That’s all from me today after another exciting stage at the Tour de France Femmes.
Thanks for reading and emailing in, and we’ll be back for more tomorrow for a rolling stage before the race hits the more intimidating climbs on Saturday and Sunday ...
Updated
Jeremy Whittle reports from Saint-Dié-des-Vosges:
Top five GC after stage five:
1) Vos 16hr 20mins 58secs
2) Persico +20secs
3) Niewiadoma +20secs
4) Longo Borghini +34secs
5) Moolman-Pasio +55secs
So, Vos stretched her lead in GC with four bonus seconds on the line. Longo Borghini lost nine seconds by taking that wrong turn.
Updated
Wiebes speaks: “I’m really happy especially because Franzy [Franziska Koch] did such a strong effort with controlling the race from the beginning... when the four went away, Franzy took [drove] the pace of the peloton ... she did an amazing effort, so I’m happy to finish it off.
“I don’t like to say I’m the best sprinter in the world, but if you’re saying it ... I felt today again strong in the sprint, I’m happy to deliver it after a long stage.
“It’s still a goal to get the green jersey and also to keep the GC with Juliette [Labous], she’s also riding really strong. Today was really a team effort and that’s the most important.”
Updated
The final 20seconds of the stage, via Eurosport Denmark on Twitter:
Lorena Wiebes vinder overlegent 5. etape af Tour de France Femmes og sikrer sin anden etapesejr! 💪🥇
— Eurosport Danmark (@Eurosportdk) July 28, 2022
Se Tour de France Femmes på discovery+! pic.twitter.com/9cCq8sMC00
Stage five: provisional result
1) Wiebes 4hr 32min 16sec
2) Balsamo +0sec
3) Vos +0sec
4) Barbieri +0sec
5) Van der Duin +0sec
6) Confaloneri +0sec
7) Persico +0sec
8) Guazzini +0sec
9 Dronova +0sec
10) Manly +0sec
Elisa Longo Borghini launched an early assault for the finish line (or rather, perhaps, she was trying to lead out her teammate Balsamo) but unfortunately she took a wrong turning at the final chicane, heading left instead of right. It looked like Vos very nearly followed her, but realised just in time that her rival had gone the wrong way.
Wiebes launched her own sprint early, stamping on the pedals from a long way out and showing her rivals a clean pair of cleats. Balsamo (Trek Segafredo) was third, Marianne Vos third.
Updated
Lorena Wiebes (Team DSM) wins stage five!
Too much power and pace from Wiebes! She takes her second stage win of the race with another fearsome sprint!
Updated
1.5km to go: There is a big right-hander as the road kicks up. A couple of riders come down ... and a small select group forms at the front.
3km to go: Audrey Cordon-Ragot (Trek–Segafredo) has put in a massive turn to reel in the leaders ... and that’s it. The catch is made with 3km to go ... but Berteau, ever the fighter, has one last try to stay away! What spirit. She finally admits defeat with 2.5km to go ...
Updated
4km to go: Balsamo, Wiebes and Vos are all right up there at the front of the peloton and will all be eyeing the stage win. The gap is down to 11secs.
Updated
5km to go: The gap is down to 20secs ... the smart money must be on the chasing peloton now.
6km to go: Jumbo-Visma visibly up the effort levels at the front of the peloton. Vos is lurking three of four wheels back.
Up front, Berteau comes through to do yet another turn.
7km to go: Tour Field Art!
#TourFieldArt #TDFF pic.twitter.com/OzSrDNvIo9
— Luke McLaughlin (@LukeMcLaughlin) July 28, 2022
The gap is out to 40secs! The two escapees have a real chance here!
9.5km to go: Jumbo-Visma, FDJ and Liv Racing Xstra are among the teams toiling on the front to close this down. You’d have to think that without that big crash earlier, the break would have been mopped up by now, but as it stands the two riders up front have a chance of taking this all the way to the finish ...
10km to go: Berteau and Christoforou continue to battle away at the front. The gap is 36secs. Berteau, meanwhile, has been awarded the most aggressive rider prize for today, so she’ll be in the red bib numbers tomorrow.
17km to go: With four hours of racing on the clock, the gap is 39secs.
