Under-23 Mountain Bike world champion Isabella Holmgren (Canada) has further confirmed her immense talent by winning the Tour de l'Avenir Femmes on Friday.
The 20-year-old, who came second in the race in 2024, this year got the better of last year's winner Marion Bunel (France), winning three stages, the mountains and youth classifications, and the overall classification.
Her adventure began with a victory in the three-kilometre prologue, which she won by 17 seconds over her nearest rival - a huge margin over such a short distance. After claiming the first leader's jersey, Holmgren kept it through to the finish.
She added to her advantage on stage 5, a short but extremely mountainous 41.6km stage with three high-altitude ascents, where Holmgren out-sprinted Bunel to win the stage and extend her lead to 45 seconds over the French woman, who had given up 35 seconds to Holmgren in the prologue.
Holmgren then went on to win the 10.3-kilometre closing time trial to La Rosière, putting a further 71 seconds into Bunel to win by 1:56. Talia Appleton (Australia) was third overall at 4:06.
Célia Gery (France) won three of the stages and the points classification.
Paul Seixas (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale) (Image credit: Getty Images)
In the men's Tour de l'Avenir, Paul Seixas (France) won the GC after also winning both the prologue and final time trial. Seixas had only fractions of a second over Lorenzo Finn (Italy) after the first stage and held onto his lead on stage 1, won by Noah Hobbs (Great Britain), but gave it up on stage 2.
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Elliot Rowe gave Great Britain their second win on stage 2, with the lead passing to Maxime Decomble (France). Danish team pursuiter Carl-Frederik Bevort powered to a solo victory on stage 3, while Mathieu Kockelmann (Luxembourg) won the fourth stage.
Belgium's Jarno Widar won back-to-back mountain stages, first in Tignes and then in La Rosière, both ahead of Seixas.
Decolmbe went into the final stage with a 29-second lead over Seixas, but gave up 1:49 in the 10.3km time trial on the final day, tumbling off the final podium.
Seixas won the time trial and the overall, with Widar second and Jørgen Nordhagen (Norway) in third.
Laura Weislo is a Cyclingnews veteran of 20 years. Having joined in 2006, Laura extensively covered the Operacion Puerto doping scandal, the years-long conflict between the UCI and the Tour de France organisers ASO over the creation of the WorldTour, and the downfall of Lance Armstrong and his lifetime ban for doping. As Managing Editor, Laura coordinates coverage for North American events and global news.
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