getting in moves during the race.

Eraso wore green on the second day of the race, a nice bonus for the team, after picking up points in the break on stage 1, though she didn't lead the classification.

Their best result of the nine days came in Poligny on stage 3. Out front, Haugset stole the day with a massive solo move. Laboral Kutxa had reason to celebrate too, as Usoa Ostolaza – another rider developed in-house – powered to fourth place from the peloton behind Marianne Vos. After finishing fourth at La Vuelta Femenina, she had harboured hopes of a GC top-10 here, but a crash and 24-minute time loss on stage 5 put paid to that.

Directeur sportif Ion Lazkano said that "achieving a result like that [fourth place] in the Tour doesn't happen every day" but admitted that "Usoa’s crash on the fifth stage really disrupted our plans." (DO)

Ma Petite Enterprise

• One-word review: Polkas
• Achievements: Two days in polka dots for Océane Mahé plus four top-20 results
• Room to improve: Try to aim for top 10s and get more riders involved in the breakaway performances

Ma Petite Enterprise were among the smallest teams in the race, supported by small businesses across France and fan donations, but they did have more luck than other similar squads in getting results this August, and the Tour was a job well done for the French squad on their Tour debut during their first year of operation.

24-year-old Océane Mahé did well on the opening day to make the break and lead the way over two of the day’s four climbs. That resulted in her wearing the polka dot jersey for two stages, resulting in time on TV, podium ceremonies, and more interviews – all wins for the team. Being the only non-Women’s WorldTour squad to wear a jersey deserves praise, too.

Elsewhere, Clémence Latimier, Laura Asencio, and Célia Le Mouël put in some solid performances to take four top-20 finishes across several stages. (DO)

Liv-AlUla-Jayco

• One-word review: Muted
• Achievements: Sixth on stage 2 with Letizia Paternoster
• Room to improve: More attacks and maybe a more targeted calendar for their GC leader

It's fair to say that the Australian team were among the least visible Women's WorldTour squads in the race. Liv-AlUla- Jayco struggled through the Tour and didn't make a huge impact.

Results-wise, their best effort came courtesy of Letizia Paternoster, who sped to fifth place in Geneva. Ruby Roseman-Gannon was in the breakaway on Ventoux day, but apart from that the team were rather quiet.

That may have something to do with the form of their GC leader, Monica Trinca Colonel, who didn't finish the race. The Italian finished seventh at La Vuelta Femenina and then went on to race the Giro d'Italia later in May. She was second at her National Championships leading into the Tour, and finished 10th on stage 3, but racing all three Grand Tours in one season may have been a mistake with the toughest coming last. (DO)

Picnic-PostNL

• One word review: Embattled
• Achievements: Sixth on stage 2 with Josie Nelson
• Room to improve: Both men’s and women’s squads seem to have lost their way, so something surely has to change behind the scenes

It was a challenging Tour for the Dutch squad, who are enduring a tough year just as the men’s team are. Picnic-PostNL can look back on four Tour stage wins in their history via the now-departed Lorena Wiebes and Charlotte Kool, but those days are well behind them now. Still winless in 2026, that triumph never really looked like coming to fruition here.

Josie Nelson’s sixth place was their top result, the British rider up there in the Geneva sprint. Beyond that, there wasn’t much else to highlight as their GC hopeful, 22-year-old Eleonora Ciabocco, struggled. Pfeiffer Georgi’s best result was 19th place on the penultimate day. (DO)

Lotto-Intermarché Ladies

• One-word review: Depleted
• Achievements: 10th on stage 2, 16th on stage 4, and a battling performance
• Room to improve: Try and avoid such a devastating early spell of bad luck, not that you can really plan for that

Bad luck hit Lotto almost immediately at this year’s Tour de France Femmes, their first since 2024. Stage 2 saw Sterre Vervloet, Marieke Meert, and Elisabeth Ebras all leave the race via a combination of crashes and the heat.

On the same day, two more of their number, Romina Hinojosa and Dina Boels, barely made the time cut, crossing the line just 1:41 before their team would’ve been down to two women. The same stage also brought their best result, too, as Linda Riedmann claimed 10th place.

Sandrine Tas, the former speed skater making her Tour debut, had a nice result with 16th in the time trial, while another debutant, Hinojosa, flew the flag for Mexico as their first-ever Tour de France Femmes racer.

"We’ve tried to bounce back and keep showing up every day and trying our best. I think yesterday we showed that we’re not just here to finish, but we also want to show ourselves, and we’re happy we managed to," Tas told Cyclingnews the day after Ventoux. (DO)

VolkerWessels

• One-word review: Replaceable
• Achievements: Eline Jansen’s 11th place in Geneva
• Room to improve: More breakaway rides from others on the team, especially early on where a jersey might be up for grabs

Like many teams at this end of the list, Dutch squad Volkerwessels struggled to make an impact at this Tour de France. With eight chances to make a breakaway, and even fewer to realistically contest for a stage win or a jersey, the least well-off teams in the race can go largely unnoticed by TV viewers.

Their standout performance came early in the race as Eline Jansen infiltrated the breakaway on day two in Geneva. She spent over 50km out front on the road from Geneva, eventually racing to 11th place as super sprinter Lorena Wiebes sped to victory. Compared to some other teams this low down the rankings, that’s not a bad achievement.

Apart from Jansen, the all-Dutch team struggled to make much headway. Quinty Schoens was quiet, with 22nd on Ventoux her standout result, while Laura Molenaar left the race on stage 2. (DO)

Mayenne Monbana My Pie

• One word review: Penniless
• Achievements: Fiona Mangan made the break on stage 7
• Room to improve: Just get the team sponsors out on TV in more breakaways

Well, one team has to come bottom of the prize money list, and this time it was one of the smallest squads in the race, May enne Monbana My Pie. It was a challenging Tour for the team formerly known as Winspace – they ended their nine days of racing with €0 in prize money.

The team’s best stage finish came on stages 2 and 5 as Natalie Quinn and Karolina Perekitko raced to 28th place. There wasn’t much else to shout about for the ProTeam, either, though Irish racer Fiona Mangan did make the breakaway on stage to Mont Ventoux.

In a race dominated by the strongest teams and riders in the peloton, it’s perhaps unsurprising that a team such as Mayenne didn’t leave a real mark, but for any team in the race to come away with no prize money at all is a surprise.

"If I had to pick one moment from this Tour, it would be the second I decided to follow the breakaway on the Ventoux stage. I think I gave absolutely everything I had," Mangan said after the race. (DO)

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The 24-year-old Breton surprised even her teammates last summer, with Dominika Włodarczyk exclaiming "What's going on? Is it April 1 or August 1?" at the team bus after Squiban's second win. Her triumphs came after disaster struck UAE Team ADQ early in the race as Elisa Longo Borghini and two other riders were forced out of the Tour due to illness.

This time around, things were very different for the squad, now named UAE Team L'IMAD. They headed to Lausanne led by a trio of GC hopefuls in the form of double Giro champion Longo Borghini, last year's fourth-placed finisher Włodarczyk, and La Vuelta Femenina champion Paula Blasi.

With such a strong lineup – all three finished among the top 10 in Nice, and Longo Borghini savoured a long-awaited podium – Squiban rode a support role from the Grand Départ to the grand finale. That was no problem for her, given their final achievements.

"This year I was 100% here to help my teammates and my leaders, not to play my own card, which is what I did. So, of course, I was not in the front to play for victory like last year, but I think I did my job. Elisa is on the podium in the end, which was our goal, and now it's done," Squiban told Cyclingnews in Nice.

She spoke well after the race had finished, having watched third-placed Longo Borghini take the stage on the Promenade des Anglais before taking the stage herself as UAE celebrated winning the team classification. After that came several minutes of signing jerseys for a crowd of children cheering her name at the UAE team bus.

"It's a nice prize for us," she said of the team prize. "And all the girls and sports directors can be on the podium, not only the winner or the leader. I'm happy with this one."

Squiban played her role to great effect during the Tour, evident in the team's successes come the end of the race. UAE directeur sportif Cherie Pridham told Cyclingnews that with this year's Tour being harder than previous editions, and with a host of GC leaders on board, it was natural for her to take a different role.

