There’s a reason the Tour de France commands such respect among cycling enthusiasts. To win the oldest race of the three Grand Tours, riders have to brave three weeks in the saddle and ascend through some of the most brutal uphill slopes in all of Europe. You have to be in peak physical form to succeed. But to have all that training get derailed because of mere road furniture? Gutting, to say the least.
The men’s 2025 Tour de France will wrap up after just one more stage. But the ladies’ part of the tournament, the Tour de France Femmes, is just getting started. And it immediately hit a roadblock. Things came to a standstill before the race even started.
An article by Le Figaro from July 26 shared how “The real start of the first stage of the women’s Tour de France has been delayed following a fall,” on Saturday. During the false start phase of the iconic race, riders ride at a controlled speed, and that’s exactly what they were doing during the opening stage from Vannes to Plumelec. However, it was just as race director Marion Rousse was about to flag off the actual race that disaster struck.
When riders were making their way up the road, they noticed a bollard that was sticking out abruptly. While most were able to meander around the piece of road safety equipment, one rider failed to do so, and that’s all it took to create a pile-up before the start of the race. The bollard was placed to inform the riders that the road was about to split. However, looking at the chaos the thing wreaked, we are hard pressed to argue that it wasn’t doing its job very well.
Credit – X/Le Tour de France Femme
There are eight more stages scheduled for the women’s Tour de France. And it would indeed be heartbreaking if Saturday’s crash had resulted in any of the riders dropping out of the world’s biggest cycling race. Then again, unfortunate scenarios are uncontrollable all the time for a reason. You don’t need to take our word for it. We’ve got the evidence to back the talk!
Only yesterday, the Tour de France’s stage 17 was the talk of the town as a “fake rider” sought to cross the finishing line before the first contestants. Dressed in a black helmet and a Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale team jersey, the usurper almost spoiled Jonathan Milan’s day, but the race organizers and the French police were swift to bring the situation under control.
After being produced in court, the fake rider was handed a five-year ban from the tournament and a hefty fine, which is to be paid to the police officer who fell down during the physical altercation near the finishing line on Friday. Milan ultimately won the 160km stage 17 from Bollene to Valence.
Thankfully, though, such unforeseen things didn’t get to affect everyone.
The Tour de France keeps coming up with gifts for the fans
On the same day that the Tour de France Femme start got delayed, Australian cycling icon Kaden Groves attained his own personal milestone. Prevailing on the Tour de France’s penultimate ride, Groves completed the coveted trilogy of Grand Tour victories with a memorable solo win in stage 20. In the process, the 26-year-old also avoided a number of high-speed crashes that were caused by the slippery road conditions during the 184.2km journey from Nantua.
Credits: Instagram/@letourdefrance; Photographed by @jstartt
To make the Tour de France fans smile even broadly, Slovenia’s Tadej Pogacar also holds on and is just one stage away from posting his fourth Tour win. True to his overall leader’s yellow jersey, Pogacar maintains a 4:24 advantage over Denmark’s Jonas Vingegaard. Now, all that remains for the 3x Tour de France winner is to make sure he doesn’t get entangled in a crash on Sunday, so he can blitz into an elite club.
So, how do you foresee tomorrow unfolding at the greatest cycling event in the world? From Pogacar to the ladies’ part of the iconic race, share your thoughts in a comment!
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