Kasia Niewiadoma’s nail-biting success in the 2024 Tour de France Femmes on Sunday was long-awaited, wholly deserved and came after countless near-misses in other major races.
The Polish rider’s thrilling victory, late on an Alpine afternoon as a chilly sunset enveloped Alpe d’Huez, came at the expense of a crestfallen Demi Vollering, the defending champion, who lost her title by just four seconds.
It was the narrowest margin of victory in the history of Grand Tour racing and came during a season in which men’s racing has been monopolised by one dominant rider, Tadej Pogacar, while the women’s Vuelta, Giro, and Tour, have been won by three different riders, and all by narrow margins.
A few years ago, before the Tour Femmes was reborn, such was the cynicism that few – other than the riders themselves – would have believed that the women’s peloton could produce such gripping mountaintop drama.
Now the Tour Femmes must build further on the enthralling spectacle that Canyon-Sram leader, Niewiadoma, and her SD Worx Protime rival, Vollering, provided alongside the rest of the peloton.
While Pogacar wins by huge margins, in the Vuelta Feminina, Vollering won by just 1:49, while at the women’s Giro d’Italia, Elisa Longo Borghini, of Lidl-Trek, beat Lotte Kopecky, Vollering’s stablemate, by only 21 seconds.
Then came Sunday’s high-altitude drama, in which the fate of the yellow jersey remained uncertain until the very last moments of racing.
“Alpe d’Huez was a proper showcase of our best climbers and GC riders,” Longo Borghini’s British team-mate, Lizzie Deignan, said. “It was an absolutely brutal finale to the race.”
The 27-year-old Vollering described her feelings as “sour” after the finish which, given the paucity of the team support she received, was unsurprising. The focal point for that bitterness was the crash shortly before the stage finish in Amneville, a fall that cost her the yellow jersey.
Vollering never fully recovered and was all too often abandoned to her fate by her team. Instead of staying alongside her, her team-mates rode on, pursuing their own ambitions, or lagged behind, struggling to catch up. Too often, that left the clearly injured defending champion in no woman’s land.
“[To think] because of the crash,” she said, “I didn’t win the yellow jersey is very sad, but it’s part of cycling. It’s sad that that makes the difference here.”
For Niewiadoma, winner of the women’s Tour of Britain in 2019, it was a monumental breakthrough, even if she admitted that on the seemingly never-ending climb of Alpe d’Huez, she had come close to throwing in the towel.
“I lost the faith that I could still do it,” she said on Sunday night. “I’ve gone through such a terrible time on this climb.”
For the development of the race itself, the dramatic denouement that led to Niewiadoma’s four-second win, will build its global reputation, even if there are still issues to be resolved.
The crowds on the Alpe, a climb known for boisterous behaviour, were worryingly small and subdued. The live TV coverage of each stage was minimal, the transfers between stages too long and the inclusion of a split stage in Holland – a stage and time trial on the same day – was unnecessary.
Then there’s the money.
The total prize pot for the men’s Tour is 2.4 million euros, and Pogacar himself took home 500,000 euros. In the women’s race, the total is just under 247,000 euros and Niewiadoma pocketed only 50,000 euros.
Of the 153 starters, 110 made it to the finish line on the Alpe, but what shone through was the camaraderie of the riders, many of whom crossed the line in tears, hugging their rivals in exhaustion, although Canada’s Alison Jackon bucked that trend by arriving at the Alpe eating a burger.
“This race has captured the public’s attention,” Deignan said. “I really hope that the Tour continues to grow, whether that’s the length of the race, having each stage being broadcast from start to finish, or simply seeing more fans every year. I think we have more than proved that we are deserving of that.”
Niewiadoma was more direct. “We all wrote history this week,” she said of what the peloton had been through. “And we can be proud of that.” – Guardian