"It's a different race altogether, a much harder Tour de France Femmes, and a Tour where we had clear objectives. If the opportunities arose, of course, she could take those when it suited and didn't impact the GC targets.

"Maëva is a very talented rider, but very specific. She knows when she can be good. She's French – why not be proud in France, you know?"

During the nine days of the Tour, Squiban got a handful of chances to race in the breakaway after all, though obviously the results weren't the same as last summer's.

On stage 5, an arduous race through the Jura hills to Belleville-en-Beaujolais, she made the breakaway, which only went clear 50km into the day alongside Włodarczyk. She was caught with 30km to go before dropping back to help Longo Borghini and Blasi limit their losses as Demi Vollering surged to stage glory up ahead.

Stage 8 saw her out in the break all day alongside Lidl-Trek racer Loes Adegeest, the pair carrying a near-four-minute lead into the final 30km. That fell swiftly on the run to the final climbs around Nice before Squiban's hopes of scoring a third stage victory were ended by a crash on the descent of the Côte de Colomars, 17km out.

"I've hardly got any grazes. It's just that I took a bit of a knock and it was a bit bumpy all over. Then, yesterday, I'm not quite sure what happened. I slipped at the front; I don't know if I took the bend wrong or if it was slippery," she told Cyclingnews and DirectVelo, before adding that she and Adegeest might've had a shot at glory had she stayed upright.

"I think it would have been touch and go. We just needed to get over the top of the steep hill alongside the leaders – that was pretty much the aim.

"Then again, if we started saying 'what ifs', we could win every stage. But I'm still happy to have spent the day at the front. 135km in a pair was quite long, but it was fun."

Squiban raced to the line, and, following examinations at Nice hospital, she was cleared to race on and complete the Tour for a third time on Sunday.

"Let's just say that the Tour demands respect. I wanted to finish. As I hadn't broken anything, I thought to myself, 'Right, I'll give it a go, and if it works out, great. If it doesn't, so be it,' " said Squiban, who showed her fighting spirit with an attack on the Col d'Eze on the race's final day.

"Today it was just to be sure I was still in a group after the first climb, because I knew that if I was in a group for the time limit, it would be OK. So, I just wanted to be sure to be in a group. Yesterday was not exactly what we planned, but in the end it was a good day. I like being in the front in the Tour."

Squiban's upcoming races include "some races close to my home in Brittany," most likely the Kreiz Breizh Elites Féminin and Classic Lorient Agglomération at the end of August, where UAE are set to race.

After that, she's hoping to be called up for the European Championships in Ljubljana and World Championships in Montréal, having made her Worlds debut last year.

"I'm still waiting," she said of the call-up news. "And after that, holidays."

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The 160km of dusty trails twisted from Maasmechelen on the west side through Flanders and featured 10 timed sections. Both Frain and Soete used similar tactics to begin with fast times and then settle in for the final segments.

Frain won with an accumulated time of 3:40:33, 11:50 faster than Hanne Van Loock (Reverb Cycling) and more than 14 minutes on third-placed Nathalie Bex (Serso Gravel Team).

Soete won with a combined time of 3:24:57. Kevin Panhuyzen (Storms Cycling Team-Ridley) finished second by just 26 seconds. Adne Koster (Seka-Reynolds), who has twice finished runner-up, took third 48 seconds off the best time.

The first tick of the clock came after the opening climb in the first 5km, the first segment technical with sandy tracks. Next came across segments 2-4, going back-to-back-to-back for 57.6km, and then a long stretch of sand arrived at section 5 with a climb at the end and marking the half-way point of the race. Sections 7 and 8 also included most of the back-half climbing for a relatively flat final pair of timed sections.

Frain never faltered, setting the top times in all 10 segments. The Oceania Gravel Champion earned her seventh race win of the season, which began with RADL GRVL in January that also gave her the Continental title, and has included four wins in the UCI Gravel World Series in Europe.

"I went full gas from the start and just see where it sort of ended up. Those first couple of sectors were quite technical, so I thought there's a good opportunity," Frain told organisers.

"I'm pretty buggered, yeah tired. It's a challenging parcours. For me, the conditions were good. I'm more used to heat and I prefer the heat."

Conditions were mild and dry for all starts, but the thermometer moved to 30°C for the final hours. Soete said the early moves were fruitful so that when the heat arrived it was manageable.

"It was a hard day. I think the course is quite technical, a lot of corners. It was good we started in the morning, the weather was hot, the last two hours it was getting very warm," he told organisers at the finish for his first gravel win of the year.

Soete and Panhuyzen grabbed the best times on the first section, then Koster went to work on the middle sections. Soete began to close a gap from seventh place to third place and made up a final deficit on the final 9.5km section.

"If you have advantage in the beginning [in the sand], you know the situation for sure. And if you keep up with the others then for the rest of the race, you know you are going to be close on the podium. So that was one of my plans," the accomplished cyclo-cross racer said.

"It's a special concept with the timed segments. It's the first time for me, so a little bit technical in the beginning. Then halfway through the race, we had a little bit advantage, Kevin Panhuyzen and myself. It's always unclear how much seconds you have, so you need to keep riding and keeping in the front."

There were a thousand starters on the line in Maasmechelen, with 50 of the riders from the 160km event in the running to secure one of the 50 places up for grabs at the 2027 edition of Unbound Gravel. Half of the slots were awarded based on performance and the other half through an official lottery.

The demand for spots in the world's most revered gravel event far outweighs the number of positions available, and while the spot lottery opens on November 1 there are also a number of events in North America where you can secure an early entry to the June 5 event. Crusher in the Tushar was the first in July, but this race was cancelled due to wildfires, so now the options are The Rad Dirt on September 26 and Big Sugar Gravel on October 17.

Freddy Ovett sets FKT on Icelandic Divide

Australian Freddy Ovett took on the remote territory of Iceland to set a new Fastest Known Time (FKT) on the 376.7-kilometre trek across the Nordic island country. He completed Icelandic Divide in 16 hours, 30 minutes, 39 seconds, averaging 24.1 kph with 4,066 metres of elevation accumulated.

The record, from north to south, was established by Payson McElveen (Allied Cycle Works-Red Bull) in 2021, becoming the first athlete to complete the ride in under 24 hours, and he did it in 19 hours, 45 minutes. Ovett broke that mark by over three hours, and instead of riding in daylight hours he began at 6 p.m. local time in Akureyri to ride in 'unending dusk' into Vik.

"Doing something more than just racing each season is something I’ve been thinking about for a while now but doing exactly what and how isn’t easy to come up with. Speaking with COROS at the end of last season I mentioned this to them and within months they come up with the idea to attack the Iceland Crossing record. It was a perfect distance and route in terms of management for my first FKT experience and I readily accepted the challenge," he said in a press statement.

"It means quite a bit to me because as much as I love racing, I love even more the idea of challenging myself on my own terms in my own way and this ride is exactly that. I loved every part of the experience not just the ride itself but the entire team involved and the time we all had together in Iceland."

Ovett encountered more than a dozen water crossings, with tricky descents that followed for his very first FKT attempt. He plans to share the effort with a video.

He raced for seven seasons on the road, last with L39ION of Los Angeles in 2021-2022 and then transitioned to gravel in 2023. He has had several top 10s since, including Crushar in the Tushar and The Gralloch, and this year going 13th at RADL GRVL and 12th at Wish One Millau Grands Causses.

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This year's race, the toughest edition yet, ran for nine days between Lausanne and Nice, was marked by a record 18,795 metres of climbing, with the brutal summit finish atop Mont Ventoux the highlight. On the side of the road, crowds are bigger year-on-year, as are viewing figures, and the same goes for the press pack following the race on the ground.

So, what next for the premier event of the Women's WorldTour calendar? Questions about future expansion have persisted almost ever since the switch from the one-day La Course to the race we know today.

Cédrine Kerbaol, who was the home nation's standout performer at the Tour this summer, said that she would be "very happy" to tackle a longer Tour in future, even as long as the three-week-long Grand Tours the men's peloton race.

"My teammates don’t share that opinion. And I really need them in every race I enter," the EF Education-Oatly racer told French television after finishing in Nice.

"So, I think it’s better to take it one step at a time. Extending it to two weeks would be a great step forward for the coming years."

