Marianne Vos rejuvenated. At 35, the Oranje legend adorned herself on Monday in Provins with the only color missing from her collection: the yellow of the women’s Tour de France jersey which she did not dream of as a child, for lack of a women’s Grande Boucle.
Fault restored. After three rainbow tunics and too many maglia rosa To count them, Dutchwoman Marianne Vos donned the golden fabric at the end of the second stage by setting up a small group in the sprint.
“It’s not revenge, it’s an absolutely wonderful day,” savored the leader of Jumbo-Visma after his second place the day before, on the Champs-Élysées.
At 35, the three-time world champion (2006, 2012 and 2013) and three-time Giro winner (2011, 2012 and 2014) further lengthened her record by isolating herself in the lead with the Italian Elisa Longo Borghini and the Polish Katarzyna Niewiadoma, big winners of the day. Unlike Marta Cavalli, forced to abandon after a very violent fall.
The Italian, co-leader of the French team FDJ-Suez, cursed on Monday, was hit at full speed by Australian champion Nicole Frain, who arrived without braking in a slowdown caused by a fall.
A stroke of luck for the FDJ-Suez team, which lost the runner-up at the Giro to the immense favorite of the Tour, Annemiek van Vleuten.
“Obviously the objectives will change,” said team manager Stephen Delcourt. It’s part of the sport. »
The bad luck of FDJ-Suez
Especially since the Danish Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig, the other card of the French formation, caught in another fall, conceded more than a minute and a half on Vos, Longo Borghini and Niewiadoma. But only one on van Vleuten, trapped by the decisive racing movement during the first passage over the line, at the top of a hill, 20 km from the finish in Provins.
The yellow jersey at the start of Meaux, 136 km earlier, Lorena Wiebes, settled 29 seconds late in the sprint of a nervous peloton and dented by the falls in the vast plains of Brie.
For Vos, who has won almost everything on his bike, between his Olympic titles on the track (points race, 2008) and on the road (2012) and his 32 stages of the Giro, this yellow jersey has a taste of success. It was she who won on the Champs-Élysées in 2014 for the first edition of La Course by Le Tour, a women’s event launched by ASO.
A creation that owes to the work of the Dutchwoman: “Nine years ago, when we discussed the creation of an event with ASO, everything went very quickly to launch La Course. When we first drove down the Champs-Élysées [en 2014, pour la première édition, NDLR], this day was a milestone. »
“Now, being here, in a stage race, the real Tour de France, is another moment to mark with a white stone”, added the one who, as a child, attended the men’s Grande Boucle with her parents, in France.
“We were going to Alpe d’Huez, to the sprint finishes, to Pau, she said again at the start in Meaux on Monday. That was how we spent our summer holidays, along the way, in a motorhome. »
Without dreaming of the yellow jersey then. “It was not a dream, because there was no Tour de France for women, she admitted at a press conference. Now that it exists, it is something immense. It will be very special to wear it in the race. And that’s what she will do on Tuesday between Reims and Épernay (133.6 km), where the sparkling finale of the third stage strewn with ribs corresponds to her qualities as a puncher.