Pauline Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot may have been excused for hemorrhaging time Tuesday in the stage 4 time trial of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift.<\/p>\n
She had not raced against the clock since she returned to road racing, after all.<\/p>\n
There was no excuse for the pure climber Wednesday in the terrain that suits her best.<\/p>\n
Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot\u2019s yellow jersey defense all but evaporated on stage 5 after Demi Vollering and FDJ United-Suez put the hammer down in a brutal climbing stage through the vineyards of the Beaujolais.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt quite good to be honest,\u201d\u00a0Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot told TV cameras at the finish. \u201cI was simply dropped on the steep section of the penultimate climb.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I can\u2019t say I felt bad or that I had a moment of weakness,\u201d she said. \u201cI think the others were simply much stronger.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot was one of the first to be shelled on the Cat 3. Col de Durbize at 30km to go Wednesday as Vollering began her all-out offensive on race leader Marlen Reusser.<\/p>\n
PFP never made it back into contention.<\/p>\n
Her yellow jersey dream vanished up the road as Vollering, Reusser, and Kasia Niewiadoma went on to prove themselves the strongest all-rounders in the race.<\/p>\n
Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot limped to the line, 2:35 back. It\u2019s a single-day deficit even more damaging than the 2:13 she lost Tuesday in the Dijon TT.<\/p>\n
Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot\u2019s hopes rest on the climb of Ventoux<\/h2>\n
Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot had started the 2026 Tour de France Femmes this weekend as a favorite.<\/p>\n
The Tour\u2019s home hero is now 5 minutes away from the yellow jersey and questioning her preparation.<\/p>\n
The 34-year-old and her Visma-Lease a Bike team took the high-risk strategy of opting for a training-heavy season at the cost of racing kilometers this year.<\/p>\n
It was a plan that worked to perfection when Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot won both Paris-Roubaix and the Tour de France Femmes in 2025.<\/p>\n
The time around, it might have backfired.<\/p>\n
Having amassed only 17 race days since January, Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot\u2019s top-end wasn\u2019t there when she needed it most on Wednesday\u2019s explosive 5th stage.<\/p>\n
\u201cA time trial is very different. You mainly need a lot of power,\u201d Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot said at the finish.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday, you needed to climb well and have a little more explosiveness. That is what I am missing at the moment. It is simply an honest assessment. I do not want to fool myself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot\u2019s hopes now rest entirely on Friday\u2019s gruesome 16km summit finish to Mont Ventoux.<\/p>\n
In 2025, the French veteran blew the peloton apart on the Col du Madeleine in the penultimate stage of the Tour.<\/p>\n
It was a long-range raid that put a lock on the yellow jersey within sight of the overall finish line.<\/p>\n
In 2026, Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot can only hope for a similar climbing rout on stage 7\u2019s climb of the infamous \u201cGiant of Provence.\u201d<\/p>\n
But in reality, those mythical slopes are looking very steep for her right now.<\/p>\n
\u201cI haven\u2019t seen the gap yet but I think it\u2019s over,\u201d Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot said at the finish line. \u201cWe have to refocus, to change the plan maybe.<\/p>\n
\u201cMont Ventoux will be another new day and another battle,\u201d she vowed. \u201cWe are going to give everything there.\u201d<\/p>\n
The time losses weren\u2019t the end of the bad news for Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
UCI commissaires also fined her 250 CHF and docked her 15 UCI points for tossing a bottle outside a litter zone.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/velo-cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/GettyImages-2289209102.jpg”] Jim Cotton Updated August 5, 2026 12:43PM Pauline Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot may have been excused for hemorrhaging time Tuesday in the stage 4 time trial of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift. She had not raced against the clock since she returned to road racing, after all. There was no excuse for the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[226,71],"class_list":["post-2079496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-crawlmanager","tag-velo-outsideonline-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2079496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2079496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2079496\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2079496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2079496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2079496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}