Tears were already rolling down Pauline Ferrand-Prévot’s cheeks as she entered the last kilometre of stage 9 of the 2025 Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift. No doubt remained – the French leader of Team Visma | Lease a Bike was alone at the front, clad in the maillot jaune, and she could already let the intense emotions of a historic triumph sink in as she reached the finish line in Châtel, nine days after starting from Vannes.
Ferrand-Prévot crossed the line some 20 seconds ahead of the last two winners of the Tour, Demi Vollering (FDJ-Suez, winner in 2023) and Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney (Canyon//SRAM zondacrypto, 2024), and crumbled on the ground.s
“This morning, I told my DS, ‘I want to try to win in yellow’,” she eventually said. Her triumph is absolute: at her very first participation in the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, the French athlete brings home yet another iconic jersey, enriching, at 33 years of age, an already extraordinary collection of prizes. Vollering (+3’42’’) and Niewiadoma-Phinney (+4’09’’) complete the overall top three.
A week after the men’s Tour crowned Tadej Pogačar for the fourth time, on the 40th anniversary of the last victory for a home rider (Bernard Hinault, in 1985), France could celebrate its return to the top with an absolute icon that has been guiding and illuminating women’s cycling for more than a decade, echoing the conquests of Jeannie Longo, a three-time winner of the former Tour de France Féminin (in 1987, ‘88, ‘89).
read more on www.uci.org – photo Rafa Gomez/SprintCyclingAgency©2025
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