Ahead of the race, Tour director Marion Rousse told Cycling Weekly how proud she was of the progress made during the first five editions, but said that the ongoing growth of the race wouldn't be quite so rapid.

"In the first edition, I went to speak to the wider public, and they struggled to name a single rider. Now I’m really happy because everyone knows the riders. We’ve really overcome an obstacle.

"You’ve really got to put the race in its context: barely five years before, there were hardly any riders in the peloton who were paid. That’s very recent.

"Yes, it’s evolving quickly, but we’re not at the same stature as the men’s peloton yet. We also shouldn’t put any barriers in our way, and one day there might be more stages, but we won’t go from nine days to 21 overnight. It will need to be done little by little."

This year's Tour was a tough watch for home fans, with France having gone from feast to famine in the space of a calendar year. Last summer, the nation hailed its first Tour winner for decades as Pauline Ferrand-Prévot dominated the final weekend en route to the yellow jersey, while Breton breakthrough hero Maëva Squiban shone as she broke away to win two stages.

This time around, French squad FDJ United-SUEZ led the way with Demi Vollering's GC victory, though there were few standout results from French racers. Kerbaol, who equalled her career best of sixth overall in Nice, took the limelight. While the French stage win drought continued from the men's Tour, she scored the nation's standout stage result here with a second place on the road to Belleville-en-Beaujolais.

The 25-year-old Breton, who won a stage and finished sixth two years ago, headed to her EF Education-Oatly team bus after crossing the line to end her race, bursting into tears in the arms of her teammates, before making her way across the beach and cooling off with a spontaneous dip in the sea. Afterwards, she told L'Equipe just how happy she was about her race.

"It's incomparable to previous years. Last year, Marlen and Van der Breggen weren't there, and the year before, other top riders were missing, too. This year, all the best riders in the world were here, so it definitely means it carries a higher value. I can only take away positives from the race," she said.

"We knew it was going to be tough from start to finish. I would've loved to go on the attack today, but there was no point in trying anything too far from the finish. Isabella Holmgren made the move I wanted to and buried herself a long way out. We averaged over 200 watts, so it was simply impossible to break away. We did what we could."

Kerbaol may have been France's best GC performer this year, though she was some way adrift of Demi Vollering's first place, finishing 6:41 down. She was closer to the podium, however, at just 1:22 off Elisa Longo Borghini's third spot.

There's reason for her to look upwards and have hope for higher placings in future, then.

"It's still a big step to climb to challenge those girls at the front. With my teammates, the harmony was just as good off the bike as on it. We also showed other teams that they can be afraid of us in the future. Next year, we'll come back stronger."

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FDJ topped the teams’ prize money earnings, taking home €77, 080, with the podium reflecting that of the individual general classification – Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney’s Canyon-SRAM team netting €51,500 and Elisa Longo Borghini’s UAE Team l’IMADE pocketing €37,980.

There was a big gulf to the team in fourth, SD Worx-Protime – once the dominant force in women’s cycling – who collected €18,940. Lidl-Trek rounded out the top five of team earners on €14,880.

Remarkably, there was one team who left the race without a single extra Euro in the bank: Mayenne-Monbana-MyPie. The French second-division team were also bottom of the pile on their Tour debut last year, but at least pocketed €290.

This time, they were empty-handed given they did not place a rider inside the top 20 on any of the nine stages, or in the overall classification. Furthermore, they weren’t among the cash-scoring first few riders at any intermediate sprint or mountain crest, failing to have an impact in any of the classifications, including the daily combativity prize.

This is not actually the first time a team has left the Tour de France with no prize money; in 2024, the Tashkent team suffered the same fate. There had been controversy surrounding the Uzbek team’s inclusion in the race, which intensified when four of their riders abandoned on the first day, and they rode the final four stages with just one rider.

Mayenne-Monbana-MyPie lost Kaira Lylyk ahead of stage 7 and Alice Coutinho ahead of the final stage, but finished with five riders.

Vollering the runaway individual earner

Of FDJ United-SUEZ’s table-topping total, the overwhelming majority of cash was hauled in by Vollering herself.

In fact, Vollering’s personal prize haul of €69,000 would put her ahead of all the other teams as collective entities.

In second place on the personal earnings was runner-up- Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney €37,120, while third-placed Elisa Longo Borghini earned €14,310.

Vollering took home €50,000 for her overall victory, but her huge total was indicative of the impact she had throughout the race.

The Dutchwoman collected €4,000 on each of the three occasions she won a stage, and she bulked that out to the tune of €4,000 with three further podium finishes on stages. What’s more, she also finished runner-up in the final classifications for the points and the mountains, adding €1,500 in each instance.

Vollering also earned €500 for being elected the most combative rider on stage 5, and she earned a further €400 from high placings on categorised climbs to take her total to €69,900.

How does this compare to the men?

When looking at the Tour de France Femmes prize money, it’s always interesting, in the context of women’s cycling’s continued evolution, to see how it stacks up against the men’s Tour.

The difference is still stark. This year, Tadej Pogačar took home €500,000 for winning the Tour, and plenty more for his five stages wins, giving his UAE Team Emirates-XRG squad a whopping total prize money haul of €832,750.

That figure is tempered by the huge gulf to second-placed Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe on €288,160.

However, there is still a big difference between the €2.5 million total prize pot for the men’s Tour, and the €260,000 total for the women’s Tour.

There are several contributing factors, cited by among others the Tour de France Femmes race director Marion Rousse.

The men’s Tour is a far bigger commercial beast, with huge revenues from broadcasting and sponsorship, and part of that is down to its scale. The men’s Tour has over 100 years of history behind it, while the women’s Tour in its current incarnation is only five editions old, and whereas the women’s Tour has grown to nine stages, that’s still less than half of the 21 stages of the men’s race.

Rousse has consistently resisted unfavorable comparisons with the men’s Tour, pointing out that the prize pot is still significantly higher than the most prestigious week-long races on the men’s calendar, and underlining the fact that women’s cycling is still growing from a very low economic foundation.

“We must not grow too quickly, and above all, we must ensure the race's longevity because if the event stops next year, it would be a catastrophe for women's cycling, which is evolving very quickly from year to year,” Rousse said in 2025.

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Following a hard-fought battle that saw her win three stages but only take yellow on the penultimate day, Demi Vollering (FDJ United-SUEZ) became the first rider to win this race twice in the modern era, and brought the yellow jersey home to a French team for the first time.

In its fifth year of existence, the Tour de France Femmes somehow just keeps getting better, and this year was no exception, with a decisive and challenging time trial, a historic ascent of Mont Ventoux, and a perfectly-designed finale that kept the battle alive up until the very last hour of racing.

We've covered the whole event in depth with news, analysis and exclusive interviews, but as the dust settles on this year's edition, it's time to look back on a truly fantastic nine days of racing, and what it means for its protagonists, the sport and the races still to come this year.

After 10 days on the ground in Switzerland and France, here are eight key things we learnt from the 2026 Tour de France Femmes

The Vollering - Niewiadoma-Phinney rivalry continues, but it’s far from predictable

Cycling, as we've seen proven time and again through the years, is a sport of generations. The Classics and the Grand Tours always bear witness to extended spells of dominance by a handful of riders before they naturally age out of contention and the next generation comes along.

In recent years, the men's Tour de France has been dominated by the Pogačar - Vingegaard rivalry, the two men duking it over the yellow jersey year after year at a level well above their GC rivals.

With the conclusion of the 2026 edition, the Tour de France Femmes can say that it's firmly in the Vollering - Niewiadoma-Phinney era. The final three stages of this year's race played host to a thrilling back-and-forth battle between the pair, with more contention than past years, too, after the events of stage 8. As things stand, they’re the only riders to have stood on the podium of every edition of the Tour.

Both came into the race among the very top favourites for the yellow jersey, but with the likes of Pauline Ferrand-Prévot, Marlen Reusser, Elisa Longo Borghini, and more also racing, their success was far from a foregone conclusion.

Without wishing to constantly compare women's and men's racing, that simply isn't the case at the men's Tour, where few others beyond the 'big two' stand a realistic shot at yellow. There are no such foregone conclusions at the Femmes, and we should be grateful for that. (DO)

Pauline Ferrand-Prévot is not untouchable – in fact she still has a lot to learn

A year ago, Pauline Ferrand-Prévot was an unstoppable force as she sailed to her first Tour de France Femmes title, and I think we were all expecting a similar show of strength in this year's edition. Vollering had had the more impressive season beforehand, sure, but PFP's singular focus and unrivalled commitment to training and form was expected to bring her back to the Tour in fantastic shape.

