Demi Vollering put in a stubborn, defiant performance on stage 8 of the Tour de France Femmes, launching a brutal attack on the final unclassified climb of the stage to drop race leader Kasia Niewiadoma and all her rivals, then soloed to the stage win and yellow jersey.<\/p>\n
Vollering was chased by Niewiadoma and Elisa Longo Borghini on the descent and the flat roads afterwards, but they were unable to get back on terms. Vollering thundered in well clear, with Longo Borghini taking second and Niewiadoma third 17 seconds later.<\/p>\n
Vollering had started the day 15 seconds behind and once the time bonus was applied she ended the day eight seconds clear in the overall standings.<\/p>\n
That sets things up for a gripping finale on Sunday, with the riders set to slug it out over four ascents of the Col d\u2019Eze.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn a stage race, you live day by day,\u201d Vollering said. \u201cSo you can be disappointed overnight but then the next morning you need to put on a new mask and you go again. You try again, you make a plan with the team.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her eight second lead over Niewiadoma is a slim one, but with third-placed Marlen Reusser (Movisar Team) finishing 38 seconds back on the stage and drifting to 1:12 back overall, the GC is looking more and more like a fight between two riders. <\/p>\n
Stunning showdown in Nice<\/h2>\n
The race from Sisteron to Nice was the longest of the race at 171.9km and also one with four category four climbs. That was perhaps a little misleading, given that the roads rode almost constantly until kilometer 76, the summit of the second of those climbs. <\/p>\n
That was a perfect profile for a breakaway to go through and sure enough Maeva Squiban (UAE Team L\u2019Imad) and Loes Adegeest (Lidl-Trek) got a gap with 144km remaining. They had a six minute gap over the peloton at the top of the Col des Robines, the day\u2019s first climb, and nudged this upwards to 6:10. <\/p>\n
This dropped to 1:15 at the start of the third climb, the C\u00f4te de Colomars, and the chances of the break staying clear plummeted when Squiban crashed on a curving descent with 16.5km to go. She remounted and received brief medical attention, but was caught by the peloton with 12.7km remaining. <\/p>\n
Adegeest was still out front but with Vollering\u2019s FDJ United-Suez team hammering the pace on the final classified climb, she was caught with 9km to go. <\/p>\n
The ever-depleting GC group raced onwards to a short unclassified climb, where Vollering went ballistic with just over 6km remaining and got a gap. Longo Borghini (UAE Team l\u2019Imad) and Niewiadoma (Canyon-SRAM) chased and inched back up to her, but both were hurting and cracked just before the summit. <\/p>\n
Longo Borghini led the chase on the descent and while the gap was just a few seconds there, the flat roads afterwards saw a rampaging Vollering increase her lead and finish well clear. She secured her second victory of the race and wrested the yellow jersey off Niewiadoma\u2019s shoulders, setting things up for a thriller of a final stage. <\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n
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[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/velo-cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/GettyImages-2289604113.jpg”] Shane Stokes Updated August 8, 2026 10:54AM Demi Vollering put in a stubborn, defiant performance on stage 8 of the Tour de France Femmes, launching a brutal attack on the final unclassified climb of the stage to drop race leader Kasia Niewiadoma and all her rivals, then soloed to the stage win […]<\/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-2085449","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\/2085449","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=2085449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2085449\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2085449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2085449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2085449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}