Marianne Vos won the opening stage of the Tour de France Femmes on Saturday. The 38-year-old from Brabant was the strongest on a difficult final climb and is logically the first wearer of the yellow jersey.
Vos passed her Visma Lease-a-Bike teammate Pauline Ferrand-Prévot in the final meters. The Frenchwoman had created a significant gap with the competition shortly before, but barely moved forward in the last hundreds of meters.
Kimberley LeCourt from Mauritius finished second, just behind Vos, and Ferrand-Prévot finished third. Demi Vollering, the top favorite for the overall victory, finished sixth, three seconds behind Vos.
Puck Pieterse and Anna van der Breggen finished sixth and seventh, respectively, five seconds behind. Eline Jansen (eighth) and Pauliena Rooijakkers (ninth) also finished in the top ten.
Vos achieved her first stage victory in the Tour since 2022. She won two stages in the French cycling tour that year. The Dutchwoman grabbed her third victory of 2025. Earlier, she achieved two stage victories in the Vuelta a España.
Vollering sees rival Reusser abandon
The opening stage took the peloton over 78.8 kilometers from Vannes to Plumelec. Along the way, the riders faced climbs of the third and fourth categories. The finish was on a difficult climb.
Before the official start, things went wrong in the peloton at a road barrier where there was no signaller. A rider crashed hard against a sign, causing several riders to tumble over her.
Shortly after the start, the Dutch Maud Rijnbeek went on an adventure with the Italian Laura Tomasi. After a while, Rijnbeek continued alone, but 37 kilometers from the finish, the 22-year-old rider from VolkerWessels Cycling was caught.
The stage was marred by several crashes. Marlen Reusser, the runner-up of the Giro d’Italia, also crashed and quickly fell far behind the peloton. With 11 kilometers to go, Vollering’s rival for the overall victory gave up.
On the difficult final climb, the riders made it an exciting battle. Ferrand-Prévot rode away 1 kilometer from the finish and seemed on her way to victory. But the Frenchwoman stalled, after which Vos accelerated and passed her teammate in the final meters.