She made history on Sunday by winning the first stage of the Tour de France Femmes on the Champs Elysees, and on Thursday Lorena Wiebes (Team DSM) won a reduced bunch sprint wearing the green points jersey. Marianne Vos kept the yellow jersey. Magdeleine Vallieres was the top Canadian despite getting caught up in a huge crash.
You can watch the inaugural Tour de France Femmes at FloBikes.
The Course
The longest stage of the first Tour de France Femmes traveled 175.6 km from Bar-le-Duc to Saint-Dié-des-Vosges, an undulating route with two early classified climbs and a bonus sprint atop an uncategorized climb with 18 km remaining.
🚲 Stage 5 / Étape 5 🚲
📏 175,6 km
⏰ 11:45 CEST > 16:12 CEST
⛰ 2x 4⃣c
💚 km 114,1
🅱️ km 155,2#TDFF #WatchTheFemmes pic.twitter.com/2MZWhIyPEs— Le Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift (@LeTourFemmes) July 28, 2022
First an English-speaking duo sprang free, eventually joined by a French rider and Cypriot. By the midpoint of the day this quartet was 3:00 ahead.
🏁 80 km
⏱ The gap between the breakaway and the peloton is now under 3 minutes.
⏱ Les 4 coureuses de tête ont moins de 3 minutes d’avance désormais.#TDFF #WatchTheFemmes pic.twitter.com/Xj1K6q1PoC
— Le Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift (@LeTourFemmes) July 28, 2022
With the categorized climbs in the rear view mirror, DSM, Valcar-Travel Service and Trek-Segafredo led the peloton.
An enormous pile-up in the peloton delayed the catch. Canadian Magdeleine Vallieres was among the dozens who went down. Emma Norsgaard had to abandon and 2017 world champion Chantal van den Broeck-Blaak wore a towel around her bleeding right elbow before the medical car arrived.
It took many kilometres for the delayed riders to make it back to the field and for riders to receive medical attention.
On the Côte du Haut du Bois bonus climb the breakaway split in two. Simone Boilard’s orange-clad St Michel-Auber93 squad tried to chip away at Victoire Berteau and Antri Christoforou’s gap. After a long standoff, the duo was yanked closer. It was all over with 2.3 km to go.
The lead outs formed. Trek’s Ellen van Dijk grabbed the reins. Elisa Longo Borghini took a wrong turn!
Despite starting her sprint from a long way out, there was no stopping Wiebes, who made it three out of five stages for Dutch riders.
Friday route is another rippling one.
2022 Tour…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at Canadian Cycling Magazine…