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Sigrid Haugset, the Norwegian national champion, shocked the established order in the Tour de France Femmes, breaking away alone for 90km, to take the overall lead after winning stage three to Poligny.
“I never thought it was possible,” she said, after realising she had taken both the biggest success of her career and the overall lead in the sport’s biggest race. “It’s unreal. I was so dizzy at the end. I know my boyfriend would be so angry at me for not celebrating, but I couldn’t. I could not lift my arms off the bike. It was impossible.”
Haugset’s spectacular solo effort surprised the peloton’s leading teams and on the eve of the 21km individual time trial, from Gevrey-Chambertin to Dijon, she leads by two minutes and two seconds from Kim Le Court.
“I was thinking about all my teammates and everyone cheering from home, so I had to give it my all. All done in the Norwegian champion’s jersey too – it’s fantastic. We had looked at this stage and it was the goal for this Tour. I told my father I’d get some flowers today. Tomorrow is the time trial, but I haven’t worked on it this year so I will just enjoy it.”
Haugset is the first Norwegian rider to wear the yellow jersey in the Tour Femmes. The 27-year-old’s lone effort began at the foot of the second category Col de la Savine and was marked by an intense pursuit from former world road race champion, Lotte Kopecky, winner of the points classification in all three Grand Tours.
“I thought Kopecky would catch me. I can’t believe that she didn’t, but I kept on. The team car was amazing, pushing me,” she said.
Although, in what became an epic duel, Kopecky got as close as 10 seconds to Haugset, she was not able to find the power to finally close the gap and the Norwegian moved clear again to win the stage by almost a minute and a half.
Temperatures in the high 30s made it yet another suffocating and stifling day on the rout, with the ever-present iced drinks and ice socks passed up to the riders throughout the 156km stage.
As the sweat-streaked Haugset held on to win, the first sparring match between the race favourites came on the Côte de Chaux-Champagny, 25km from Poligny, where Le Court accelerated and temporarily left her rivals in disarray. But as the narrow climb went on, with brief tentative accelerations from Kasia Niewiadoma and Demi Vollering, the main contenders regrouped and with Tuesday’s potentially pivotal time trial looming large, a truce was called.
There is some uncertainty over how well the defending champion, Pauline Ferrand-Prévot, will fare in the winding test through the ‘Routes des Grand Crus’, which includes the sharp climb of the Lacets de Marsannay.
“It’s a real challenge for me,” she admitted, acknowledging her lack of time-trialling experience, certainly compared with Vollering and Le Court. The double Olympic gold medallist said that she has spent several months working to improve her time trialling, but accepts that she will have to “limit the damage” against the clock.
“We made sure to put me in a more correct position on the time-trial bike. We also set out to do quite a few aerodynamic tests on the track, and to try to find the fastest outfit.”
Even so, she appears to accept that she will be on the back foot as the peloton heads into the Rhone valley on Wednesday. “It’s a possibility,” she said. “I don’t know how much time I will lose, but I will give my best to lose the least possible.”
Much of the south-east of France, which will host Friday’s summit finish to Mont Ventoux and the Côte d’Azur stages on Friday and Saturday, remains under elevated risk of wildfires.
While the climb of the Ventoux scheduled for stage seven is expected to remain intact, the current routing of the stage through the Ventoux’s foothills could be affected. In a statement, the Vaucluse prefecture asked the organisers of the Tour de France Femmes to consider an alternative route. The prefecture is planning a risk assessment on Tuesday and has said that an “alternative route will be implemented should the wildfire risk be considered extreme”.
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