But instead, her race was pretty much a flop, rarely matching the level of the best riders, neither on the punchier stages, the time trial nor the long climb of Mont Ventoux before dropping out with a vague illness.

The Frenchwoman was in good spirits and not frustrated by her performance, but this week has dispelled the idea that perhaps we had last year that if she puts her mind to something, she can do it at will. Clearly, the TT is still a major weakness that you have only been able to improve so much, and even her dialled training approach can fail her and bring her to the Tour without the level to compete.

Ferrand-Prévot has already achieved her major goal of winning the Tour and she's still a legendary and decorated rider. However, after thinking last year that she could just pick an aim and achieve it straightforwardly, this year has reminded us that she is human and fallible, and even she still have areas to improve and learn. (MP)

Route design is everything

It's not controversial to say that this Tour de France Femmes was one of the best, if not the best, editions of the race in terms of excitement, intrigue and competition. But that wasn't just down to the talented riders, most of whom have been here every year. It was also down to the route design.

When the route was unveiled last autumn, it was clear that the route designers had gone big on difficulty, eschewing the flat sprint stages in favour of multiple one-day-style punchy routes and, crucially, a time trial. They opted for just one mountaintop finish on Ventoux, and a circuit race finale that could keep things alive to the final day.

It was a little bit of a gamble, I think, because the race could have been signed, sealed and delivered on Ventoux on Friday and the final weekend could have been a bit anti-climactic, but actually, I think the organisers got it just right. They know the dynamics of cycling and they designed the route to reach a high point in its final few days.

And that's exactly what we got. The GC riders tested their legs as early as the first day in Lausanne, and took every single opportunity to race, be it on stage 5, Ventoux, or the Col d'Eze finale. The time trial also offered fantastic intrigue, bringing Marlen Reusser into the fight and ensuring the winner was a true all-rounder.

By including punchy stages but only one big climb, the route ensured that there were time gaps and an extended GC fight, but the gaps were never once big enough to be considered done, not until Vollering crossed the line on Sunday.

Grand Tours will always have mountaintop finishes and sprint stages, but it's what the route includes between those extremes which really makes the race, and this Tour got that utterly spot on. (MP)

The level is high enough to add more stages

The topic of race expansion seems to be brought up year after year in women's cycling, from the length of Classics and stages to the number of days featuring in a Grand Tour.

This summer, after five years of the race, it seems barely believable that the Tour de France Femmes didn't even exist before 2022, with the one-day La Course running as its predecessor since 2014.

Since its inception, the Tour has grown from eight stages in its first three years to nine stages in 2025 and 2026. This year's was, by the numbers, the toughest edition yet, featuring 18,795 metres of elevation gain as three hours covered first to last places.

Is it time to add another stage? The final stages certainly left us wanting more, with exciting racing all the way to the finish line, and another mountain stage – not necessarily another summit finish – wouldn’t have gone amiss.

Women riders are often asked if they'd like to race three weeks, and Cédrine Kerbaol, who finished sixth overall, told L'Equipe after the race that she'd be "very happy" if the Tour were expanded to that length, even if "my teammates don't share that opinion."

Three weeks might be too far of a leap right now, but the level of competition at the Tour means that it could certainly expand to 10 or 11 days, or maybe even 12 with the addition of a rest day. The gradual expansion has worked so far, after all.

Meanwhile, in her closing press conference, Elisa Longo Borghini reminded us of the importance of supporting women's racing at lower levels and the youth ranks, too.

"We are reaching a great level in general in cycling. What I would like to see is the base to be a little bit more wide, let's say, and to not see small teams disappearing. Because otherwise we will not have a change of generation. Young girls will not have a chance to have experience," she said. (DO)

Célia Gery was the MVP of the Tour

Célia Gery's debut Tour ended in a bit of a cloud as the 20-year-old found herself at the centre of drama and online nastiness after a racing clash with Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney. But we shouldn't forget that she was one of the most influential, important and strong riders of the entire race.

Juliette Berthet may have won the official, fan-voted teammate of the race prize, but honestly, I'd have given it to Gery. Only 20 this year, U23 World Champion Gery has already won the elite French National Championships and been entrusted to join Demi Vollering at two Grand Tours, and this week it was clear to see why. The Frenchwoman is so strong, often the last rider left with Vollering on the punchy stages, and really brave with her riding despite being one of the youngest riders in the bunch.

You could argue that riders like Berthet and Évita Muzic had a slightly lacklustre race compared to previous years, though I'm sure they did important work that we didn't always see. But Gery was always there, always making the race, and I don't think Vollering could have won this race without her.

The other point of strength is that Gery did not get overexcited or drawn into her own ambitions, and every attack was smart and to the benefit of the team. And to be honest, that move on Niewiadoma-Phinney, whether she liked it or not, was a really bold one from Gery, a rider who is willing to fight tooth and nail for the win.

As long as it's legal, we shouldn't punish that tenacity. She wasn't rewarded with a stage win like she was at the Giro d'Italia, but she got to be part of the first French team to win the yellow jersey, and surely carved out her place in Tour teams for years to come. (MP)

The next generation is waiting in the wings

The main storyline of the Tour saw a host of established GC stars battle it out at the top of the standings. However, there were several standout performances from the next generation of riders who will inevitably be in a similar position in the years to come.

In Nice, the final top 10 featured three riders aged 23 or under in Antonia Niedermaier, Paula Blasi, and Isabella Holmgren, with the former pair spending much of their race working for more experienced GC leaders in Niewiadoma-Phinney and Longo Borghini.

This time next year, both may be leading their own teams, if rumoured transfers are to be believed, with Niewiadoma-Phinney rumoured to be joining Holmgren at Lidl-Trek, and Blasi seemingly set for a Movistar switch.

All three are already Grand Tour forces in their own right, and they’re all still growing and improving as riders, too. Niedermaier took the white jersey home, while Blasi – second on the final stage – and Holmgren – launching a solo attack on the Col d’Eze – both went out with a bang.

You can also add 20-year-old Gery, immaculate in her service for Vollering at both Giro and Tour, and 25-year-old Niamh Fisher-Black, still on the rise as a GC racer, after her switch to Lidl-Trek last year, to the list. (DO)

From feast to famine for French riders

Last summer saw the home nation experience its most successful Tour de France Femmes yet as Pauline Ferrand-Prévot won France’s first yellow jersey in decades while she and breakout star Maëva Squiban shared four of the race’s nine stages between them.

This year, the end results for home riders made far bleaker reading, even if home team FDJ United-SUEZ took home the yellow jersey with Demi Vollering’s second triumph.

Beyond the French squad’s success, there was little to shout about for the masses of French fans at the roadside. EF Education-Oatly’s Cedrine Kerbaol was the sole shining light as far as the general classification goes, improving on her eighth place last year to sixth this time around. She also took the home nation’s only stage podium finish with a second place behind Kim Le Court-Pienaar in Tournon-sur-Rhone.

Ferrand-Prévot, meanwhile, was well below the astonishing level she showed last year. The Visma-Lease a Bike leader lost two minutes in the time trial and two more in the hills the next stage before cracking altogether on Mont Ventoux and withdrawing with a reported illness the next morning.

It’s not all bad news for France, however – young guns Célia Gery and Ferrand-Prévot’s teammate, 21-year-old Marion Bunel who took third at La Vuelta, look certain to contest Grand Tours in the near future.

Then there’s Maëva Squiban, who switched from swashbuckling freelance attacker to domestique this year, though won’t always be consigned to that role, and Ferrand-Prévot, who will surely be back to battle for another yellow jersey. (DO)

The appetite and viewership for full TV coverage is there

Those of us who have been involved in women's cycling for years have been banging on about TV coverage for ages, when we had to ask and fight for there to be any coverage at all of even the biggest races. Thanks to a combination of fan interest, investment and UCI rules, coverage of the Women's WorldTour is now better than ever. But the Tour de France showed that viewers still want more – and that asking for more coverage is now a mainstream opinion, not the reserve of a select few women's cycling obsessives.

