‘What now?’ Visma | Lease a Bike reassesses Tour Femmes goals after Ferrand-Prévot setback

Visma | Lease a Bike saw its hopes of winning the Tour de France Femmes for a second consecutive year suffer a major blow on Wednesday. Team leader Pauline Ferrand-Prévot lost 2 minutes and 35 seconds and, after five stages, now trails by exactly five minutes. That has forced the Dutch squad to take a realistic view of the remainder of the race, which team manager Rutger Tijssen has now done.

Tijssen’s squad began stage five still believing it could turn the situation around. Femke de Vries and Sarah Van Dam were sent into the early breakaway, with the hope that Ferrand-Prévot could later bridge across from the peloton and regain time on the other general-classification contenders.

It never reached that point. When Demi Vollering applied the pressure, the Frenchwoman had no answer. Afterwards, true to her realistic nature, Ferrand-Prévot made no attempt to hide that successfully defending her Tour de France Femmes title had become a more distant prospect than ever.

“This is not why we came to the Tour,” Tijssen said realistically on the team’s official website. “Of course, anything can still happen, but things have become more difficult. We have to be realistic about that,” added the Visma | Lease a Bike team manager.

Tijssen also highlighted the positive aspects of the team’s performance. “Looking at the team as a whole, we saw a very strong performance today. Femke and Sarah rode exceptionally well. Femke has moved into the top ten of the general classification and has a great opportunity to achieve a strong result. There are still four stages to go, and we will do everything we can to keep fighting for good results.”

De Vries is now eighth in the general classification, while Ferrand-Prévot occupies 17th place.