Saturday, August 17, 2024 at 4:23 PM
Demi Vollering draws confidence from her performance towards Le Grand-Bornand. On the final climb she tried to break away three times, but only succeeded on the last attempt. Despite the fact that yellow jersey wearer Katarzyna Niewiadoma was able to keep up with her, the Dutch rider managed to snatch the last bonus seconds from under her nose. “My body was good today, I’m happy with that,” she said afterwards to the NOS.
As the leader of SD Worx-ProTime expected, the first real mountain stage of this Tour de France Femmes 2024 was not tough enough to make a big difference. “My feeling was okay. It was a long, tough day. The final climb was, as I thought, not tough and steep enough. If you then take the lead, everyone in your wheel benefits from those efforts. So I didn’t do that.”
Vollering therefore wanted to get into the head of leader Niewiadoma in this stage. “My goal was to make Kasia nervous. I succeeded, because she was constantly looking back. I suspect she was afraid that I would attack. Seeing that gave me a good feeling. It is nice that I managed to create a small gap at the end. Hopefully the climbing on Sunday will be enough for me to make the difference.”
Then the final stage of this Tour de France for women heads to the Dutch mountain, Alpe d’Huez. “My body was good today, I’m happy with that. Nobody really feels at their best anymore, at the end of the Tour. Now I have to make sure I recover well and quickly. Whether it works out on Sunday or not, we’ll see afterwards. I can get really worked up about that, but that only causes me a lot of stress. I just hope to do my thing. It remains exciting!”
Vollering is currently eighth in the rankings, one minute and fifteen seconds behind leader Niewiadoma. Puck Pieterse, Thalita de Jong, Shirin van Anrooij and Pauliena Rooijakkers are among those still in between the two contenders. Stage winner Justine Ghekiere has also just entered the top 10. She is one minute and 27 seconds behind the Polish rider from Canyon//SRAM.