00:00Hello, everyone. Bicycling's coverage of the Tour de France Femmes AVEC Zwift Stage 9, the final stage.
00:06We are so excited to bring you the racing action. So sad that it is over. I'm Molly Herford. That's Tara Suplevi.
00:13Tara, it is such a good thing that I did not wear mascara as we recorded because I have now sobbed like five times in the last 30 minutes.
00:23I've cried. I think I was crying before the neutral rollout finished this morning. Yeah, it's a day.
00:34It's been emotional for us.
00:36We have, you know, we have tears. You know, there's happy tears, there's sad tears. I'm sad that tour season is over, right?
00:44Like the, all the tour, all the tours de France's are over. I'm sad about that. But I'm also happy tears about like getting to see like, like a dominant performance of a rider in her prime.
01:01A hundred percent. Yeah. And you know what? I also love it because you and I back in the tour previews, you and I called PFP, Polly and Fran Prevot, for the win.
01:10And I think we were some of the only people that said, she's got it. She's going to get ballering. No one believed us. And you know what? We were right.
01:19And my sad question, though, is PFP at the beginning of this race said she thought it was like a two to three year goal that she would take the win and then she would retire.
01:28Does she announce her retirement today? I hope not.
01:32I don't know. And I mean, she's still talking as the time of filming, she's still talking on with the press and everything.
01:39She'd be talking to the press for hours because like this is a huge deal, not only in cycling, not only in women's cycling, but in France, like for the French people to have a French tour winner.
01:51That's huge. And you could see it like watching the stage and everybody who was out and all the L.A. Pauline signs and everything.
02:01Yeah. When you saw crowds, you were hearing just L.A. Pauline, L.A. Pauline just the whole time.
02:08It was incredible. And OK, we have to quickly go back to the beginning of the stage, because I'll be honest, when it first started,
02:14FDJ Suez finally seemed like, OK, we're not going to just let Pauline ride away with this win.
02:20They were doing everything they could to drop her, to drop all of the Viz Malisa bike women.
02:25And you know what? They did it. They dropped everybody, including PFP.
02:29She clawed her way back. She used all of her teammates to get her back in that lead group.
02:35And I'll be honest, when I saw it, I was I think I was messaging you being like, oh, my God, it's I thought this was going to be not a victory lap,
02:42but I thought it was going to be pretty in the bag. And I was like, this might not be in the bag.
02:46Oh, no. What did you think?
02:49I knew it was in the bag. But I think I think everybody wanted their stage win. Right.
02:55And like rolling into the day, I actually expected Kashinu and Doma to to throw down a little and say, hey, you know, like I'm defending,
03:05you know, the number one on my back. And, you know, obviously she had an excellent race.
03:13Like, you know, if you finish in the top 10 in the Tour de France after nine days of racing,
03:18after a few heavy days in the mountains, you did something right.
03:22But yeah, I mean, I don't think any of us expected
03:26Pauline to just absolutely ride away from everybody, you know, in the last several Ks.
03:34Yeah. And you know what? A 10K to go. I was actually sitting there watching this group of the top GC riders,
03:40and they're all kind of looking around at each other, sort of like waiting to go.
03:45And I was literally shouting at my screen, go, go, go. Someone do something.
03:49And Demi Vollering tried. PFP was right on her wheel.
03:52Cassie was right on her wheel. You know, 6.5K to go right after Vollering has attacked
03:58and kind of gotten caught again. PFP comes out to the left and just goes.
04:03And it was brilliant. The timing was brilliant. Honestly, I loved this race because it,
04:09you know, yesterday they talked about, Demi talked about like the stage yesterday came down
04:13to just who had the best legs. But so much of this Tour has come down to which team
04:18has the best tactics, which rider has the best tactics, best instincts,
04:22and who can just have those attacks at the exact right time.
04:27We saw it with the solo, you know, the solo flyers from like Mavis Squibbin, Maddie Garcia.
04:33It's just been an incredible race that really shows the depth and strength of the women's field.
04:39And that's been so exciting.
04:41Yeah. And I think something that was really important that you saw, particularly today, right?
04:47You saw over the last few days how important climbing skills are, right?
04:52But today you particularly saw how important descending is.
04:57And just, you know, that you saw, we saw Sarah Gigante ride herself off the podium.
05:05And it was, as somebody who loves descending on a bicycle, I watched that and I was like,
05:12I felt like I wanted to like help her. I wanted to hug her and like, no, no, no, we can do this,
05:19right? Like, come on, we got this. Like, let's chase them down. But there is that thing of when
05:24you get dropped and you're trying to bridge back onto a group, you can't tell how fast they're
05:29descending unless they're right in front of you. And she lost that gap. And she
05:35lost a lot of it on the descents. And she she wrote herself off the podium when she after
05:41she wrote herself onto it. So 100%. Yeah, yeah, this race definitely really came down to as
05:48winning by climbing, losing by descending. And I think you're going to see a lot of women
05:54Sarah Gigante already had gone and gotten instruction on descending. It's not like she wasn't
05:58working on it, but she knows it's a weak spot. She's going to continue to realize it's a weak
06:02spot that needs to get honed. And I think next year, we're going to see a lot more of the riders
06:06doing these specialized descending camps where that is all they are focusing on because she,
06:12you know, got off the podium by 15 seconds, right? She went from being second to sixth today.
06:18And New Fisher Black eked in front of her by 15 seconds. And that was something she could have
06:23made up descending. So that hurts. But you know what? We just got to celebrate Pauline Fran Prevaux
06:30for one more second before we wrap up this coverage of the Tour de France Femmes of X-Swift.
06:36It has been just such a remarkable race. I, you know what, as a longtime cyclocross fan,
06:42longtime mountain bike fan, longtime road fan, I just love seeing PFP on top of yet another podium.
06:48She's finally got that yellow jersey in her closet. So on purpose. I think, though, that something has
06:56to be said is that, like, last year watching going, okay, they have this mountaintop finish. And
07:01I thought that was huge. And I actually thought that that was something that was special about
07:07the Tour de France Femmes, right? That it was a race over nine days, and you actually race all nine
07:13days. And then today, I'm watching this. And from from from the drop this morning, I'm going, wow,
07:19you know, I really would have loved to see a processional lap. I would have loved to see
07:26Pauline winning this, riding the yellow jersey down the Champs-Élysées. Yeah, I mean, you look at what
07:33what the country of France would have done. I mean, we saw her in the post race there. She's getting a
07:38call from President Macron of France, right? Just to have that there in Paris. I think that the public
07:45would have taken her, rolled her down to the Louvre, hung her up right next to the Mona Lisa,
07:50because that's how much she's just like, loved by France right now.
07:56Yeah, I mean, when you're trying very hard to clearly get the president off the phone,
08:01because he's talking too much to you, and you have other things to do, you know,
08:05it went well, it went well. So chapeau to PFP. And to I mean, all the other riders, it was just
08:14such a fantastic race. If you missed any of the stages, make sure that you catch up on our recaps,
08:19because your friends are going to be talking about this for the next month of group rides.
08:24All right, I'm Molly Hereford. That's Tara Suplebi. Thanks for hanging out with us. It has been
08:28an absolute adventure. See you next year.
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