Demi Vollering raced clear to win stage eight of the Tour de France Femmes and snatch the leader’s yellow jersey with just one stage remaining.
The race lead has changed hands for the second day running, with Katarzyna Niewiadoma-Phinney having won on Mont Ventoux to replace Marlen Reusser at the top of the general classification.
That gave the Polish Canyon-SRAM rider a 15-second lead over Vollering heading into Saturday’s penultimate stage, a mostly flat 171.9km ride from Sisteron to Nice.
It was the longest stage of this year’s race and looked set to suit the sprinters, but they were dropped on the Cote de la Ginestiere – the final climb of the day – about 8km from the finish.
Dutch FDJ-Suez rider Vollering then attacked in a bid to drop Niewiadoma-Phinney and Elisa Longo Borghini, and went clear right before she crested the final climb, with 6km to the finish.
That allowed the 29-year-old to immediately stretch her lead on the descent and open up a gap that was too much for Niewiadoma-Phinney or Longo Borghini to bridge.
Vollering held on to claim her second win of this year’s race and set up what promises to be a thrilling finale on Sunday.
The chase duo crossed the line 17 seconds after Vollering which, with time bonuses, means the 2023 Tour winner carries an eight-second lead over 2024 champion Niewiadoma-Phinney into the last stage.
Reusser is 72 seconds adrift in third heading into the 99.2km mountain stage that begins and ends in Nice.
“In a stage race, you live day by day, so you can be disappointed overnight but the next morning you have to put on a new mask and go again,” said Vollering.
“The funny thing was that this morning I had a kind of deja vu [to earlier this year]. I saw that I would take yellow here but it didn’t make sense [at the time].
“I reminded myself during the race that I can do it and I had to dig so deep, to go through so much pain, but somehow we made it happen.
“Tomorrow is going to be super hard, anything can happen on the last day, but at least I start in yellow.”
Defending champion Pauline Ferrand-Prevot, who finished more than 10 minutes behind Niewiadoma-Phinney on stage seven, pulled out of the race on Saturday morning through illness.
Puck Pieterse is set to claim the polka-dot jersey as leader of the mountains classification, while sprinter Lorena Wiebes has a commanding advantage in the points classification.
