Niamh Fisher-Black and Riejanne Markus turned it on for the TDFF Queen stage
The first half of Tour de France Femmes didn’t go exactly as planned for us.. Our sprinter, Elisa Balsamo, unfortunately crashed out of the race on stage 4 and our Aussie Amanda Spratt fell ill the day before Stage 1. However, it seems the tide has turned for the second half! Shirin Van Anrooij came within a whiskers of taking a podium place on yesterday’s Stage 7, just falling short in the dying meters after a days long battle out front in the breakaway.
On paper, today was a day that suited our young Kiwi climber but sitting 15th on GC we weren’t sure if she would be let get in the breakaway… Niamh wasted no time in finding out and jumped on the first climb of the day. Riejanne Markus joined Niamh in the breakaway and knew she could play a huge part in getting Niamh as far as possible into the stage ahead of the main GC group.
Riejanne got straight to work and made sure the breakaway pulled hard and gained as big an advantage as possible. With over 3 minutes on the peloton, Riejanne dug deep to bring Niamh into the bottom of the iconic Col de la Madeleine and give her the best chance possible to go for the stage win. Niamh settled into her rhythm and in the end, it was only the GC favourites of Ferrand-Prevot and Gigante that could better our climber. Niamh crossed the line in a fantastic 3rd place and earned a trip to the podium as the most combative rider.
We hoped to be on the offensive and try something on the last climb but it ended up happening earlier than planned. I jumped across to Riejanne’s group on the first climb and then we had a really good group. Riejanne was able to do most of the work for me which was really nice and then it was my job to try something on the Mdeleine. Maybe I left it a bit too far into the climb but I just tried to pace it as best as I could.
Ferrand-Prevot came with a really strong pace from behind and I did what I could but it wasn’t to be. We went for a stage win and I’m happy with how it went because it was very close!
