Lorena Wiebes doubles up in sprint at Tour de France Femmes

Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx-Protime) took yet another Tour de France Femmes stage win on stage four on Tuesday. In what was a chaotic final, the SD Worx-Protime rider appeared to be swamped, with other teams coming over the top. However Wiebes found her way through to take her fifth career Tour stage win.

Marianne Vos (Visma | Lease a Bike) ran her compatriot close, though, finishing second for the second day running, but was much closer than on stage three. Lara Gillespie (UAE Team ADQ) finished third.

Vos retains and extends her overall lead, with bonus seconds adding to her advantage. She now leads Wiebes in second and Kim Le Court (AG Insurance-Soudal) in third, the pair tied, 12 seconds behind. With the stage win and points from the earlier intermediate sprint, Wiebes now has a convincing lead over Vos in the points classification.

SD Worx-Protime had shared the work to bring the day’s breakaway back with other teams in the peloton, but began to take control in the final 15km, using their whole squad to line the bunch out on the run into Poitiers. A two-woman breakaway put up stiff resistance, but was brought back with 4km to go.

Inside the last 2km Anna van der Breggen did a huge turn for Wiebes, but she was unable to hold on, and with no other team mates to take over Wiebes was blocked. When Chloé Dygert (Canyon//SRAM-zondacrypot) opened her sprint, however, a gap opened for Wiebes, and the Dutchwoman took full advantage.

On paper at least, stage 5 appeared to be another one for the sprinters, the 130.7km stage between Saumur and Poitiers having the least amount of climbing of any of the nine in this year’s Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift. 

With an intermediate sprint in Soudun 45.5km from the line followed by the fourth category Côte de Marigny 16km later, it would be down to the wind to prevent a fairly straightforward stage. The opening kilometres of the race would be ridden with a tailwind, but a 90º turn south after 45km would see the peloton in crosswinds, and while the forecast was for light winds, it wouldn’t take much of an increase to prompt some gutter action.

Sure enough it was another frantic start, the peloton flying along at well over 49kph as it flew along the banks of first the Loire then the Vienne rivers until finally, with more than 20km ridden, Franziska Koch (Picnic-PostNL) got a small gap. The German champion was not out front for too long though, a chasing rider dragging the bunch with her, the race coming back together, the pace lifting once again.

Shortly afterwards, Maud Rijnbeek (VolkerWessels) was on the attack, the third stage in four days she’d been away, though she too struggled to build any kind of gap as once again the average speed topped the 49kph mark.

However, the fight for the break was keenly fought, with a number of riders setting off in ones and twos in pursuit of the Dutch woman. Eventually, with 50km of the race done Rijnbeek was joined by Koch and Ana Vitória Magalhães (Movistar), though they were held on a tight leash.

With their lead at only 1:45, in the kilometres after the race passed through Richelieu, the crosswinds hit and once again the pace lifted. The peloton did split here, though it soon came back together, the only change in the race being that Rijnbeek had been dropped from the breakaway, the two leaders resuming their place 1.45 up the road.

That gap dropped once again on the approach to the intermediate sprint, where Wiebes extended her lead over Vos in the points classification. Over the day’s classified climb the gap was under one minute and with 10km to go they were in touching distance, a bunch kick on the cards as it had been all day.