Tour de France Femmes stage 6 preview: the first big GC showdown

With the first mountains of the race coming on stage six, this is where the GC will truly begin to take shape. Four climbs, including a first category ascent and even a bonus sprint make this a spicy day.

Start: 14:00 CET
Estimated arrival: 17:43 CET
Stage distance: 123.7km
Elevation gain: 2475m

Up to now the classified climbs of the 2025 Tour de France avec Zwift have been a mixture of third and fourth category ones, but today we get serious, the race heading into France’s third mountain range, the Massif Centrale. We might not have very long climbs yet, you’ll have to wait for the weekend for those, but you can expect major GC action.

Starting in the major city of Clermont Ferrand and finishing in Ambert, it all starts easy enough, there’s an intermediate sprint after 30km where Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx-Protime) will be looking to score and boost her green jersey lead, then two third category climbs at 37 and 45.7km. But with 55km to go the race changes as the peloton hits the Col du Béal, the first proper mountain pass. At 10.2km with an average gradient of 5.6% it’s a first cat climb, and though it’s not a beast, only a select few riders will be left by the top. 

The GC riders will want to bag a statement win today, so if the breakaway isn’t caught by the top, it will be on the Col du Chansert. This second category climb peaks with 29km to go, though after that there is the added complication of the the bonus second sprint. And while six, four and two seconds might not sound worth racing for, remember, everyone is very aware that last year’s GC was decided by only four seconds. Every second counts.

The bonus sprint comes 12km from the line, and once again it’s at the top of a 5km climb, it’s not steep, but it might be an opportunity to get away, despite a plateau coming before the descent. That descent isn’t too technical and there’s no rain forecast so it’ll be ridden hard.

While the race will be far less explosive than yesterday’s, you can expect the same faces to be there in the final, and this could be another one perfectly suited to Kim Le Court (AG Insurance-Soudal). Already in the yellow jersey, she proved on Wednesday she can descend - she was a mountain biker after all - and she has the best sprint of the GC riders.

The question comes on the longer climbs, where she has never been tested. She will be today and she may well pass with flying colours.

Anna van der Breggen (SD Worx-Protime) might have one of the best poker faces in the sport but she seemed to be riding well within herself on Wednesday. The final climb was very punchy and she was there with apparent ease, despite the longer climbs being her forte in the early part of her career. She descended brilliantly too, chasing down Kasia Niewidoma (Canyon//SRAM-zondacrypto) before a very accomplished sprint. We may be starting to see the best of the former world champion.

Niewiadoma was slightly unimpressed after finishing fourth yesterday and will be looking forward to today’s stage and the longer climbs, both today and the rest of the week. She has been incredibly proactive so far this week, and there are no split loyalties in the team which is built entirely around her. The descent might not be wild enough to get the best out of her but it’ll be a surprise if she finishes lower than she did on Wednesday.

It might be a predictable pick, we could have gone for Le Court’s team mate Sarah Gigante, or the even more dangerous Pauline Ferrand-Prévot (Visma | Lease a Bike) but Demi Vollering is very good for this one. She seems to have shaken off the effects of her stage three crash and while her punchy attack on the steepest slopes of yesterdays final climb didn’t distance her rivals, the route was hardly difficult enough.