The champions enter alone on the Promenade des Anglais, and none like Demi Vollering, who does it twice, once on Saturday, once on Sunday; once from the east, once from the west; once in white as European champion, the second, in dazzling yellow, very bright, smiling as if at the end of a stroll enjoying the breeze, after a victorious battle without mercy or pity with Kasia Niewiadoma. With her third stage win in a race she only lost control of on the ascent to Mont Ventoux on Thursday, Vollering, 29, becomes the first cyclist to win two Tours in the decade, the first also to win Giro and Tour in the same season, and also the most important classics, Liège, Fleche, Flanders, and she did not win the Amstel (she finished third, and Niewiadoma second) because that day in April outside Maastricht, with an attack of pure instinct, an instant decision that changes life forever, Paula Blasi was born as a champion. She won the great Dutch classic ahead of the two best in the world and four months later, with them, she continues, at 23, in the great race. She sprints to be second on the great avenue of the Nice beach, a minute after Vollering, and seals a magnificent fifth place overall in her debut in the grande boucle.
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Having crossed the finish line of the last stage, Blasi chats with her captain, the Italian Elisa Longo Borghini, as if they were lifelong friends. Smiles and hugs. She thanks her for her work in the last kilometers to help her be fifth. They high-five. The bad days by Lake Léman, in Lausanne, are a distant memory. The controversies and bad spirits in a team, UAE, that played childishly secretive. Blasi’s unease in such a publicized race, with so much impact, because she happened to say she would not be the team leader despite having won the Vuelta and everything she has raced, and she receives a warning from the team. “That’s not said,” they warn her. “You are too young to be the leader. You have a lot to learn.” And her morale drops even more, she suspects they punish her because she is negotiating to leave the team. She is so lost that the first days she agrees with her bosses by getting dropped on the climbs for being badly positioned. Blasi is smart and generous. She learns very fast. She convinces Longo by pedaling that she is not the devil. She helps the Italian as much as she can.
“With Elisa we have a lot of communication. We were clear that the goal was the podium,” says Blasi after the hugs and congratulations, accepting with a smile that trying to win the white jersey for best young rider would have been a mistake. Longo, third, after Marlen Reusser fell on a descent trying to catch the best after dropping on the climb. She is fifth. “We increasingly saw the podium as secure and said, we have to work as a team because Antonia [Niedermaier, the German with the white jersey] looked very strong, she was fourth overall. And that was it: we wanted to secure the podium.”
The road also teaches Blasi that she still needs to grow to be on par with the greatest, with Vollering, with Niewiadoma, whom she watches from afar while they engage in a brutal boxing match on the climb via the Camino de los Vinagreros on the fourth ascent to the col d’Èze, and to Vollering’s KO victory, who regains her throne after two very tough second places in 2024 and 2025.
Carousel of the col d’Èze, four stairs to climb, four slides to launch at full speed. Halfway through the stage. Eleven remain in the group of the best. The leader, Demi Vollering, is there, and also the second, only 8s behind, Kasia Niewiadoma. Marlen Reusser is missing, the Swiss who was leader until Ventoux and was still third. She fell on the second descent from the Nice viewpoint, down there by the sea. The three from UAE – Elisa Longo, Paula Blasi, Dominika Wlodarckzyc, third, seventh, and eighth overall — still maintain the fiction of their variable geometry strategy. They breathe a little in a stage without peace after having climbed breathlessly, fiercely, breaking speed records up the col for the second time, on the incredible wheel of Zoe Backsted, the phenomenal Englishwoman with the genes of her father, the gigantic Swede, and aptly named, Magnus, almost 100 kilos and winner of a medium mountain stage in the Festina Tour and a Paris-Roubaix ahead of Fabian Cancellara. Niewiadoma, their leader, woke up determined to reconquer in the bravest and most aggressive way the yellow jersey she lost with the Dutchwoman’s attack on the L’Arieta wall on Saturday.
It is a fight poisoned by memory and grievances, indelible affronts always. The Polish rider so light on the pedals is hurt by the memory of how Célia Gery, under Vollering’s orders, closed her in a curve to open a gap very difficult to close in her boss’s attack on the wall, what a childish trick. And Vollering takes the opportunity to remind Niewiadoma that if she only won the Tour two years ago by 4s it was because she took advantage of her fall, what poor sportsmanship.
“I had never won with the yellow jersey,” says the best cyclist in the world. “I thought of my team, I thought of Célia; what a very, very hard night she had. I thought of all the work I had done before this.”
The first ascent they do chatting, accelerating their desires. The second, without looking at each other, turning in the meat grinder managed by Backsted. On the third they measure each other. They study each other. On the fourth, by the shortest and hardest path, they really fight. The Polish attacks, forced to recover the 8s, and Vollering responds very easily. Repressed power in her legs. It is a physical and psychological game. They take turns ahead. They fake each other out. Neither yields until, 500 meters from the last summit, Vollering’s power shouts, accelerating in unstoppable progression until Niewiadoma yields. “I thought: ‘I have to try to attack and go alone,’ because I wanted to make it clear that we did not win thanks to an incident on Saturday. I wanted to make it clear that we, as a team, deserve to win a beautiful Tour de France, with humility and pride.”
The rest, satisfied pride, is a triumphant stroll for Vollering, until her coronation in Nice.
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