Berteau and Christoforou are together up front.
Updated
20km to go: Berteau, who won both the QOMs, now takes five bonus seconds on the Côte du Haut du Bois.
20.5km to go: The escape group has split into two: Victoire Berteau (Cofidis) and Antri Christoforou (Human Powered Health) are now out front on their own.
Updated
22km to go: Marta Lach (Ceratizit–WNT Pro Cycling) is pictured riding along with a big graze on her left arm and torn kit. She is far from alone in the peloton in nursing a few bumps and bruises following that big crash.
Jumbo-Visma are now more prominent at the front, massed around the yellow jersey Marianne Vos. The gap between break and peloton plunges to 29secs – clearly the peloton is trying to bring this back so the GC riders can fight for the bonus seconds ...
24km to go: The four riders up front are co-operating excellently, and the gap is holding at one minute. Trek-Segafredo and Le Col-Wahoo are both doing plenty of work at the front of the bunch as they try to close this down.
Updated
28km to go: And now the gap yo-yos back down once again to under a minute.
30km to go: Is there a chance for the break? Their advantage has gone out to 1min 18 sec, and there are some sore bodies in the chasing peloton following that huge crash. The Côte du Haut du Bois is nearly upon us. Or rather, them.
(Just a reminder, it’s not a categorised climb but there are bonus seconds available.)
Updated
35km to go: Kopecky has managed to chase back on to the peloton, along with the other riders in that group. The break’s advantage has now dropped to 1min.
36km to go: Bonus seconds will be available on the Côte du Haut du Bois, coming up in another 16km or so.
39km to go: Barbara Malcotti (Human Powered Health) has been disqualified for ‘irregular repairs’.
Norsgaard has indeed abandoned the race, and has been taken away in an ambulance. Slappendel reports she was in a neck brace, which hopefully is just a precautionary measure. All the best to Emma Norsgaard for a speedy recovery.
Barbara Malcotti has been disqualified for "irregular repairs". Not sure quite what that means. #TDFF
— Sadhbh O'Shea (@SadhbhOS) July 28, 2022
41km to go: The escape group’s advantage is 1min 42secs. Three minutes behind them, a group containing Lotte Kopecky (SD Worx) is battling to get back on.
44km to go: It looks like Emma Norsgaard (Movistar Team) may have broken something, and is going to have to abandon the race. She is holding her left shoulder and is being attended to by medics.
Updated
45km to go: Oh no – a huge pile-up in the peloton. Seemingly countless bodies and carbon bikes are massed in the road after someone came down in the middle of the bunch. Most of them are already up and racing again.
Updated
“I’ll celebrate and continue to push for change, but there’s a long way to go.”
Suze Clemitson speaks to the former pro rider Kathryn Bertine on the long (and ongoing) road to equality for women’s cycling:
Updated
51km to go: Slowly but surely the gap is falling. It’s down to 1min 48secs now. The breakaway is powering on and they are working together, but there is only so much they can do in the face of the upping of effort in the peloton behind them.
Vos has said she expects to lose the yellow jersey in the mountains, but she and Jumbo-Visma have every chance of another stage win today. Tomorrow’s stage is undulating before the two proper mountain stages on Saturday and Sunday.
Updated
55km to go: Still 2mins 13secs for the break.
56km to go: So Wiebes managed to grab two points more than Vos at that sprint, but Vos still enjoys a healthy 56-point lead at the top of the sprint classification.
57km to go: The top 10 at the sprint in Charmes:
1) Louw 25pts
2) Berteau 20pts
3) Newsom 17pts
4) Christoforou 15pts
5) Wiebes 13pts
6) Vos 11 pts
7) Kopecky 10pts
8) Confaloneri 9pts
9) Georgi 8pts
10) Bujak 7pts
60km to go: At the sprint point in Charmes, Louw sprints away from her fellow escapees to take maximum points, with Berteau second.
Wiebes beats Vos in a sprint for fifth place – although after an initial burst of pace, it looked like Vos was happy enough for her rival to take it.
