There is no peace in the Tour. Not a day, not a minute, not a second. Demi Vollering is on fire, inhabited by her soul as a young speed skater, and there is no climb that does not ignite her passion, her desire, her devastating attacks that make everyone tremble, and she is rewarded with a second stage victory, the admiring applause of her defeated rivals, and, one day before the end of the race, the yellow jersey.
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Everyone was waiting for her. A fourth-category climb. A small descent, a right turn, and there, imposing, the Camin de l’Arieta among luxury urbanization chalets with splendid views of the blue Mediterranean and Nice at their feet. Just under 500 meters at 14%. A wall six kilometers from the finish that the European champion turns into hell. Her team, FDJ, has powered through the fourth-category climb and the descent. Three locomotives – Koch, Berthet, Gery — and a missile called Vollering that jumps supersonic as soon as the wall steepens. Niewiadoma, hindered and poorly positioned, takes time to reach her wheel, and also Elisa Longo, always lively, eager to join the parties. Both hold on and Vollering insists, standing on the bike, and experiences a sort of mystical experience that she later describes, still amazed, still not quite understanding the trance in which she pedaled for half a dozen kilometers. “When I came in January, half injured in the knee, to recon this stage, I saw a very clear image, a premonition, here I will get the yellow jersey,” she says about the climb along the path. “I thought that image made no sense, and I forgot it.” It’s curious, but in the morning, before the race, that image attacked me strongly again in a kind of déjà vu, and I thought, maybe it’s true, maybe this is how it has to happen. And when I attacked, I just kept repeating, I can do it, we can do it, yes, we can.”
Only at the end of the wall does she break away from the two cling-ons. She crowns with half a dozen meters and blindly launches into the descent, guided by an instinct that does not fail her. Half a dozen seconds when she enters the Promenade des Anglais, a straight of almost four kilometers next to the beach and Nice airport, and she accelerates without looking back. An ideal time trial that ends the resistance and strength of the Italian champion, the only one pulling behind. At her wheel, the yellow leader does well just to hold on. “At 500 meters I already felt a terrible pain. I was dead. I couldn’t go on,” says the Polish rider, who couldn’t even sprint to catch the six-second bonus.
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She was tired and possessed by a just anger as well. Niewiadoma, the Polish rider who flew on Mont Ventoux and lost the lead by 8s, neither applauds nor submits, she only feels rage and a lot, a lot of heat, and pants, exhausted, without strength to get up from the asphalt where she sits just after crossing the finish line: “I’m furious. Célia Gery deliberately closed me against the curb when Demi attacked,” claims the rider who beat Vollering in the 24 Tour at Alpe d’Huez. “It was not an accident at all because I saw she was watching me to push me against the barrier, and then she stopped pedaling. Those tricks aren’t done even in a kindergarten, much less in the Tour.”
Marlen Reusser, the Movistar leader who is third, neither has the explosive capacity of the three who left her stuck on the climb nor skill on the descents. She is 1m 12s behind in the general before a last stage that does not suit her style or abilities: it is a carousel, an explosive roller coaster of 99 kilometers with four ascents to the col d’Éze before a dizzying descent to the same Promenade des Anglais. Three times the traditional route is climbed. The fourth, by the very steep path of Monte del Vinagrero, an ambush that will make Vollering dream and give hope to Niewiadoma. For Blasi, seventh overall, 1m 11s behind the white jersey worn by the German Antonia Niedermaier, a domestique of the Polish rider, it will be the last chance to see if finally UAE believes in her and organizes an attacking stage, going for the white, which would be no small thing in such a tormented and educational debut at 23 years old.
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