Three Key Takeaways: Stage 7 of the TDF Femmes
How Demi Vollering's dominance on the pivotal stage of the recent TDF Femmes highlights a major issue with modern stage racing strategy
In the handful of days since Demi Vollering won the Tour de France Femmes for her SD-Worx team with dominant performances on the final two stages, I’ve been thinking about how the team managed what became a somewhat complicated race leadership situation during the course of the week as Vollering’s teammate Lotte Kopecky rode herself into a commanding race lead with strong riding through the opening six stages. This strong riding from Kopecky complicated things on the race’s seventh stage, which finished atop the brutal Col du Tourmalet, when SD-Worx came into the stage in the seemingly enviable position of having both the race’s GC lead with Lotte Kopecky and the race’s stronger rider in Demi Vollering.
However, when these two designations are two different riders, the situation is far more complicated than when they are a single rider. For example, heading into the stage, should Vollering’s strategy be to attack the final group of GC favorites, which was likely to include her teammate Kopecky, in an effort to gain back time on the final climb that suited her better than any other rider? Or, should she stay in the group until Kopecky was dropped before riding her own race? This decision might seem reasonable, but if Kopecky held on until too late on the climb, it would leave Vollering without enough real estate to claw back enough time to overcome her GC deficit and would have allowed Kasia Niewiadoma to ride clear and potentially steal the overall win.
This complex situation set up an interesting racing situation that produced a blowout victory for Vollering, but, at the same time, it exposed problems in the ‘let the road decide’ GC strategy and highlighted why it is so important for teams to clearly define team leadership before, and stick to it during, a race.
Let’s break it down below:
Select GC Heading into Stage 7
1) Lotte Kopecky +0
3) Annemiek van Vleuten +55
5) Kasia Niewiadoma +55
7) Demi Vollering +1’07
TDF Femmes Stage 7 Race Notebook:
35.1km: Annemiek van Vleuten’s Movistar team ramps up the pace on the penultimate climb of the day, the Col d’Aspin. Since Van Vleuten is burning her entire team, this has to be to set up an early attack, but this is somewhat odd since, with Vollering both trailing her in the GC and stronger than her, it is in her best interest to keep the pace as easily as possible until the final few kilometers of the Tourmalet.
34.6km: Despite it being in her interest to keep Kopecky in the group, which could force Vollering to ride a more conservative race, Van Vleuten attacks from extremely far out on the Aspin. Kasia Niewiadoma, who is right on her wheel, follows, and Demi Vollering easily surges across the slight gap to join them.
34.2km: Even when Van Vleuten realizes she hasn’t been able to drop two key GC riders, she continues driving the pace all the way up the Aspin with the two in her wheel.
22.8km: Niewiadoma smartly takes advantage of the situation by attacking the pair. Van Vleuten doesn’t want to waste energy by pulling Vollering to the base of the final climb, the Tourmalet, and Vollering, who has two teammates chasing close behind, and one in the race lead has nothing to gain by working with Van Vleuten. It would only distance her teammates and help Van Vleuten overtake Kopecky in the overall classification.
11.7km: After waiting, Vollering is pulled to within just a few seconds of Niewiadoma by her teammate Marlen Reusser, while Kopecky sits in and attempts to hold onto her lead.
5.5km: With the group still together and Niewiadoma dangling just over 30 seconds ahead, Vollering attacks a long way from the finish line on the Tourmalet. This looks somewhat odd considering Vollering is attacking, and dropping, her teammate who is in the front group and leading the race.
5.3km: Van Vleuten initially responds to Vollering’s attack, but the sustained power from the younger Dutch star is simply too much for anyone to match and she rides clear through the mist in pursuit of Niewiadoma.
3.9km: Once she drops Van Vleuten, Vollering quickly catches, and drops, Niewiadoma and continues to power away toward the finish line, where she wins ahead of Niewiadoma by close to two minutes, Van Vleuten by 2’34, and takes the race lead from her teammate Kopecky by 2’35.
Stage Top Six:
1) Demi Vollering +0
2) Kasia Niewiadoma +1’58
3) Annemiek Van Vleuten +2’34
4) Ashleigh Moolman +2’43
5) Juliette Labous +2’46
6) Lotte Kopecky +3’32
Stage 8 Time Trial Select Results:
1) Marlen Reusser +0
2) Demi Vollering +10
3) Lotte Kopecky +38
9) Kasia Niewiadoma +1’23
14) Annemiek Van Vleuten +1’41
TDF Femmes Final GC Standings
1) Demi Vollering (SD-Worx) +0
2) Lotto Kopecky (SD-Worx) +3’03
3) Katarzyna ‘Kasia’ Niewiadoma (SD-Worx) +3’03
4) Annemiek van Vleuten (Movistar) +3’59
5) Juliette Labous (DSM) +4’48
Three Key Takeaways:
1) Demi Vollering made the right decision for herself, but committed a significant cycling faux-pas in the process
Considering she won the overall title by over three minutes and was by far the strongest GC rider on every type of terrain, it is difficult to challenge the idea that Vollering made anything but the right decision by attacking and dropping Kopecky on the Tourmalet.