61km to go: A clip of the breakaway riding through the QOM point a few minutes ago:
⛰ Côte de Gripport (Cat. 4⃣) ⛰
— Maillot à Pois E.Leclerc (@maillotapois) July 28, 2022
1⃣. @velopipoire, 2pts
2⃣. @AndriaChristor, 1pt#TDFF ⚪️🔴 pic.twitter.com/3u26USAMps
63km to go: The top five in the points classification as it stood before today’s stage:
1) Vos 186pts
2) Wiebes 128pts
3) Kopecky 128pts
4) Persico 72pts
5) Confalonieri 63pts
66km to go: Understandably, the power seems to be fading a little from the front four after all the work they have put in: the gap has shrunk to 2min 29secs. They are under five kilometres from the intermediate sprint point at Charmes, however, so they are sure to mop up the lion’s share of the points there.
Updated
70km to go: Berteau leads the breakaway through the QOM point at the Côte de Gripport. Christoforou is second. That was the same order as the first QOM of the day, at Côte de Pagny-la-Blanche-Côte. Berteau now has four QOM points in total, level with Reusser and Chabbey, but behind Gerritse (8pts), Demay (5pts) and Asencio (5pts).
72km to go: Just a reminder that the four breakaway riders are:
Emily Newsom (EF Education-Tibco-SVB)
Anya Louw (AG Insurance-NXTG)
Victoire Berteau (Cofidis)
Antri Christoforou (Human Powered Health)
Berteau does a big turn at the front, then drops back to the back of the group for a breather and something to eat. Of the four riders out front, she is the highest-placed in GC in 77th. But she is 19mins and 27secs down overall, and therefore not any kind of worry for any of the GC teams.
Updated
74km to go: The top five in the GC before today was as follows:
1) Vos 11hr 48min 46secs
2) Persico +16secs
3) Niewiadoma +16secs
4) Longo Borghini +21secs
5) Moolman-Pasio +51secs
Updated
Live pictures kick in with 80km to go. The break has 2min 58secs. It looks like the riders back in the bunch have been instructed to ensure this gap doesn’t balloon into something unmanageable, and the pace is pretty hot.
Updated
The peerless Marianne Vos.
Updated
The gap between break and peloton has been reduced to 3’05” by an acceleration in the bunch.
Don’t forget, you can email me or tweet @LukeMcLaughlin with any thoughts on the race.
Iris Slappendel, on the famed Eurosport motorbike, brings us up to speed: “We had a really furious start until the break established. We have a break of four, they’re really nicely working together ... it kind of calmed down. It’s a really nice day, a rolling course, a lot of head and left-side wind but not too hard ... but also no Dutchie in the breakaway, so that’s a bit disappointing for me ... Every day there are more and more people at the start, I couldn’t believe how many fans were there this morning, so that’s really cool.”
ICYMI, as we say on the internet, here is yesterday’s stage report:
The next significant milestone on today’s route is the category-four climb, the Côte de Gripport. The breakaway is now a smidgen under 20km from the summit of that climb, which is 1.3km in length with an average gradient of 5.3%.
Soon after that, there’s an intermediate sprint at Charmes, with 61.6km remaining on the route, and then there is a bonus point at Côte du Haut du Bois with 20.4km to go.
No live pictures from Eurosport yet ...
Updated
Preamble
Yesterday’s stage four prompted a renewal of the debate on whether gravel sections (or cobbles) have any place in multi-stage road races. Regardless of the finer points of that discussion, Marlen Reusser emerged from the peloton to win the stage solo, before the Tour de France Femmes riders began to size up the longest stage of this year’s race – today’s 175.6km trip from from Bar-le-Duc to Saint-Die-des-Vosges.
We join today’s marathon stage a couple of hours in – Emily Newsom (EF Education-Tibco-SVB) and Anya Louw (AG Insurance-NXTG) were early attackers, before being joined up front by Victoire Berteau (Cofidis) and Antri Christoforou (Human Powered Health) to form a four-rider break that currently has an advantage of 3mins 26 secs over the chasing peloton.
It was always a stage that looked good for a breakaway - will we see this one go to the finish? Or will the fast women such as Marianne Vos, the overall race leader, have another chance to battle for the stage win in Saint-Die-des-Vosges? Let’s see ...
Updated
