Elisa Longo Borghini has had a lot of reasons to be pissed off during this Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift.<\/p>\n
She hit back at journalists and media speculation about Paula Blasi\u2019s role and any insinuations of tensions within Team UAE L\u2019IMAD.<\/p>\n
The Italian all-rounder suffered a mechanical problem with two kilometers to go in the stage 4 TT when on a flying day. After a bike change, she still only finishing 1:02 down on winner and race leader Reusser.<\/p>\n
She was frustrated to lose time on the all-action following stage through Beaujolais. But after making the break, she is up to fourth and fighting for more.<\/p>\n
Italian champion \u2018tired of being pissed\u2019<\/h2>\n
Having it into the decisive escape on stage 6 Thursday and stolen back 26 seconds on GC rivals, she had something to be happy about.<\/p>\n
Given the frustrations, a few bike racers sitting on while she did the lion\u2019s share of the work to bring back late attacks by Kim Le Court-Pienaar (AG Insurance-Soudal) and Riejanne Markus (Lidl-Trek), was not going to bother her.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s bike racing, I don\u2019t care, I don\u2019t pay attention to this anymore,\u201d she told Velo<\/i> minutes after the race.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was pissed for the TT, I was pissed yesterday. I\u2019m tired of being pissed, in the end.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked if she was chasing GC or going for the stage win, she said, in all earnestness: \u201cI was just riding by ignorance.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although her efforts to power the group along contributed to finishing seventh as Kim Le Court-Pienaar won, Longo Borghini moved two places to fourth on Tour de France Femmes GC, 2:28 down on Reusser before the big Mont Ventoux day.<\/p>\n
Maybe channelling the power of being pissed can be a positive thing.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo carry anger with you, maybe you can get good results but then you don\u2019t live well,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m just trying to live my Tour de France. It\u2019s three years I\u2019m not performing here and I just want to go to Nice and have fun.\u201d<\/p>\n
Born bike racer<\/h2>\n
Turning feelings into results on the bike is Longo Borghini in a nutshell.<\/p>\n
\u201cElisa wears her heart on her sleeve and she rides by emotion,\u201d her UAE L\u2019IMAD sports director Cherie Pridham told Velo<\/i>.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s a born bike racer, she just wants to be at the front of the bike race.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe saw today she was pretty much the only one that was willing to work in there and benefit from both GC and stage win. We gained some seconds today, but we always said all along the race finishes in Nice.\u201d<\/p>\n
Longo Borghini is up to fourth. But having burned a lot of matches up the road to keep the escape rolling, could that have an impact on Friday\u2019s crucial finish on the \u201cGiant of Provence\u201d?<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we rode quite smart with Elisa\u2019s energy. I think Mont Ventoux is going to decide, eh,\u201d Pridham said.<\/p>\n
Is Longo Borghini herself looking forward to Ventoux?<\/p>\n
\u201cNot really. It\u2019s a tough race, no? But I will hang there until I can, then we go to Nice.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/velo-cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/GettyImages-2289209048-scaled.jpg”] Andy McGrath Updated August 7, 2026 07:27AM Elisa Longo Borghini has had a lot of reasons to be pissed off during this Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift. She hit back at journalists and media speculation about Paula Blasi\u2019s role and any insinuations of tensions within Team UAE L\u2019IMAD. The Italian all-rounder […]<\/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-2083110","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\/2083110","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=2083110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2083110\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2083110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2083110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2083110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}