#Maëva Squiban

[womensworldtour]

Tour de France Femmes - Stage 7

After two brutal stages, this medium-mountain stage apparently daunted enough of the teams, especially with the Alpe d'Huez on Sunday, that the GC teams took it relatively easy. So finally, we got a true breakaway stage, with both Visma Lease-a-Bike and AG Insurance-Soudal very active to secure points in the sprint and mountains classification, respectively. Marianne Vos may have had the sprint classification all-but secured, but she went in the break and took no chances, so all she needs to do tomorrow is finish in the time cut.

Meanwhile, Justine Ghekiere and her teammate Julie van de Velde drove the break hard, with van de Velde doing a lot of work on the front to keep Ghekiere in the polka-dot jersey. (When she was awarded the most aggressive rider at the end of the stage it felt quite appropriate.)

Meanwhile, behind, the peloton was have a lazy day, with neither Canyon-SRAM nor SD Worx-Protime willing to spend much energy to real in the break until the base of the final climb. That meant that the remaining members of the break kept their time gaps, and it suddenly became apparent that Ghekiere wouldn't just secure the polka-dot jersey, she was probably going to win the stage! Ghekiere said in later interviews that she was dog-tired, but pushed on and took the stage, more than a minute ahead of the GC leaders.

Finally, on the slopes of the final climb, we saw some attacks in the reduced bunch, though not initially as we might have expected. Maëva Squiban (Arkéa-B&B Hotels) was the first to launch, and she stayed away and ended up taking second on the stage. a very impressive performance, one that would have been a stage victory if Ghekiere hadn't been hunting mountains points.

Pualiena Rooijakkers (Fenix-Deceuninck) was the first to attack from the bunch, and Demi Vollering (SD Worx-Protime) tested GC leader Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon-SRAM) once or twice, but it settled back in a detente, with the slopes not steep enough to get separation. It wasn't until the flamme rouge that Niewiadoma attacked, and when Vollering countered, she sprinted to third place on the stage and reduced her gap to Niewiadoma by four seconds.

Obviously, everything is waiting tomorrow for the final stage finish atop Alpe d'Huez, but we have to come back for a moment and say how impressive Gheiere has been in this TdFF. We knew she was a good climber, although the Giro mountains classification wasn't the best showcase, she won the blue jersey partly due to Clara Emond's withdrawal. But we remember that last year in Setmana Ciclista Valenciana, she rode for mountains so successfully that she won GC, and earlier this year she won the mountains classification in the Volta Ciclista a Catalunya in an impressive performance. Kudos to her and her team, we know riders like van de Wilde and Sarah Gigante have been riding hard for her, and it's been a great team effort.