Overcoming RED-S, inspirational Mexican debut, and a 21-year-old in the top 10 – North American roundup from the Tour de France Femmes

As a collective, North America took 13 riders to this year's Tour de France Femmes, including six from Canada, five from the US and one each from Mexico and Cuba.

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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