Reusser blames Vollering tactics after losing yellow: ‘I told her not to do it’

Marlen Reusser has lost the yellow jersey at the Tour de France Femmes, and according to the Swiss rider, that did not necessarily have to happen. At the summit of Mont Ventoux, she made it clear that the cooperation with Demi Vollering (FDJ United-SUEZ) in the chase behind Kasia Niewiadoma had been far from ideal.

Reusser didn’t have much to do at first in Stage 7 of the Tour. FDJ United-SUEZ had made no secret of its ambitions and immediately began applying pressure on the approach to Mont Ventoux and on the climb itself. Vollering quickly ran out of teammates, however, and when her first attack was answered by both Reusser and Niewiadoma, an entirely different race scenario suddenly began to unfold.

The CANYON//SRAM rider from Poland boldly decided to ride away, and Vollering initially had no response. The Dutchwoman did accelerate later, but she never managed to get closer than six seconds. Eventually the elastic snapped, allowing Niewiadoma to rapidly build an advantage of around a minute. At the summit, she had 1 minute and 16 seconds in hand over Vollering, while Reusser crossed the line another half-minute later after struggling badly through the final section of the climb.

In the general classification, Niewiadoma completed a remarkable double by taking both the stage victory and the yellow jersey. She now leads Vollering by 15 seconds, while Reusser’s difficult final kilometre dropped the Swiss rider to third overall, 39 seconds behind the new race leader. “I think the problem was that Demi and me were marking each other too much — really stupid from both of us,” Reusser told Cyclingnews.

After Niewiadoma had ridden clear, Vollering repeatedly tried to distance Reusser with sharp accelerations, or at the very least reduce the gap to the Polish rider ahead. According to Reusser, however, those efforts had the opposite effect. “Demi kept attacking super hard, I kept telling her ‘don’t do this, let’s just ride’,” the Swiss rider explained, arguing that the pair would have been better served by settling into a sustained chase together.

That did not happen, or at least not often enough. Vollering still took a number of turns on the front, but once Reusser’s yellow jersey came under serious threat, the Swiss rider was forced to take responsibility herself. “We still had Kasia in sight and I think we could definitely have closed the gap the first time. But when you keep attacking, you repeatedly load the legs with lactate. It just makes things harder and harder for both riders.”

When Reusser and Vollering finally began working together more consistently after emerging from the wooded section of Mont Ventoux, Reusser felt the Dutchwoman was still not contributing enough. “It definitely worked in Kasia’s favour that neither of us wanted to ride flat out on the front while the other could sit in the wheel. But at a certain point I thought: every second matters now. I had the feeling Demi was still holding something back and could have ridden harder.”

In the end, Vollering pulled away putting another 30 seconds into Reusser as well as collecting six bonus seconds. It left the Swiss time trial specialist with a bitter feeling after surrendering the race lead. “I’m disappointed, simply disappointed. I still think it could have been possible today, but that is all if, if, if. Kasia got it done and it was hard. I gave everything as well.”

Movistar team director Kelvin Dekker also expressed his disappointment to Wielerflits. The Dutchman noted that Reusser and Vollering did not deliver “the most incredible performance ever.” “If you have a 12-second lead over Vollering, you know you have to stay on his wheel during every attack, and that costs both of them energy. I think they wore each other out there. Kasia was very strong, though, and they realized that pretty quickly.”

Dekker didn’t see any more attacks from Vollering in the final 8 to 9 kilometers to the summit, which added some nuance to Reusser’s comments. “They worked together, but they never closed the gap. Kasia was just much better today.”