The coverage this year was more extensive than ever, with three stages shown in full, but the racing convinced most of us that full coverage of every stage would be completely justified. Stage 3 seemed to be the most galvanising, with the two hours of live coverage meaning that we never got to see the winning attack from Sigrid Haugset (Uno-X Mobility), and reminding us that just showing the second half of a race is no longer enough.

Of course, there are financial considerations, and the broadcasters and organisers have to see the economics of such a move, but TV viewership this year is surely on the way to justifying such a move. Full figures aren't out yet, but France TV said that over 2 million people watched the opening stage last Saturday, only 20% less than the figures for the opening men's stage, and Dutch broadcaster NOS reported that viewing figures for the Ventoux stage exceeded viewership for all but two stages of the men's race.

"I've discussed this at length with France Télévisions and we’re giving serious consideration to broadcasting all the stages in full in the future because the women deserve it, and because it works well in terms of audience figures," race director Marion Rousse said on the topic. "We’re currently giving it real consideration, which is a step forward. Things are moving in the right direction.”

Whether it's full coverage next year or expanded coverage and flag-to-finish images in the future, Rousse is right that things are definitely going in the right direction. Coverage that matches the men's race is already wanted, and is surely not far from being achievable. (MP)

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Speaking to French media as the 2026 race drew to a close in Nice, in comments reported by Ouest-France, Rousse reminded journalists that the diversity of stages in this year's edition had helped make for an exceptionally entertaining race to watch.

She also pointed out that organisers' tendency to make races as hard as possible tempts riders to play it conservatively and to wait for the final climb on ultra-difficult mountainous stages, rather than taking bigger risks.

"I don't favour constantly raising the level of difficulty, but that's a personal point of view.

"I've had experience as a TV media analyst and sometimes, when it's too tough, that kills off the suspense because riders just look at each other until the last climb.

"We try to vary the types of stages and we had a great stage in the Beaujolais" - where Demi Vollering took her first stage win in a sprint against Marlen Reusser (Movistar) and Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon-SRAM) - "and on Saturday [stage 8], by putting two 'walls' in the final, it felt like we were seeing a Classic.

"We can make the race harder, but do we want to? Not necessarily."

As for this year's race, Rousse felt that riders exploited the terrain that had been offered them to the full, to make for a very exciting event from start to finish.

"Every day, something happened," she pointed out.

'Helping young girls have an opportunity to dream'

One of the biggest downsides for French cycling was that Pauline Ferrand-Prévot (Visma-Lease a Bike) was well off the pace, despite working hard to make that possible.

"She trained like she had to, but she wasn't up there," Rousse said, "but that doesn't mean she won't be back in the future, fighting for the top spot overall."

"I'm in a good place to know that in the life of a top athlete, from one year to the next, things can stop working so well. I hope people won't forget her palmares and what we'll be able to see in the future [in races] thanks to her as well.

"She's the first person to feel disappointed not to be there at 100%. But she was there at the starts and finishes every day and that meant a lot to people, too."

Rousse said there had been concern over how the race could play out in terms of viewer interest, given this was the first time in its modern history that the end of the men's Tour de France and the start of the Tour de France Femmes had been separated by a week. But that calendar switch had worked out well and as a cumulative effect of its impact and success, "the race now forms part of people's daily lives."

On top of that she argued, the Tour de France Femmes had become a focus point to help "young girls dream if they take out a racing licence, or help them to identify with top feminine stars. It's very important for us.

"When I started racing aged 6, I couldn't help but identify with the men, because that was all you saw on TV.

"Helping young girls have an opportunity to dream, and not just about getting on a bike, is a very good goal to have, and that's why I'm proud to be the race director. On a broader level, this is about how women take part in sport."

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Canyon-SRAM were celebrating finishing on the podium of the Tour five times in a row with Niewiadoma-Phinney on Sunday night. But with the Polish rider reportedly on the way out of the team for 2027, according to Daniel Benson, that streak might come to an end. Or will it?

Of course, it won't be with Niewiadoma-Phinney that the team finish on the podium if she is indeed headed for pastures new, but the team seem to have a ready-to-go successor in Niedermaier.

"We wanted to build her slowly. It's her first Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift and this is an exceptional result for a first appearance," team manager Ronny Lauke said.

"And so now she knows what it all means to be in this race and how much bigger it is than any other race she has competed in. So the future is bright."

Niedermaier finished second at the Giro d'Italia Women only a few weeks ago, but came to the Tour as a secondary rider to Niewiadoma-Phinney, without really even attention as a co-leader and certainly no leadership tensions. It was under those circumstances that she was able to thrive.

"It was her first time here and could enjoy it, and she wasn't really in the big focus. She enjoyed that as well, not talking to you folks every day," team DS Rolf Aldag told reporters in jest on Sunday.

"[She had] a little bit more time off. She's more the introvert person. And I think that was really, really good for her to have Kasia with her. The pressure was on Kasia all the time, and she has this routine, and she handles it in a good way. And Antonia can [absorb] that all and come back next year, and it's not going to be a shock to her system.

"She felt now how it was to defend the jersey. One day she might have to defend the yellow jersey, and we're looking forward to being part of it."

Niewiadoma-Phinney's departure is not yet confirmed, but from the way Aldag spoke, it seemed very clear that Canyon-SRAM are looking at Niedermaier as a potential new Grand Tour leader.

"There's a long way 'til next year," he said. "I think we will probably drink some beer tonight and reflect next week, and send all our reports, and write up what we can do better next year. And then we will see what we're going to do. And probably by November, we're going to make a plan for what we're going to do in the Tour 2027."

Anyone who has been watching Niedermaier's rise will know what a talent she is, but this Tour really confirmed that she is the complete package when it comes to Grand Tour racing. A fantastic climber, strong in the TT – which will likely only become more important as women's Grand Tours grow – and mentally resilient.

Her success in the Canyon-SRAM jersey was made even sweeter by the fact that she isn't a rider the team just found or signed as a ready-made talent, they have built her career and performance from the beginning.

Niedermaier was part of the very first cohort of riders on the Canyon-SRAM Generation team when it was launched in 2022, and has come up steadily through their programme to become one of the most exciting Grand Tour prospects in the peloton.

"It's part of our DNA to bring riders into the sport, like giving them that pathway without having that big pressure from the beginning, so I believe it played a role [in her success this year]."

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Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney had accused FDJ United-SUEZ of blocking her before the final climb on Saturday, and with just eight seconds in it at the top of the standings afterwards, there was room to question whether the apparent move influenced the Tour's overall outcome.

Not so on Sunday evening, after Vollering dropped the Pole at the top of the Eze, soloing 16.2km to the line to seal the yellow jersey by 1:18. Her overall victory was decisive, beyond question, and, following a mid-stage conversation, the air had been cleared.

"I explained again that we really didn't want to block her on purpose, and then she accepted it, and she was like, 'OK, I understand.' It was all good in the end. I think it was good that we had a talk together," Vollering explained in the post-race press conference, before telling of how her teammate, Célia Gery, the 20-year-old at the centre of the storm, had been affected by the row.

"She got a lot of nasty messages, which makes me always very angry, especially because she's such a young girl still. We should always protect young people from these kinds of stupid actions from people who don't think and just send a message," she said.

"I mean, it's very sad to think that you go to somebody's profile and send them death-threatening messages. I really cannot understand this, but it makes me very angry. She had a really rough time, so of course today was also motivation for us to show that we can do it without all the commotion about what happened yesterday.

"I think I just wanted to have a chat with Kasia about this, also because I was just a bit disappointed that she let all the emotions out like that about a rider and saying their name. You should always try to avoid these kinds of things. First of all, we are riders, and then next to it, we are human beings – we are real people. If you say somebody's name or you really attack somebody like this, it really hurts somebody and can really do bad things to people.

"We all know racing is crazy, and we try our best to make it as safe as possible, but we are under so much pressure, and sometimes things just happen and go how they go in a race. So I think we should realise that."

'I believe you always need to see life in the bigger picture'

With the controversy consigned to history and racing taking centre stage on Sunday, Vollering made a statement with her winning attack over the final ascent of the Eze, run up a steeper road than the previous three on the stage.

