Visma used Femke de Vries to put Demi Vollering under pressure: ‘We wanted her to panic’

Five stages into the Tour de France Femmes, Femke de Vries is the highest-placed Visma | Lease a Bike rider in the general classification. That was probably not part of the Dutch team’s original plan. De Vries is now eighth overall, 3 minutes and 11 seconds behind race leader Marlen Reusser of Movistar, while designated leader Pauline Ferrand-Prévot sits 17th and is already five minutes down.

De Vries had already been well placed before the stage, so the plan was to use her as a tactical card, she admitted afterwards in an interview with NOS. “It was an incredibly hard stage. There were attacks right from the beginning. Our plan was to get someone up the road so that we could put Demi under pressure and make her panic a little because I was in the move.”

“It is really cool that it worked, especially with such a strong group that also included Sarah Van Dam,” De Vries continued, although she was also critical of her own performance immediately after the finish. “I was able to save a lot of energy. I only made a small mistake on the first climb, where I should not have pushed on quite so hard. But the idea was simply for me to get as far up the road as possible.”

The move was intended to help the team recover some of the time Ferrand-Prévot had lost in the individual time trial. “If Pauline had then managed to bridge across, we would at least already have had someone at the front,” De Vries said, explaining the Dutch team’s tactical plan for stage five.

The first part of that plan worked, but the second part involving Ferrand-Prévot did not come together. “She just told me that she actually felt quite good, but it was simply too hard. She gave everything, and you cannot ask for anything more than that,” De Vries said about her team leader and friend Ferrand-Prévot, whose reaction you can read here.

It may still be too early to ask whether De Vries should now become the team’s protected leader. “I don’t know yet. We still need to discuss tonight how we are going to approach everything from here,” she explained after stage five. “I did have really good legs. They were just not quite good enough to follow on that final climb. It was a little too explosive for me.”

“But I am incredibly proud of how we raced and how well positioned we were throughout the stage. I still need some time to let everything sink in,” said the rider ranked eighth in the overall standings.