The headline story from day two of the Tour de France Femmes was of course Marianne Vos (Jumbo-Visma) taking the yellow jersey. The sight of her wearing the iconic garment on the podium was one that has been many years in the making; as the greatest the sport has ever seen, it wouldn’t have quite felt right if she’d have retired without ever getting to wear yellow at a proper Tour de France; and as such a great ambassador for the sport who did so much to bring this race into being, it was only fitting that she should play a starring role in it.
However, amid the romance of Vos’ achievement, we shouldn’t lose sight of just how significant a stage this could be in terms of the long-term fate of the yellow jersey.
Vos is not expected to take the yellow jersey all the way to the finish at La Super Planche des Belles Filles next weekend. She no longer has the climbing legs she once did, and does not target the overall classification at stage races any more. Although she’ll fancy her chances of defending in the mixture of rolling, flat and gravel stages in the coming days, the two big mountain stages in the Voges on Saturday and Sunday will surely be where the pure climbers take over.
But the other riders who accompanied her in the six-woman group that went clear from the peloton 20km from the finish all had the long term GC in mind — in particular the Trek-Segafredo pair of Elisa Longo Borghini and Elisa Balsamo, who executed what appeared to be a premeditated plan to perfection.
Twenty kilometres from the finish, just after the day’s intermediate sprint, Balsamo launched herself out of the peloton, with her GC leader Borghini on her wheel. Rather than contest for the sprint and advance her own position in the points classification, the Italian instead invested her energy in propelling her leader up the road in an apparent attempt to catch Borghini’s GC rivals off guard and gain some time.
Ultimately, the move worked exceptionally. Working well with fellow escapees Vos, Silvia Persico (Valcar Travel & Service), Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon-SRAM) and Maike van der Duin (Le Col-Wahoo), and following some huge self-sacrificial turns from Balsamo (he might have been expected to contest for the stage win in the sprint), Borghini ultimately gained half a minute over the rest of her GC rivals.
Crucially, among those GC rivals to lose 30 seconds was Annemiek van Vleuten (Movistar). Given her dominance in recent years, and in light of her…