The win, plus the final GC, were her 13th and 14th of the season and stand alongside titles at the Tour of Flanders, Liège-Bastogne-Liège, and the Giro d'Italia in a glittering 2026 campaign that looks like the high point of her career to date.

There are still title defences at the World Championships in Montréal and the European Championships in Ljubljana to consider, too. Does she feel like this is the best Demi Vollering we've seen to date? And, at the age of 29, is she still improving as a rider?

"I feel like I'm growing as a person as well. Over the years, you learn so much, and you keep on learning. You take that all with you in your backpack, and sometimes you're struggling because you think you figured it out, but then at the same time, the moment you start to feel like that, you lose all of it," she said.

"That's life. You need to keep evolving, you need to keep working hard, you need to keep working on every detail. I think you never should think you're 'there', because you will never get there. Life is a whole process, and it goes with ups and downs. You need to try to do everything as good as possible, but at the same time, there is no end goal until we're not on this world anymore.

"You need to enjoy every step of the way and try to just become every day a little bit better version of yourself."

After the finish, a magnanimous Niewiadoma-Phinney admitted that having an opponent like Vollering – the pair have been on the podium of every Tour de France Femmes to date – is one of her main motivations to improve and get stronger.

Vollering said that the feeling was mutual – that it's true for Niewiadoma-Phinney and her other rivals, too. But she noted that improvement as a rider and chasing these big racing goals isn't worth it if it negatively affects life away from the bike.

"I think it's really nice that your rivals think things like this about you. I think it also shows their strength. I also believe that all your rivals bring you to a bigger level. Like this, we keep each other motivated and focussed as well. We have to force ourselves to become every day a better version, just because the others are also growing," Vollering said.

"You try to be the best version of yourself – see it in the long-term version to not do too crazy stuff, because it's only your cycling career. After, it's still a life. You want to stay healthy, and I don't want to sacrifice everything for this dream. Everything I have I will give, but I don't want to force myself into corners I don't belong.

"This is me, and I have to deal with my size and everything. I know that some girls think getting skinnier is the way to get to a higher level, but I'm not a believer of that. I believe that first of all, you need to be a healthy version of yourself, a motivated version of yourself.

"You train every day very hard, you focus on your recovery, and that's how you get better – not taking shortcuts that are for the short term. I believe you always need to see life in the bigger picture."

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While the Tour had started with questions from the outside over their leadership strategy, their plan clearly paid off. Longo Borghini finished with a career-best third place after previous attempts were ended by illnesses and a pre-race crash. La Vuelta Femenina winner Paula Blasi raced to fifth in her debut Tour, while Dominika Włodarczyk, fourth last summer, finished seventh.

If there was ever any tension in the squad to begin with, there certainly wasn't at the conclusion of the final stage.

"Big result. We're really, really proud of Elisa, proud of Paula, proud of Dominika, proud of Silvia – I mean all the girls," team directeur sportif Cherie Pridham told Cyclingnews outside the team bus in Nice.

"It was just an incredible week that we had to manage. There was a lot of noise from the media, but to finish third on the podium, second on the stage podium today, and then win the team classification pretty much from the start – it's a dream.

"We said from the start that we just need to believe in the process. The road was always going to do the talking, but we kept our line, and the girls executed a professional job."

The role of Paula Blasi, one of the breakthrough riders of the season following her Amstel Gold Race and Vuelta triumphs, was the centre of questions as the race kicked off in Lausanne. The Spaniard insisted she wasn't a co-leader in France, but how could a rider of her ability be consigned to a support role?

"I think cycling sometimes is like that. If you have a plan, even though maybe it may feel strange, you have to accept it and go for it," Blasi told the assembled media at the finish.

"But even though I was like, 'Oh, maybe I'm not really doing the right thing,' you always try to trust in the team. Also, sometimes even if you have a clear leader, maybe she cannot have the best day, and things can change on the road, and you have to adapt a bit.

"So that's what we did, but in the end, I think we had a clear tactic, and we proved that even though we can have any tactic, we just commit to it. That's what we did, so I can say I'm pretty happy about it."

Blasi and Longo Borghini worked together on the race's queen stage up Mont Ventoux, with the Italian surging to third on the stage and laying the base for a final weekend which would see her jump onto the podium.

After the stage, she admitted that the leadership talk had taken its toll on her, saying, "We're cyclists, but we're humans too, aren't we? And it just became a massive ball of stress."

Blasi said in Nice that she and the team managed to block things out and focus on the race and their own tactics.

"We all knew what was going on in the media, and we spoke about it. We were like, 'We know all the blah blah blah around.' But also, we are a team quite honest with everyone.

"We were like, 'This is the tactic. We go for it, we commit, and then if in the climbs we have to change, we will change.' "

'I never stopped believing that I could stand on the podium in Nice'

Longo Borghini admitted that UAE's eventual triple leader strategy invited questions, but reiterated her earlier point that riders are all humans who are affected by such rumours and speculation.

"I think we showed that we raced well and smart. It was questionable, for sure, having three leaders, and I understand the journalists have to do their job and their work, and I respect that 100%. But sometimes there is too much speculation, and as I said, it hurts people because behind an athlete there is a person – a girl, a woman," she said.

"We do suffer a little bit sometimes when we read some silly stuff, let's say. Sometimes I just think we should think twice before writing things down.

"We showed that we could work very well today. In the end, Paula was working for me, and I was working for her until I punctured for the sprint, because she's super fast and I wanted to give her a chance to be second in a stage in the Tour de France. We went all in, and we showed we were strong."

Blasi took that chance and finished second in Nice as Vollering soloed home to take the second yellow jersey of her career.

Longo Borghini ended the day in seventh, a handful of seconds back after a late puncture, ready to celebrate third place – a result built on consistent racing – barring that single off day in the Jura on stage 5, and keeping the belief, even when she lay 2:20 off third place following Ventoux.

"I never stopped believing that I could stand on the podium in Nice, and I kept telling myself that the Tour would finish in Nice," she said in the post-race press conference.

"I've been scratching seconds here and there every single day after the bad luck on the time trial and after Stage 5, and today it paid off. So, I still have to realise it, but I can say that I'm proud."

Longo Borghini said the result was "definitely one of the highlights of my career so far", the third place a "cherry on the cake" of nine hard days of racing.

She'd remain on the podium to celebrate with her full team, too, including the revelation of last year's Tour, Maëva Squiban, who was more than happy to assume a domestique role when it brought such results.

"Our goal was to put one girl on the podium, and we did it. We also won the team classification," Squiban told Cyclingnews.

"It's nice because all the girls can be on the podium, not only the winner or the leader. Everyone was happy to be on the podium, including the sports directors. We're happy with this Tour."

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The 2024 winner went toe-to-toe with the pre-race favourite Demi Vollering (FDJ United-Suez), bettering her on the legendary climb of Mont Ventoux to briefly take yellow, and only losing on the punchy final weekend where FDJ threw absolutely everything at her.

So it was 'just' a podium finish this time for Niewiadoma-Phinney – her fifth in as many editions of the race, which both her and Vollering have done – but that didn't automatically equal disappointment.

"I'm happy and satisfied just because I know that I gave my absolute best," she said in her runner-up press conference.

"We came here to fight for the best possible result, and I mean, I won on Mont Ventoux, and I feel like that was the biggest day of my life, cycling-wise. I'm super proud and happy about it. And then Demi is of course extremely strong, and it's not that I lost to a rookie, you know? It makes me work harder and then dream to come back here and get the yellow jersey again. So, in general, I would say I'm happy."

It was a similar feeling at the Canyon-SRAM bus, where celebrations were obviously not as raucous as they were a few metres down the road at FDJ, but the team were keen to emphasise that this was a result they were very pleased with.

"We acknowledge performance and congrats to Demi and to her team. She has been the strongest with a good support group of her team, and we accept that we are second now in GC. We are proud of that achievement," a cheery Ronny Lauke, Canyon-SRAM team manager, said.

"We fought until the very end, and this is a realistic result now with everything we have seen. It was a fair competition today, and we are happy with Antonia in fourth place with the white jersey, the best young rider, so we are also ready for the future. Everything is good from our side."

It's perhaps surprising for the rider and team to be this happy about coming second in a race they've won before and podiumed the other three times – though interestingly, never in second – so why was that the overwhelming feeling on Sunday evening?

