Eight seconds on the start line
Stage 9 was built for a duel and got one: 99.2 km around Nice with the Col d’Èze climbed four times, the final passage at 7.6%, and the two best riders of this Tour separated by eight seconds after eight days of trading blows — the Ventoux to Niewiadoma-Phinney, Nice to Vollering, and a finish-line argument still hanging in the air. Dominika Włodarczyk and Maeva Squiban tried the first ascent, Canyon//SRAM chased, and Zoe Bäckstedt’s pacing on lap two cut the race to twenty riders. It also cut loose someone important: Marlen Reusser lost contact, then crashed on the descent — and with her went the third step of the podium she’d defended all week.
Sixteen kilometres of verdict
The last Col d’Èze delivered the fight everyone came for. Antonia Niedermaier paced, Niewiadoma-Phinney attacked 19 km from home — and this time Vollering answered as if it were a training ride. Then, 16 km out, came the counter: one decisive acceleration, a gap that never stopped growing, and a descent to the Promenade des Anglais ridden entirely alone. Vollering won the stage by 1:04 over the 20-year-old Paula Blasi and Niewiadoma-Phinney, turning an eight-second overnight lead into a final margin of 1:18. On the closest final day in the race’s modern history, she won the stage, the duel and the Tour in a single move.
The first double
The record books get a new line: Demi Vollering is the first rider to win the Tour de France Femmes twice, adding 2026 to her 2023 title after two years of finishing second. The final classification: Vollering; Niewiadoma-Phinney at 1:18; Elisa Longo Borghini at 4:29, with Niedermaier fourth at 5:10 — the white jersey hers — and Blasi fifth. Lorena Wiebes takes the green jersey with 181 points and Puck Pieterse the polka dots. Afterwards, Vollering reached for yesterday’s controversy and turned it into fuel: “I thought about my team, about Célia Géry…” — the 18-year-old teammate caught in the finish-line storm on Saturday. The full interview:
The other side of eight seconds
Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney leaves Nice with a Ventoux stage win, three days in yellow, and the particular ache of a Tour that was hers for 48 hours. Second by 1:18, beaten on the road twice in two days by the same rival, she spoke afterwards with the honesty the sport loves her for:
In the grupetto
Nine stages, 1,174 km, and the grupetto’s quiet heroes made it to the Promenade: the sprinters who hauled themselves over the Ventoux for one more chance that never came, the domestiques who buried themselves on climbs their leaders got the credit for, and Marlen Reusser — who wore yellow for four days, cracked on the Giant, and ended her Tour on the asphalt of a descent with the podium still on her back. The autobus doffs its cap. Every jersey in Nice was carried part of the way by someone who finished half an hour behind it.
Moral of the story
Vollering lost this Tour on a Friday, won it back on a Saturday, and sealed it on a Sunday — answering the attack she couldn’t follow on the Ventoux as if gravity had changed sides overnight. The grupetto’s moral: a rivalry doesn’t crown the rider who lands the first blow; it crowns the one still swinging on the last day. Eight seconds became seventy-eight, second place became a double, and the Tour de France Femmes got the finale its first week promised. Chapeau, Demi. See you at the Vuelta.
