Van Vleuten roars into lead at Tour de France Femmes with stage seven win

Annemiek van Vleuten blew apart the Tour de France Femmes with a 60-kilometre lone attack in the first mountain stage of the week-long race, taking a memorable stage win and the overall race lead with one day’s racing to come.

The Tokyo Olympic time trial champion and former World Road Race champion, who started the eight-day race with a stomach bug, was fully recovered in time for the first mountain stage and took the race by the scruff of the neck with fellow Dutch rider Demi Vollering (Team SD Worx), a move that immediately distanced the overnight race leader Marianne Vos (Jumbo-Visma).

But Van Vleuten (Movistar Team), who won the 2019 World Road Race title in Yorkshire with a similar solo break, then moved clear of Vollering on the 11% gradients of the Col de Platzerwasel, the second of three first category climbs, to open up a near four-minute lead at the final summit, Le Markstein, in the Vosges.

Van Vleuten, winner of the women’s Giro d’Italia, started the women’s Tour de France as the hotly tipped favourite, but came close to quitting on stage three after making an enforced mid-race toilet stop.

“Things were really very, very tricky,” she said. “The main thing was finding a good spot to ‘go’ on the side of the road.” Fined 100 Swiss francs for her public toilet break, the 39-year-old survived the crisis and remained in contention.

Her rivals may now wish they had tried to distance Van Vleuten earlier in the week, particularly on the gruelling gravel roads of the Aube. “They didn’t force the pace, luckily for us, because that would have been a disaster,” her French teammate, Aude Biannic, said. “Monday and Tuesday, given her state of health, we didn’t push things.

“She said it was her worst day on a bike and