Apart from taking a huge win on Ventoux, there is also the fact that this race gets harder every year, both in competition and parcours, as the level of the peloton in general rises rapidly. To be able to keep improving along with that offers a sense of pride and accomplishment for Niewiadoma-Phinney.

"Each year has been special in its own way. I think that this year definitely felt nice. I think that I felt stronger than in any other editions. I felt like I was part of making the race maybe more interesting," she said.

"So definitely the way I approached the race with my coach and what we were preparing for paid off, and that just gives me confidence for the future. I feel like there are a lot of women right now at a similar level, and then it's all about those little gains you can make or maybe mental strength and mental approach that gets you into yellow."

Niewiadoma-Phinney was vague on what the specifics of those little gains or performance tweaks might be, but spoke more openly about the mental side, and how her enjoyment of the sport makes it much easier to live the life of an elite athlete.

"I find myself being very fortunate because I purely love riding my bike. I feel very passionate about it, and I share the passion with my husband, so any day for us on a bike is a fun, happy day. And as long as you love doing what you do, then it never feels like any sort of sacrifice or anything like that," she said.

"And whenever I go to races, and I get my ass kicked, that also gives me motivation to then come back and be the one that kicks others' asses."

'Every single year she delivers'

The significance of Niewiadoma-Phinney finishing on the podium five times for Canyon-SRAM, matching Vollering in that record to underline just how close she is to the peloton's best rider, is really not lost on the team, either.

"I'm also proud that we are now the team that is for the fifth consecutive year on the GC podium, and the only one, the only team," Lauke said.

"This is exceptionally good. Kasia, from the beginning, when we knew that the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift was coming for our part of the sport, we knew that this was going to be our season highlight and we wanted to perform. Kasia has adjusted her training, her preparation, her focus, and every single year she delivers. She's always trying to become better, and she's an exceptionally classy rider. In her shadow another rider has grown, Antonia [Niedermaier] and this is fantastic for us."

It's this ability to focus on the Tour de France, perhaps at the expense of being a more prolific winner, that is likely behind Niewiadoma-Phinney's repeated success here. Rather than struggle with the pressure of one singular big goal, that laser focus seems to only spur her and the team on, and means that every year, she comes to this race at her very best level, a streak of consistency very few are able to replicate.

"The importance of this race, you need to understand how much it does for the sport and how important it is. So I think that's where we always come together, to say, 'Well, it's not just a race. It's not just another Grand Tour or something; it's the Tour de France'," Canyon-SRAM DS Rolf Aldag said.

"If you put that importance into it, then you also understand you need to put more and more resources into it year by year – more altitude, more people, more planning, and stuff like that. I think the team always did that really, really well. But also, to be fair, Kasia always did that on her own. So we gave her a lot of peace and freedom to prepare. We didn't make everything mandatory from the team. We know how motivated she is, and that's the key to it. You need to love this race, and you need to understand how important it is, and that makes it definitely easier."

This may be another second place in Niewiadoma-Phinney's palmares, but it won't be remembered as that. It will be remembered the same as the year she won: a great battle, a duel between two of the peloton's best, and a mighty final day to decide the GC. The result may not have been the same, but the racing, determination, and indeed strength was perhaps even better.

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Reusser was already dropped on the second ascent of the Col d'Èze, but any hopes of limiting her losses also came crashing down when she came off on a tricky corner and watched any dream of third place ride away from her.

Her whole Movistar squad rallied around her and rode with her for the whole rest of the stage, letting the time just go out rather than trying to salvage something, but by the time she finished – bashed up and in tears – she had lost over 24 minutes and tumbled to 14th overall.

The effects of the crash were minor, but the heartbreak of going from the yellow jersey on stage 6 to third coming into the final day, then out of the top 10 was clearly going to leave more of a scar.

"I think crash-wise she's OK," Movistar DS Kelvin Dekker told Eurosport at the finish.

"It wasn't a high-speed crash or anything. She took the corner a bit weird, and then I think this little bump in the middle, she crashed over that one. She was mainly at that moment really disappointed because she saw the podium getting away of course, and then on the ground she was fully realising that it would be gone.

"So this was mainly the reason why she was longer on the ground and just being really sad and disappointed. I think that's the feeling that will stay a bit longer than the wounds from the crash."

Even though it ended in disaster, Reusser's race was far from disappointing overall, as she won the time trial stage and spent three days in the yellow jersey, making it clear to absolutely everyone that she was a contender for not just the podium but the win.

Had it not been for her crash, she might have been able to defend her third spot from Elisa Longo Borghini (UAE Team L'IMAD), who started the day nearly two minutes down on Reusser.

"We had two weeks of a lot of fun, up until three o'clock today more or less. Up until then, it was a really nice week, and today we lost big, but you can only lose big if you first have something and if you truly care about it and we all truly cared about it a lot," Dekker said.

"It's been a long journey to get here. Like I said, we can only lose it if we had it first, we had an amazing week, three days in yellow, a stage win and a lot of great memories, and today a bit less nice.

Fourteenth in the end won't do much to dent Reusser's status as a GC rider, given her previous podium performances in Grand Tours, and she will likely – eventually – take confidence and heart from her performance this week.

But more so than that, Movistar will look back on this Tour as one where they took a team perhaps not filled with as many big names as other squads and really united behind a common goal, taking a step closer to winning yellow again, which they last did in 2022 with Annemiek van Vleuten.

"We do things really well as a team, in all races but also here, I think everyday we did so well. We got a lot of energy from how Marlen was doing, got a lot of energy from how everything was going well for us. I'm so incredibly proud of all of them. They did everyday so good," Dekker said.

As a teary Reusser made her way back to the bus, there was a sense of warmth and shared feelings at the Movistar bus, with riders and DS's offering each other comfort and kindness, rather than any element of frustration. Sometimes, how you deal with the losses means more than how you celebrate the wins.

"People were telling us that we had a weak team, but I think they showed how strong they were also today, in the beginning when we were all still there, and then this happened and it's just sad," Dekker said.

"There's only so much we can do as a team to help her, but we start as a team, we finish as a team, and in the end we had everyone there with her to support her mentally and get her over the line. But of course the girls are just as disappointed, as she is, as I am, as everyone is."

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The result came as a surprise to the Italian champion, who leapfrogged Marlen Reusser (Movistar) after the Swiss rider crashed early in the 99.2-kilometre stage.

"I'm speechless - I have no words," Longo Borghini said post-stage. "I really didn't think I'd make it onto the podium after the fifth stage and after the time trial."

Longo Borghini finished seventh on the stage after a late puncture, 1:14 behind the stage and race winner Demi Vollering (FDJ United-SUEZ) and second-placed Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney (Canyon-SRAM), but moved up the general classification because Reusser's crash left her in the gruppetto, finishing 24:35 down on the yellow jersey.

While she may have been able to challenge Reusser without the crash, Longo Borghini also had to keep an eye on Canyon-SRAM's Antonia Niedermaier, who was 49 seconds behind her in the general classification.

"I told Paula that I was a bloc, but in my head it was a completely different story. On the tough climb, I managed not to lose too much to Demi and Kasia, and then I managed to get back onto Fisher-Black," Longo Borghini said.

"Then I tried to keep an eye on [Antonia] Niedermaier, who pulled all the way to the top of the climb, and I tried to make sure Antonia didn't attack. We kept Niedermaier calm, and once we caught Kasia, we decided to go for the sprint for Paula."

Blasi out-sprinted Niewiadoma-Phinney for second on the stage, while Longo Borghini finished off the back of the chase group, explaining, "In the end I got a flat tyre - because, of course, I couldn't escape having a bit of rotten luck!"

While Longo Borghini is a two-time winner of the Giro d'Italia, she hasn't won a stage or finished on the podium of the Tour de France until today, and said she couldn't believe the result.

Longo Borghini seemed relieved to have overcome the regrets of the days she lost time - 1:03 to Vollering in the stage 4 time trial, and 1:43 the next day in Belleville-en-Beaujolais.

"I just want to go home, see my family, get on the couch, and sleep for a week. Because over the last couple of days, I kept waking up at 3:00 AM thinking about the time trial, about Stage 5, about this, and about that..."

