Maëva Squiban fuelled joyous scenes in the Haute-Savoie, winning the first high mountain stage of the 2025 Tour de France Femmes in Chambéry, just 24 hours after taking victory in stage six in Ambert.
The French rider, who celebrated draped in a Breton flag, was part of a 13-rider breakaway that splintered on the first climb, the Côte de Saint-Franc and then gradually dwindled as the gradients started to bite.
Squiban, a former French junior champion when 15 years old, finally shed her last companion, Mareille Meijering, 2km from the top of the Col du Granier and accelerated clear alone.
“At the start, I made a joke about attacking again,” she said, “but in the end it wasn’t a joke.”
On the fast descent of the Granier, overlooking Chambéry, Squiban, nudging 80km/h on the narrow road, again held off the pursuing group of race favourites, including the defending champion Kasia Niewiadoma and rival Demi Vollering, to take successive stage wins.
Further down the Granier, Kim Le Court’s time in yellow appeared to have come to an end when the group of favourites picked up the pace, and her closest rival, France’s Pauline Ferrand-Prévot, briefly became race leader on the road.
But Le Court was saved by her fearless descending. The Mauritian did not panic and her dogged pursuit of the group containing Niewiadoma, Vollering and Ferrand-Prévot paid off when she rejoined them close to the finish.
“I think I almost died a few times on the descent,” Le Court said. “The last 4km of the uphill were difficult. My body just completely shut off.
Once I got to the top, I knew I had to do the best downhill of my life to try and come back. I did a recon of the descent a few weeks ago so I knew what was coming, and I just had to go full gas. I think I went 10 times faster than the recon.”
Meanwhile, on the eve of the toughest mountain stage in the race, Ferrand-Prévot’s drastic weight loss was the subject of some scrutiny after images of her racing jersey, pinned at the sleeve so it didn’t hang loosely, emerged in the Dutch media.
The debate has been fuelled by comments made by French rider Cédrine Kerbaol who, alarmed by the weight loss among her peers, told French media: “We’re in a dangerous moment. There are a lot of people that have won big races with very low weight, and young girls, who are trying to perform, will take them as an example. What’s happening is not great.”
“Top-level sport is extreme in every way,” Rutger Tijssen, sport technical manager at Ferrand-Prévot’s Visma-Lease a Bike team, told Sporza.
On Saturday, when the women’s peloton will tackle both the 13km-long Col de Plainpalais and, later, a summit finish on the “beyond category” Col de la Madeleine – an 18.6km climb to 2,000m – power-to-weight ratios will be pivotal.
“Pauline’s leaner than in the spring,” Tijssen said, “but this also requires different things when you have to climb the Col de la Madeleine. Then it’s logical that you adapt.”
Ferrand-Prévot won the Olympic mountain bike title at Paris 2024 but has since devoted herself to road racing with the goal of winning the Tour de France Femmes.
“She’s not much leaner than she was a year ago,” Tijssen said. “Of course, she stays healthy. You know what’s happening and you make choices, which we monitor.”
The next 48 hours will decide the outcome of the race, which includes summit finishes on the Madeleine and at Châtel, as well as the daunting climb of the Col de Joux Plane on Sunday. Only 35 seconds currently separate the top five in the overall standings, but with more than 6,000 metres of climbing still to come, those gaps are certain to widen.
