Demi Vollering got through the fourth stage of the Tour de France Femmes well. The top favorite started the flat stage with question marks a day after her crash, but she had less pain than feared.
Vollering is cycling relaxed fifteen minutes after the finish in Poitiers near the FDJ-SUEZ team bus. The contrast with four hours earlier is great. Then, with a face distorted by pain, she did a warm-up of less than three minutes in the starting place Saumur. Now she talks quietly with her teammates.
“I’m relieved,” Vollering says a little later to the massed media. “I had so much trouble with my neck this morning. It suddenly shot into it. I sat on my Tacx (a bicycle trainer, ed.) and could hardly hold my head up. But on the bike it went well. That gives me a good feeling.”
The 28-year-old leader of FDJ-SUEZ fell on Monday in the third stage at 3.7 kilometers from the finish line. Only on Tuesday morning, together with her team, did she make the decision that she could start in the fourth stage. Before that, she had been tested twice (negative) for a concussion and extensively examined by the team doctor.
Vollering had bruises in her back and knee due to the fall. “Today I fortunately didn’t feel anything from that,” she says in Poitiers. “No headache, no problems with my knee or my back. It’s purely my neck. I hope that will be a little better tomorrow.”
Vollering crossed the finish line in the same time as winner Lorena Wiebes. In the general classification, she is still sixth, 25 seconds behind yellow jersey wearer Marianne Vos.