2024 Tour de France Femmes

On August 18, 2024 the Tour de France Femmes ended again. This time instead of directly following the men's tour - it occurred after the Olympics. The winners this year of the respective jerseys were:

• Kasia Niewiadoma - Yellow (General Classification)
• Marianne Vos - Green (Points)
• Justine Ghekiere - Poka Dots (Mountains)
• Puck Pieterse - White (Youngest "GC")

For those following along last year, Demi Vollering, who I expected to win came in 2nd place by only 4 seconds. So lets recap the stages.

Stage 1 had an explosive ending with Demi Vollering leading out a presumed teammate for a sprint finish, but Charlotte Kool sped on by out-sprinting everyone for a victory by many bike lengths. This seemed odd to me as the winner of the last year's tour was leading out the sprinter(s) on her own team. I couldn't tell at this point if Vollering's team was going to target both the yellow and green jerseys, since it seemed odd that your presumed GC contender was doing a lead out train.

Stage 2 was short (70~ km) compared to the other days so I was confused on what was occurring and then I realized the time trial was later that day. So both stage 2 & 3 were on the same day (August 13). When Stage 2 ended we had another victory from Charlotte Kool which solidified she was a solid sprinter winning 2 stages in a row.

Stage 3 was a time trial and it came down to just 5 seconds between 1st, 2nd and 3rd. Demi Vollering re-asserted dominance as last years winner and won the best time of the time trial at 7 minutes and 25 seconds. Having a time trial on the 2nd half of the day was such an interesting twist, because I wondered if the riders were taking the 1st stage of the day differently depending on how they wanted to preform on the 2nd stage of the day.

Stage 4 ended with Vollering, Niewiadoma and the new young rider Pieterse all fighting for the stage win. In what surprised me - Pieterse won by a tiny bit of the bike length stopping Vollering from winning back to back stages. This stage set the stage for what I believed would be the two competing yellow jerseys - Vollering & Niewiadoma.

Stage 5 is why the Tour de France is so crazy - a crash occurred that took down the yellow jersey. Her teammate tore off from the crash and left the yellow jersey behind. My mind was blown - teammates normally support their yellow, but in this case it did not look like it was.

The front of the race had Niewiadoma, Vas and Lippert racing for 1st place and Vas took the stage win which made the yellow jersey crash so much more interesting. SD Worx (Protime) won the stage, but their yellow jersey (Vollering) was lost to Niewiadoma. We then had to watch the bruised and bleeding yellow jersey ride solo the best she could as she lost time.

Stage 6 had an attack come from Kerbaol with nearly 15km left and she held on to win the stage. Not to mention a French rider winning a French race is always a celebration. For the yellow jersey we saw Niewiadoma keep an eye on Vollering as she knew she just couldn't give up seconds on a hilly stage. The top 3 changed a bit with Kerbaol jumping to 2nd with her performance only 16 seconds behind Niewiadoma. However, 2 stages of mountain racing remained which would surely shake up the rankings.

Stage 7 was the 2nd to last stage and it was a mountain stage which changed up the placements all around. Ghekiere took the stage and solidified a good chance she'd take home the mountain jersey. What was interesting on this finish was Vollering placing ahead of the yellow jersey (Niewiadoma) by just enough to steal the bonus seconds. It was only 4 seconds stolen, but that decreased the lead to 1min 15s from Vollering - it would all come down to the final stage.

The final stage ended in crazy fashion with attacks on attacks. On the 2nd to last mountain climb - Vollering took off and started distancing the yellow jersey (Niewiadoma) and started putting time on her. She had a minute 15s to make up, but knowing the bonus seconds of 10 for winning meant she only had to put 1 minute and 5 seconds between her and the leader.

The clock on the screen jumped between 47s and 1min 15s so it was a constant battle back n forth between Niewiadoma trying to catch Vollering and Vollering trying to strengthen the gap between them. As the final kilometers approached all riders looked like they were hitting their absolute max of physical abilities with extreme pain visible on their face. Vollering finished first with an accelerated sprint finish and collapsed at the finish line to see what the next minute would hold.

She won the stage so got the bonus 10 second subtraction - so Niewiadoma had to finish the race within 1 minute and 5 seconds. The camera crews showed her hitting +40 seconds with the final curve/stretch to go so it was going to be very close. Niewiadoma was racing alongside Muzic which made this further interesting because there was still 4 bonus seconds up for grabs for 3rd place.

Niewiadoma and Muzic sprinted for the line as the clock hit 1 minute, then 1 minute 1 second and Niewiadoma got 4th on the day. Without the bonus seconds awarded the winner's announcement was delayed as all math was checked. Sure enough Niewiadoma kept the yellow jersey and won the Tour de France Femmes.

As the dust settled and tour ended I still kept wondering what happened to Vollering's team and what really went down on stage 5, but I'm happy to see Niewiadoma win the tour.