It’s not the youngsters, but veterans Garcia and Vos calling the shots in the Tour: "We’ll have to think about it"
Women's Cycling
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Follow us on GoogleThere were quite a few established names mentioned for the first two days of the Tour de France Femmes, but the many young talents and women on the rise were up against two experienced riders. On Saturday, Marianne Vos, representing Visma | Lease a Bike, took the stage with a stage win and the first yellow jersey. On Sunday, that role went to Spain's Mavi Garcia of Liv AlUla Jayco. So far, experience has prevailed; that much is clear.
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At 41, Garcia is the oldest rider in the Tour peloton, but that didn't stop her from claiming her 17th victory in her cycling career. Mind you, she only started riding professionally in 2015 at the age of 31 with Bizkaia-Durango. In 2020, Garcia joined Alé BTC Ljubljana in the WorldTour. Nine of her seventeen victories came in national championships, which demonstrates that she is not a frequent winner.
Nevertheless, she came to the Tour with the ambition to win a stage, as she had tried to do in the previous three editions of the Tour de France Femmes. “As a team, we wanted to attack after the intermediate sprint today. However, Silke (Smulders, ed.) wanted to go for the mountain points and therefore joined a breakaway group. When they were caught, I was able to launch my attack,” Garcia analyzed with a broad smile at the press conference.
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Garcia explains why she and Vos won a Tour stage
“I can't believe it, I'll need a moment to take it in. It's been a year since I last won, so this is really special for me,” the Spaniard continued jubilantly. “I had a maximum lead of 25 seconds, and although it was still a long way to go, I decided to take it kilometer by kilometer. With one kilometer to go, I was still in front, so I knew I had to go all out. Despite that, I never felt like I was going to make it, because they were ten seconds behind.”
Yet she managed it, with skill and a pair of miracle legs. "I didn't believe it until five or ten meters before the finish line. Yesterday, I was lying on the ground, as I often do in my last races. I haven't seen the results of all that hard work in training for a long time, but I kept trying." And so, after two days, we have a 38-year-old and a 41-year-old as the stage winners. “I think that in such a stressful race as the Tour, experience
Read more below the photo.
Vos, in top form, has her sights set on a (new) green jersey
Vos is also doing well, although she lost her yellow jersey to Kimberley Le Court Pienaar of AG Insurance-Soudal in stage 2 on Sunday. The woman from Mauritius finished third, gaining four seconds, and with her second place on Saturday, she became the leader. "It was a tough day, as expected. Wearing yellow in the Tour is special, and it's great that I can now wear green. Of course, we wanted to keep the yellow, but with this final stage, we knew it would be difficult,“ said Vos.
”You know you can lose it when everything is still so close in the classifications,” continued the Dutch rider, speaking from experience. Nevertheless, Vos still has everything to play for in this Tour. As she said before the race, she hopes to help Pauline Ferrand-Prévot achieve a good GC, and although she dismissed the green points classification for the Tour, she said on Sunday: “It's only day 2, but we'll have to think about it.”
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Bram van der PloegEditor-in-chief
Bram van der Ploeg (35) is the proud founder of In de Leiderstrui, IDL Pro Cycling's parent site, launched in 2018. Finally, he could create stories about the sport he had followed since childhood. He is the editor-in-chief on paper, but prefers to be with his recorder next to a rider, a team bus, or in the mud at a cyclocross race. Every year, from February to the end of May, Bram follows the entire Italian cycling season, from the Trofeo Laigueglia to the Giro d'Italia, with the grand finale in October in Lombardy. During that time, he lives in Tuscany, where he has since come to call Italy his 'home'.
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