However, the fact remains that she attacked her teammate, while she was wearing the Yellow Jersey, and relegated her to second place overall.
Traditionally, this would be considered verboten, and extremely poor form, and would rarely be condoned by team management.
2) However, while it might have gone against tradition, the math backs up Vollering’s decision
The flip side of the Vollering decision is that she increased her SD-Worx’s team’s chance of overall success from something around 50% to above 95% by attacking, dropping the rest of the group, and soloing to the win.
Had Vollering stayed in the group and set a steady tempo for Kopecky once Van Vleuten inevitably attacked, she could have likely limited the losses her teammates suffered (perhaps by around 20-30 seconds), but this still would have required Kopecky to put significant time into both Niewiadoma and Van Vleuten in the final, 22.6-kilometer time trial.
While possible, this is a far riskier strategy than simply having Vollering pulverize the rest of the contenders on the Tourmalet and riding away to the win.
Option 1): Vollering rides all-out for Kopecky ≈ 50% chance of success
Knowing she is on the limit but needs to take time on Kopecky, Van Vleuten attacks inside the final 3km to distance the race leader.
Vollering paces Kopecky to the finish line roughly 30-40 seconds behind Van Vleuten and a minute behind Niewiadoma.
This would have limited Kopecky’s losses to a point where she could have won the overall after the final time trial. Ironically, this
Option 2): Vollering waits to attack until Kopecky is dropped ≈ 75% of success
Knowing she is the strongest rider in the race, but also wanting to be respectful of the fact that her teammate is in the race lead, Vollering sits in the front group until Kopecky is dropped before attacking and attempting to take enough time on the others to seal the overall win in the stage 8 time trial.
The downside of this strategy is that there is no guarantee Kopecky will be dropped without an acceleration from Vollering, which would mean that Kopecky would win the GC over Vollering.
Option 3): Vollering rides for herself ≈ 95% chance of success
Knowing she is the strongest rider in the race, Vollering attacks with just over 5km-to-go and solos to the stage win. She takes so much time en route that she easily seals up the overall victory.
3) This scenario highlights some of the major problems with a team coming into a stage race with fluid team leadership
While everything ultimately worked out for SD-Worx, and they were able to net the top two podium spots and four stage wins, this edition of TDF Femmes highlights some of the major issues with the ever-popular ‘let the road decide’ leadership strategy.
For example, there was a point on stage 7 when SD-Worx had two GC rivals, Van Vleuten, and Niewiadoma, in great positions, at least on paper, to overtake Vollering and Kopecky.
Every kilometer that went by without Vollering attacking got Van Vleuten closer to the line without losing time and gave her an opportunity to both distance Kopecky in the final kilometer while limiting losses to an eventual Vollering attack.
This meant to ensure overall victory, it was in Vollering’s interest, but not her teammate Kopecky’s, to attack Van Vleuten from as far down on the climb as possible.
Vollering’s attack took on some slight risk. If she were to attack and drop Kopecky, but also be dropped by Van Vleuten, she would have squandered her team’s GC lead, given her team’s GC rival the perfect platform to launch an attack, and fallen so out of the GC that she wouldn’t herself be able to take the overall victory.
But, by doing nothing in the group, Vollering was letting Niewiadoma ride clear and build up an overall advantage on her teammate Kopecky that she could potentially use to win the overall in the final time trial.
This set up an odd scenario that by trying to win the race herself, Vollering risked losing the race for her teammate Kopecky, but, ironically, by not attacking, she was risking her team’s chances even more.
Had Vollering and her SD-Worx team management considered keeping Vollering from attacking due to not wanting to violate the sacred law that a rider should never attack a teammate in the leader’s jersey (and a teammate that could actually win the overall), they would have seriously decreased their chances of winning the race.
At the end of the day, the best chance of victory for SD-Worx was always having Vollering drop all comers on the Tourmalet and finishing it off in the time trial. Kopecky’s grassroots GC campaign was a distraction from this, and veering from this strategy on the fly would have been a massive mistake, not to mention significantly decreasing their chances of overall success. Sometimes bike racing is as simple as having your strongest rider outperform everybody else on the two most important stages.
This shows the massive risk involved with picking leadership on the fly instead of defining, and staying committed to, a pre-race GC plan.
So much to work through here, thanks for breaking it down! Could it have been the plan all along for Vollering to be the leader and go for the win on stage 7, just due to the parcours?
I appreciate the analysis of the TdFF. It was an interesting race on the whole. The first stage was a head scratcher for me as it seemed no one wanted to attack because they feared SD worx. The race really lit up, however, once teams figured out they weren’t going to win without attacking. The other thing I found puzzling is other teams NOT forcing SD worx to chase on the stage where the break had 10 minutes. They were going to lose yellow but Lidl Trek helped SD worx bring back the break… and didn’t even come close to winning the stage. Same thing can be said for DSM when they blew through their whole team tin attempt the win the race for Kool. Weird tactics to me.