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The Canyon-SRAM rider eventually finished third on the final stage in Nice, ceding even more time to eventual winner Demi Vollering (FDJ United-SUEZ), but she put up a tenacious fight trying to take a second edition of the race she won in 2024.

Having won Friday’s thrilling stage to Mont Ventoux, and taken the yellow jersey, Niewiadoma-Phinney lost the overall lead in controversial circumstances on Saturday. However, she came out swinging for the final stage, her intention being to reclaim her eight-second deficit.

With the intermediate sprint after the first of four ascents of Col d’Èze over and done with, her team went to work lifting the pace and grinding the peloton away. British champion Zoe Bäckstedt put in a huge turn, whittling the leading group to just a handful of riders. Then, on the final ascent, it was Antonia Niedermaier’s turn, before her leader made a move on the steepest slopes.

Vollering was able to go with her, though, and near to the top the Dutch rider attacked, dropping Niewiadoma-Phinney and riding to victory. In the end, the Polish rider finished 1:04 down, her GC deficit out to 1:18, well clear of Elisa Longo Borghini (UAE Team L’IMAD) in third place. However, when interviewed by TNT Sports after the finish, she remained defiant.

"Yeah, exactly. I mean, honestly, having a competitor like Demi just motivates me to be stronger. I know the Tour is finished, but I feel like I just want to message my coach and say, 'OK, this and this and this we need to change, or work on.'"

Though she praised her entire team, she reserved a special mention for Bäckstedt, "Oh my god, yes, I don’t know if Zoe knows, but she’s officially a climber.

"She definitely put me in trouble and the whole peloton; it was something incredible. Also, you know it’s so nice to see when the team believes in going for it and it’s beautiful to be part of such a crazy team."

As well as winning two years ago, Niewiadoma-Phinney has finished on the podium in every edition of the Tour since the race returned in 2022.

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Vollering nullified all of the Polish rider's attacks before putting in the winning blow and opening up more than a minute on the 15-kilometre run-in to the finish.

On the plateau and the descent to the finish line, Vollering extended her lead further while Niewiadoma-Phinney was caught by a chasing group of five, from which Paula Blasi (UAE Team L'IMAD) sprinted to second place on the stage ahead of Niewiadoma-Phinney.

On a circuit stage around Nice consisting of four laps of the Col d'Èze, Canyon-SRAM had blown the race apart on the second lap with Zoe Backstedt pulling from the bottom to the top of the climb and over the plateau, reducing the 'peloton' to only 11 riders and dropping Marlen Reusser (Movistar), third overall going into the stage, who then crashed on the descent.

Juliette Berthet (FDJ United-Suez) controlled the descent and the third climb of the Col d'Èze, where Isabella Holmgren (Lidl-Trek) attacked. The Canadian gained over a minute on the climb but lost ground on the descent and the flat, and when Antonia Niedermaier (Canyon-SRAM) started to pace on the final climb via the steep Chemin du Vinaigrier, Holmgren was caught with 19.2km to go, just at the start of the steepest kilometre of the climb.

Niewiadoma-Phinney launched her attack right away, but Vollering could follow her, and the two riders traded attacks, with neither able to drop the other before the road briefly flattened out. Vollering then waited until the last kilometre of the climb, and her acceleration 800m from the top finally cracked Niewiadoma-Phinney, who had to let a gap open up.

Vollering stormed up the last bit of the climb to increase her lead, then flew down the descent to win with a gap of 1:14 minutes. Niewiadoma-Phinney finished as overall runner-up while Elisa Longo Borghini (UAE Team L'IMAD) moved into the last GC podium spot.

"I never won in the yellow jersey before. I thought about my team; I thought about Célia [Gery] who had a really, really rough night. I thought about all the work I did before this. I thought about the people behind me, working together with Specialized on the new bike, they made this bike to be the fastest downhill, to be the fastest uphill. It's incredible the people I have around me. It's not only the dream to win in yellow here, to win a second Tour de France, but it's the dream to live this life, to work hard together with people with a lot of passion,"

"I had to try to attack. To go alone because I wanted to make it clear that we didn't win because of an incident yesterday. I wanted to make it clear that we as a team deserve to win a beautiful Tour de France Femmes, with humility and with pride," Vollering continued.

Vollering had moved into second place overall after the stage 4 ITT but was then leapfrogged by Niewiadoma-Phinney who took yellow on the Mont Ventoux.

"I didn't have doubts on my own level. I just gambled a bit too much, and that's sport, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes you make the right decisions, sometimes you make mistakes. It's just the easiest when you attack, and that's what Kasia did on the Mont Ventoux. She won a beautiful stage there, and that's what I did today," she finished.

How it unfolded

The final stage was 99.2km long, starting and finishing on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice. It consisted of four laps of the Col d'Èze, the first three laps taking the well-known route on the Grande Corniche for a second-category climb and the final lap using the Chemin du Vinaigrier for a shorter but much steeper climb classified as a category 1.

The first lap was neutralised to the bottom of the climb where the attacks started right away. Loes Adegeest, Riejanne Markus (both Lidl-Trek), Mavi García, Dominika Włodarczyk (both UAE Team L'IMAD), Émilie Morier (St Michel-Preference Home-Auber93) all tried to get away, with Włodarczyk attacking three times, but none of the moves lasted long.

Finally, Maëva Squiban (UAE Team L'IMAD) got a small gap on the last 500m of the climb, and Morier attacked again on the plateau after the QOM sprint, bridging to Squiban at the start of the descent where they were both caught again.

Malwina Mul (Cofidis) attacked in the downhill, and Paula Ostiz (Movistar) came across to make it a front duo. At the intermediate sprint after the first lap, they were 16 seconds ahead of the peloton, where Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx-Protime) had sprinted away to take the remaining points and secure her green jersey.

Canyon-SRAM then came to the fore, catching the breakaway duo at the start of the second climb up the Col d'Èze, where Backstedt effectively did a climbing time trial, riding all but 11 riders off her wheel.

50 seconds behind the front at the QOM and with her GC podium spot in danger, Reusser crashed on the following descent and stayed on the ground for several minutes. She could eventually continue the race but finished in the gruppetto and dropped out of the top-ten of the GC.

On the third time up the Col d'Èze, Juliette Berthet (FDJ United-Suez) set the pace at first. After a brief turn by Holmgren, Cédrine Kerbaol (EF Education-Oatly) attacked but was quickly neutralised by Berthet, who continued to ride tempo at the front.

Holmgren dropped back a few positions and then attacked from behind with 46km to go, 1.3km into the 7.7km climb, and quickly got a gap. She extended her advantage to 1:08 minutes at the top of the climb, 39.6km from the finish, but lost time again in the descent and started the final lap 45 seconds ahead of the group of favourites, still led by Berthet.

The 21-year-old Canadian started the final climb with 32 seconds in hand, but white jersey Antonia Niedermaier (Canyon-SRAM) took over from Berthet and closed the gap to Holmgren over the first 2km of the climb, making the catch just before the steepest part, over a kilometre at an average 12%, began. Holmgren was awarded the stage combativity prize for her breakaway.

Niewiadoma-Phinney attacked just as Holmgren was caught, but Vollering had no trouble following the move. The two riders traded blows, each attacking the other several times, but they were evenly matched. At the Col de Quatre Chemins, where the route returned to the main road up the Col d'Èze for the already-familiar last 2.3km of climbing, they were 19 seconds ahead of a chase group including Longo Borghini, Niamh Fisher-Black (Lidl-Trek), Holmgren, Blasi, and Niedermaier.

Vollering and Niewiadoma-Phinney briefly worked together to keep the chasers behind until the yellow jersey attacked from behind 800m before the top. Niewiadoma-Phinney jumped on the wheel, but Vollering kept going and quickly opened a gap.

From there on, she only extended her advantage and could celebrate her second stage win of the 2026 edition as well as her second overall victory of the Tour de France Femmes on the Promenade des Anglais.

Puck Pieterse (Fenix-Premier Tech) had already started the stage with an insurmountable lead in the mountain classification and safely finished the stage to win the polka-dot mountain jersey. Niedermaier finished fourth overall and won the white U24 jersey, while Niewiadoma-Phinney won the overall combativity prize and UAE Team L'IMAD won the team classification.

Results

General classification