“Today we have to make it quick because I have to go and recover for tomorrow,” Marlen Reusser begins her press conference after stage six of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift.
Dressed in the yellow jersey, she’s just ridden 150km, climbed 2,500m through the hills of the Ardèche, all in 33°C heat, but already Friday’s queen stage is on her mind. It’s the day that will likely decide this Tour. More specifically, it’s the climb that will likely decide the Tour: Mont Ventoux.
On stage seven, the peloton of the Tour de France Femmes will wade into unchartered waters on the Giant of Provence. Only a handful of the riders have ever raced up the mountain – those that did the short-lived Mont Ventoux Dénivelé Challenge race in 2022 or 2023 – and only the GC hopefuls have been to recon its slopes. One of them was Reusser, who went a few weeks before the race.
Latest Videos FromCycling Weekly
“It was very windy that day and it was impressive, especially the downhill,” she said on Wednesday. “I did the downhill, I had quite deep rims, and I was almost crying, so afraid, because there were gusts.
“The uphill is going to be, of course, I expect, super hard. But I think if I could choose a hard day, I would choose more Ventoux than today [stage five] normally.”
That last sentence might surprise some people. As a rider often typecast as a time triallist – to be fair, half of her career victories, including her world title and four European titles, have come against the clock – Reusser isn’t someone fans often associate with long climbs. She’s never won a mountain stage at a Grand Tour, and has tended to lose time to her rivals when the altitude nears 2,000m.
Still, there’s a feeling that Ventoux might suit her. One colleague in the press pack has dubbed it a “Reusser climb”, for its steady slopes, and lack of prolonged steepness. Reusser, it seems, agrees.
“Actually, I like it,” she said. “I mean, it suits me more than the kind of climbs that we’ve done so far, but it’s going to be brutal, 100%.”
The question now is: does it suit her enough to hold off Demi Vollering (FDJ United-Suez) and Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney (Canyon-Sram), the riders who currently make up the podium? Reusser leads by just 12 seconds going into the stage. Would she have liked to have more of a buffer? “If you could have 10 minutes and win the Tour like this, why not?” she laughs.
“No, I’m joking. I think it makes it spicy. It makes it interesting, not only for you and for the public, but also for us. We’re going to see tomorrow.”
It was with hopefulness, perhaps, that one reporter asked Reusser about her strategy for the climb. “I don’t know,” she replied, and laughed: “If I already had a plan, it would not be smart to say it here, no?
“But I really don’t know. I focus on every day. I knew tomorrow was Mont Ventoux, but now I’ll go recover. Tomorrow I’ll take care of Mont Ventoux. I have a smart sports director, Kelvin Dekker, I’m sure he has some ideas.”
Dekker, it turns out, has one clear idea in mind. Speaking to Cyclingnews earlier he was bullish about Reusser’s chances: “We’re going to try to win the stage, that’s the main thing,” he said.
“[Reusser] is going to try and follow Demi, and then we’re going to try and beat her. Because I think if we want to win the Tour, we want to beat her on the Ventoux.”
Such fighting talk risks heaping pressure on a rider. But Reusser seems unfazed by the prospect. Wearing yellow, she said, “hasn’t changed me anyhow”. With three stages remaining, and edging closer to a career-defining victory, how does she manage to stay so calm? “I am asking myself the same question,” she said.
“Sometimes I have the feeling people, and also my competitors, take cycling very seriously, like very, very, very seriously. And I think, like everything in life, it’s just something. It’s just a fun thing to do, and we should enjoy it. It’s just a bike race. I’m maybe not that crazy about these things as others.”
Still, she’d like to win the Tour de France. She’d really like to win the Tour de France.
As Reusser got up to leave her press conference, the microphones still rolling, she thanked the assembled press and said cheerfully: “Hopefully see you tomorrow.” Her next call was to recover. Friday will be a big day.
Explore More
