The Dutch party continued at the Tour de France Femmes, as the Grand Tour debutante Puck Pieterse maintained the trend started on stage one by Charlotte Kool, to claim the fourth consecutive win by a rider from the Netherlands.
Pieterse reversed the disappointment of the Paris Olympics mountain bike race, in which she finished fourth, to win the stage from Valkenburg to Liège, outsprinting the race leader, Demi Vollering of SD Worx Protime and taking her first professional win in road racing.
The pair raced for the Netherlands at the Paris Olympics but had to cope with disappointing results. Vollering finished fifth in the women’s time trial and 34th in the road race, while Pieterse, who has been a revelation in 2024, was so distraught after finishing fourth in the mountain bike race at Elancourt Hill that she was comforted by the Dutch royal family.
Vollering, billeted at the same team hotel during the Games, also felt her pain. “After the mountain biking, she was really disappointed,” Vollering said. “I gave her a little hug and said: ‘These things need to happen sometimes because, sometimes, bigger things come out of it.’ She also wasn’t sure about riding the Tour de France and I told her: ‘Just do it!’”
Pieterse, of Fenix-Deceuninck, had been on target for the silver medal position until a puncture ruined her chances and allowed the American rider Haley Batten to steal in to second behind the gold medallist, Pauline Ferrand-Prévot of France.
Batten’s silver medal proved controversial, as the American had raced through the feed zone “without feeding or having technical assistance”, a contravention of mountain biking rules. However, she retained silver, beating Pieterse by 24 seconds, and was only fined for the infringement.
“It still burns that it didn’t work out in Paris,” Pieterse said after her stage win in Liège. “But now I’m happy to use the good shape I have from the Olympics for today and the rest of this week.”
On a day that was a shock to the system for those who had become accustomed to the flat roads of Rotterdam, seven categorised climbs – famous from the Dutch classic Amstel Gold and the Belgian classic Liège-Bastogne-Liège – soon took their toll. On the hilly route Vollering, who has won both races in the past, was expected to flourish. She did, but it was not foreseen that she would be beaten in a straight sprint by a 22-year-old mountain biker.
“I know that Puck is a really good rider, really talented,” Vollering said of the mind games as the pair entered the final few hundred metres. “I know she has a good sprint as well. I sensed she was holding back and making out she was tired. I was thinking: ‘Hmm, I think you can still do a little more.’”
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So it proved, and despite the defending Tour champion’s best efforts she was unable to get past her young rival in the final sprint. Pieterse is now second overall to Vollering, with four stages still to come and the gruelling climbs through the Jura and the Haute-Savoie, to Le Grand-Bornand and Alpe d’Huez, lying in wait, on Saturday and Sunday.
“I’m really curious to see what she can do on the long climbs,” Vollering said of Pieterse. “Maybe she can surprise us, so we will see for the general classification.”
Just four riders are now within one minute of Vollering: Pieterse; Kasia Niewiadoma, of Canyon SRAM; Kristen Faulkner, the double gold medallist on road and track in Paris, of EF Oatly-Cannondale; and the French climber Juliette Labous, Kool’s teammate at DSM-firmenich PostNL.
Britain’s best-placed rider, Anna Henderson – another medallist from Paris 2024 – slipped down the overall standings after finishing in the fifth group on the road, just over a minute and a half behind Pieterse. Thursday’s fifth stage to Amnéville, on rolling roads leading from Luxembourg to the Moselle, offers another springboard for breakaway efforts.
