The place to watch the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift is right here on SBS. Replays, mini stage recaps, highlights and live streaming can be found on the and the available for download on and .
The 90-kilometre Stage 7 from Lannemezan to the summit of the Col du Tourmalet promises to be the most crucial stage of the 2023 Tour de France Femmes.
The 17.2-kilometre climbs at an average of 7.3 per cent, and is legendary in the men’s Tour de France, and now in the women’s version of the race as well.
The men’s race this year saw Australian yellow jersey holder Jai Hindley spiral out of the lead after Jumbo-Visma sought to make it a race-defining climb. Maybe it was in the end, with fatigue catching up to Tadej Pogacar in the final week, but it wasn’t on that day. Pogacar took the win on the next climb ahead of Jonas Vingegaard despite being isolated for much of the race.
In the women’s race, many are expecting a similar duel between defending Tour champion Annemiek van Vleuten (Movistar) and last year’s runner-up Demi Vollering (SD Worx).
This year, the tables have been largely reversed, with SD Worx dominant across the season and Vollering spearheading that charge with wins in all three of the Ardennes classics, as well as Strade Bianche and Dwars dor Vlaanderen. She has won or come second to teammates in every stage race she has attended, bar one…
That was La Vuelta, where Vollering while in the leader’s jersey on Stage 6 was attacked in contentious circumstances. Vollering and her SD Worx team took a nature break when there wasn’t much happening in the race, and Movistar subsequently attacked, the team later claiming that it was a planned move ahead of a crosswind section.
Vollering was put on the back foot, minutes down on van Vleuten, managing to claw her way back to within a minute of her rival on the stage. After declaring herself “hungry for revenge,” Vollering then attacked the next day to win the stage, dropping van Vleuten, but not taking enough time to take the red leader’s jersey back, finishing nine seconds behind the reigning world champion.
The pair met up a week later in the Basque country, but a long-range Marlen Reusser breakaway that went surprisingly lightly chased dampened the GC battle and left Vollering in the position where she could mostly follow and it wasn’t the van Vleuten showdown viewers had hoped for.
Since then, the pair haven’t met in competition and though there has been no overt hostility on the road, you get a sense that Vollering is taking this race deadly seriously.
Van Vleuten too, after every stage she does short interviews with mostly Dutch press before retreating to the safety of the team bus for refuelling and preparations. It’s all aimed at these final two stages.
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Stage 6 - Daily Highlights - Tour de France Femmes 2023
There have been skirmishes already, most notably on stage 4, when the peloton split apart dramatically on the climbs and Sheyla Guitterez (Movistar) dropped back from the breakaway to set up a big van Vleuten attack. The domestique actually briefly dropped her team leader then, giving Vollering a chance to go on the attack, with van Vleuten swinging her bike about wildly as she muscled a large gear. Vollering, in stark contrast, maintained her normal seated style, but with Guitterez’s help, van Vleuten was able to catch and neutralise the move.
The only other occasions where there has been a difference between the pair is in the finale, where Vollering has a notably better acceleration than her older rival. That speaks more to the slightly different type of riders that they are than anything else. However, if it comes down to that crucial acceleration, we know Vollering has the quicks to get away, while van Vleuten will have to rely on pure endurance to ride her rival off the wheel.
The time difference at this point in the race is in favour of van Vleuten. Vollering would, and maybe should, have an eight-second gap in her favour, but after a 20-second penalty for drafting behind the SD Worx team car on stage 5, Vollering is now 12 seconds behind her rival.
The climb will be crucial, and both will want to put a good gap into their rival, with just the final stage 23-kilometre time trial in Pau remaining.
If it comes down to the time trial, I wouldn’t like to pick who will go better. Vollering got the better of van Vleuten at the Dutch time trial national championships by 18 seconds over the flat 42-kilometre course, but van Vleuten is a two-time world champion in the discipline with an appetite for pain.
Watch tonight on SBS and SBS On Demand from the later starting time of 11.55pm AEST, with a later finish as well expected just after 3am AEST.
