Tour de France Femmes heads into mountains for 2025

One of the most dramatic days in recent female cycling history was when Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney triumphed over Demi Vollering in the Tour de France Femmes Avec Zwift yellow jersey by four seconds.

The 2025 edition of the race, which begins in Brittany on Saturday and moves southwest through the Massif Central to the Alps, is no wonder because race organizers ASO have added even more mountains.

The final four stages of the Tour feature a record 17, 240m of climbing, with three days packed into the high mountains.

The race was reinstated in 2022, up to nine stages from the previous one, which was eight last summer, making the event the longest.

“We have nine stages rather than eight because the level in women’s cycling is rising.” And there are nine rebels, according to race director Marion Rousse when the route was unveiled in Paris last October.

The first two stages are typically Breton in style, with hardly any flat road in spring classic profiles that could trigger broad classification action right away.

Before the road begins to turn sharply upward, the sprinters will follow two straight flat stages.

The Queen Stage on day eight ascends to the 18.6km-long, 2, 000m-altitude Col de la Madeleine, which is the first major mountain in the race.

Vollering is the rider with the stand-out pedigree this year, and she is the favorite to add to the yellow jersey she won in 2023 after losing by the narrowest of margins in August.

The Dutchwoman, who relocated to French outfit FDJ-Suez last winter, already has ten victories in 2025, four of which include the red Velvetta Espana’s red jersey.

Vollering has the backing of a formidable team that includes climbers Evita Muzic, who placed fourth at the Tour last year, Juliette Labous and Elise Chabbey.

The sport’s growing depth and shrinking of the top competitors’ numbers reflect this year’s growing strength.

With her form improving since a bad crash in the spring, Elisa Longo Borghini hopes to carry the same legs that led her to win her second Giro title straight from Italy, she returns determined to defend her title.

French hopes for a home victory are fueled by former Olympic mountain bike champion Pauline Ferrand-Prevot.

Ferrand-Prevot has won 15 world titles, with the exception of one in off-road competitions, and has made no secret of the fact that after seven seasons away, she has returned to the road.

She won the Tour in April with a spectacular solo performance, and her team manager Rutger Tijssen reported this week that she is “completely prepared physically and mentally” to do so once more.

However, Lotte Kopecky, a Belgian who has been out of the Giro, was forced to withdraw from the much-awaited yellow jersey match.

Kopecky focused all of her preparation and effort on utilizing her all-round credentials this year, despite having done so for six stages and finishing runner-up in the 2023 Tour without actually trying to.

Anna van der Breggen, who retired three years ago after dominating the sport, is also a part of her strong SD Worx-Protime team.

Millie Couzens will be one of four British riders in the race as one of the two who won the British road race title less than a month ago in her first professional victory.

Couzens, Flora Perkins, her Fenix-Deceunick teammate, Flora Perkins, and Visma’s Imogen Wolff, who is the youngest of the 154 starting riders, are all making Tour debuts, and Pfeiffer Georgi, a Picnic PostNL rider, is likely to be hoping to win the stage after a crash ended her Tour earlier this summer.