Dutch legend Marianne Vos puts on the yellow jersey of the Tour de France Women after winning the 2nd stage in Provins (Seine-et-Marne), this Monday by settling a small group in the sprint. “It’s not revenge, it’s an absolutely wonderful day,” savored the leader of Jumbo-Visma after his second place the day before at the Champs-Elysées.
At 35, the triple world champion (2006, 2012 and 2013) further lengthened her record by isolating herself in the lead with the Italian Elisa Longo Borghini and the Polish Katarzyna Niewiadoma, the big winners of the day. Unlike Marta Cavalli, forced to retire after a violent fall, announced her team, to take “no risk”.
Percussion and falls
The Italian, co-leader of the French team FDJ-Suez, cursed on Monday, was hit at full speed by Australian champion Nicole Frain, who arrived without braking in a slowdown caused by a fall. A stroke of luck for the FDJ-Suez team which lost the runner-up in the Giro to the immense favorite of the Tour, Annemiek van Vleuten.
Especially since the Danish Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig, the other card of the French formation, caught in another fall, conceded more than a minute and a half on Vos, Longo Borghini and Niewiadoma. But only one on van Vleuten, trapped by the decisive movement of the race during the first passage on the line at the top of a hill 20 km from the finish in Provins.
The yellow jersey at the start of Meaux, 136 km earlier, Lorena Wiebes, settled the sprint of the peloton, 29 seconds later. Three falls followed one another in the last thirty kilometers in a final made very nervous by the wind and gusts up to 45 km / h which raised fears of edges, namely breaks in the peloton.
For Vos, who has won almost everything on his bike, between his Olympic track title (points race, 2008) on the road (2012) and his 32 Giro stages, this yellow jersey has a taste of accomplishment. It was she who won on the Champs-Elysées in 2014 for the first edition of the Course by Le Tour, a women’s event launched by ASO. A creation that owes to the activism of the Dutchwoman who, as a child, attended the Great Men’s Loop with her parents in France.