Ferrand-Prévot’s reaction and Kasia Niewiadoma’s climbing numbers tell the full Mont Ventoux story

Kasia Niewiadoma said she took advantage of the tactical games between Demi Vollering and Marlen Reusser, while both of her rivals admitted afterwards that they perhaps should have made different choices. Even so, the CANYON//SRAM rider thoroughly deserved her stage victory, as well as the yellow jersey she immediately took with it. The reaction of Pauline Ferrand-Prévot and Niewiadoma’s remarkable climbing numbers only underlined just how impressive her performance had been.

First, Ferrand-Prévot’s reaction, which summed everything up perfectly in about 20 seconds. The Visma | Lease a Bike rider was unable to play a meaningful role on Mont Ventoux and was dropped relatively early. When the Frenchwoman was catching her breath at the summit alongside teammate Marion Bunel, she was asked whether she knew how the stage had finished.

“Did Kasia win the stage?” Ferrand-Prévot can be heard asking, before the SBS reporter confirms that she did. “But who has the yellow jersey?” comes her follow-up question. When she is told that the answer is Niewiadoma again, Ferrand-Prévot responds with a loud and astonished: “No! Nooo!” The smile on her face, however, reveals the racer within her, clearly enjoying hearing how the battle had unfolded.

The fact that Niewiadoma managed to turn a 1-minute-and-17-second deficit in the general classification into an advantage and the yellow jersey was surprising in itself. But perhaps less so when you look at the numbers produced by the Polish team leader. Immediately after the finish, calculations began appearing on X based on power, weight, distance and gradient — and they produced some extraordinary figures.

Niewiadoma certainly set a new women’s climbing record on Mont Ventoux, covering the 21.5-kilometre climb at an average gradient of 7.5 percent in 1 hour, 6 minutes and 44 seconds, at an average speed of 19.33 kilometres per hour. “It’s for sure the best climbing performance of her career and one of the best ever recorded,” Mihai Simion wrote on X.

More statistics have surfaced after the stage. “What Kasia Niewiadoma produced today is out of this world and it can be considered the greatest performance in women’s cycling history,” the post stated. That calculation uses a 15.62-kilometre section of Mont Ventoux averaging 8.69 percent, which Niewiadoma completed in 55 minutes and 22 seconds at an average speed of 16.93 kilometres per hour.

According to that calculation, the performance would equate to 5.34 watts per kilogram, a figure the analysis claims has never previously been recorded in women’s cycling. Ferrand-Prévot was estimated to have averaged 5.04 watts per kilogram on the Col de la Madeleine a year ago. Vollering, meanwhile, is estimated at 5.17 watts per kilogram on Mont Ventoux, meaning her climbing performance was also stronger than that of the 2025 Tour de France Femmes winner. Or, as Niewiadoma herself simply put it in the mixed zone: “I looked at my power meter and saw that things were going well.”