Marianne Vos has conceded that she is unlikely to win the Tour de France Femmes, despite reaching the midway point of the week-long race with her overall lead intact.
“You have to be realistic with the climbs coming this weekend,” Vos said of the race’s finale in the Vosges mountains. “Normally, the GC riders will be very strong and take a lot of time, so it’s a different kind of racing at the weekend. I’m very happy to wear the yellow jersey now.”
As Jumbo-Visma’s Vos retained the yellow jersey, the Olympic silver medallist Marlen Reusser of Team SD Worx won stage four after attacking alone with 20km to race, as the leading group exited the final gravel section of a chaotic stage from Troyes to Bar-sur-Aube.
The 30-year-old, now recovered from a bout of Covid, moved to the front on the Cote de Vitry climb, shortly before the final section of white road, the Chemin de Vitry, the last of four gruelling gravel tracks through the sloping vineyards. Although the Swiss was pursued by three riders – Evita Muzic, Veronica Ewers and Alena Amialiusik – over the final climbs, the Cote des Burgers and the Cote du Val Perdu, she retained her lead and rode into Bar-sur-Aube with an advantage of well over a minute.
“The goal was to make a hard race,” Reusser said. “When we entered the first gravel sections, we weren’t always that well-positioned but slowly but surely, we rode from the front and created the situation we wanted.
“We have our GC leaders, we always keep them in front and see they are there, but this team has an aggressive or open race strategy, so everybody in the team is allowed to do something, or to win a stage if possible. In this Tour every day is hard, at least for me, and I think this stage suits the kind of rider I am, with these gravel sections.”
While Vos survived and even excelled on the dirt sections, the stage three winner Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig was forced to change bikes on the 4.4km steady climb of the Chemin du Plateau de Blu.
The most battered and bruised of the overall contenders was UAE Team’s Mavi García who endured no less than three technical problems and then suffered the indignity of being knocked off her bike by her own team car.
Thursday’s stage, of 175.6km from Bar-le-Duc to Saint-Die-des-Vosges is the longest in the 2022 Tour de France Femmes and also exceeds the world governing body’s (UCI) maximum distance for women’s racing of 160km.
“It’s a very long stage,” Vos acknowledged, “but I don’t think it will make much of a difference because of the length. All the girls that are here are very well trained and on the highest level. After some days of racing, it will get in the legs and maybe in the final it will make a difference. It’s a long stage and a lot of things can happen.”
