Demi Vollering showed her prowess on the final stage of the Tour de France Femmes to become the race’s first two-time winner.
The Dutch FDJ-Suez rider won the penultimate stage to snatch the leader’s yellow jersey from Katarzyna Niewiadoma-Phinney and carry an eight-second lead into Sunday’s finale.
The fifth edition of the race culminated with a 99.2km mountain stage, beginning and ending in Nice, which featured four ascents of the Col d’Eze and totalled 2,100m of climbing.
Niewiadoma-Phinney’s British team-mate Zoe Backstedt pushed the pace in the early stages before former race leader Marlen Reusser crashed on the second descent of the Col d’Eze.
Reusser was third in general classification, 72 seconds behind Vollering, and although the Swiss rider could finish, she was unable to get back in contention.
That left previous race winners Vollering and Niewiadoma-Phinney to battle it out and, just as Vollering did on Saturday, she pulled clear of her Polish Canyon-SRAM rival just before cresting the final climb and stretched her lead on the descent.
The 29-year-old went on to finish more than a minute ahead of her rivals as she claimed her third stage win from nine in this year’s race.
“I’ve never won wearing the yellow jersey before,” said Vollering. “It’s not only the dream to win in yellow here, to win a second Tour de France, but it’s the dream to live this life, to work hard together with people with a lot of passion. I think that’s the whole dream. It’s incredible.”
Niewiadoma-Phinney felt Vollering’s team-mate Celia Gery delibrately blocked her during stage eight, so Vollering wanted to prove a point with Sunday’s emphatic victory.
“I went alone because I wanted to make it clear that we didn’t win because of an incident yesterday,” she added.
“That’s not what I believe, and I wanted to make it clear that we, as a team, deserve to win a beautiful Tour de France Femmes, with humility and pride.”
Vollering and Niewiadoma-Phinney, 31, kept up their record of being on the podium in every edition of the race, while Italy’s Elisa Longo Borghini, 34, claimed her first top-three finish.
