Lance Armstrong takes close look at Vollering’s energy management on Ventoux and has one question for Dutch star

The queen stage of the Tour de France Femmes certainly lived up to its billing on Friday. On Mont Ventoux, an incredibly tense battle unfolded between Kasia Niewiadoma, Demi Vollering and Marlen Reusser. Lance Armstrong — himself a central figure in several memorable days on the Giant of Provence during his career — therefore had plenty to discuss afterwards on his THEMOVE podcast.

Armstrong watched the spectacle much like everyone else. “I’m excited. Wow, wow — shocking, beautiful! There are going to be a lot of superlatives used today, but this was an incredible bike race to watch,” said the American.

“This mountain obviously has so much history... but I don’t know if we’ve ever seen anything quite like what happened today in a peloton: with 9 km to go, simply riding away completely from two outstanding riders in Reusser and Demi Vollering. I would put this among the great performances. It was an unbelievable finale,” Armstrong said of Niewiadoma’s victory and the battle behind her.

Armstrong analyzed the final climb of Mont Ventoux almost moment by moment, beginning with the tempo set by EF Education-Oatly. “The peloton may actually have been given a gift by EF riding that pace. What was EF doing? If anybody knows, tell me, because I don’t! But they reduced it to 10 riders and after that it was simply a case of ‘the best woman wins.’”

Next, Vollering made her move with 11 kilometers to go, before Niewiadoma chose her moment 9 kilometers from the finish. “When she went and had a minute and ten seconds, I got up to go to the bathroom and said: ‘She’s going to win this by two minutes now.’ She was well on her way to doing exactly that, but Demi still had that extra gear at the end, which was pretty crazy.”

Armstrong did raise some questions about Vollering’s energy management. “I said that, in my opinion, you shouldn’t be able to ride that hard at the end of the Ventoux. You want to have a little something left in the tank, but you should have spent most of it farther down the climb. She was flying at the end. She was going so hard,” the American observed.

“Especially when those two were looking at each other... at that moment they need to look at one another and say: ‘Whatever the relationship was in the past or whatever it is now, let’s put that aside. Kasia is riding away from us and she is on her way to taking yellow. So regardless of what has been said or what has happened, we need to find some synergy now and make sure she doesn’t get too far away,’” Armstrong argued.

“The only question I have for Vollering is this: on television it looked as though, halfway up that steep section, she had a bad moment where she wasn’t feeling particularly good, and then recovered from it? But still, that was far too much energy to have left at the finish, considering how much of the gap she managed to close and how strong she looked,” he concluded. “What if she had gone 2 kilometers earlier? She would have come very close.”