The tension that followed a heated Stage 8 finale between Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney (Canyon-SRAM) and Demi Vollering’s FDJ United-SUEZ team appears to have been settled, despite animated words between the two Tour de France Femmes rivals in the opening kilometres of Stage 9.
TV cameras caught Vollering and Niewiadoma-Phinney riding alongside one another early in Sunday’s final stage having a conversation. Vollering later confirmed that she had approached her rival to clear the air over the previous day’s controversial finale.
“It was good that we had a talk together,” Vollering, draped in yellow, said after the stage. “It was all good in the end.”
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Niewiadoma-Phinney similarly suggested the matter had been resolved between the riders.
“Sometimes it’s nice for us riders to talk through things and maybe leave the media out of it,” she said. “At the end of the day, there’s so much going on when you’re full gas.
“We’ve been competing together for years, and we will be competing for the next year or so. None of us ever wants to have any sort of beef.”
The discussion followed a bitter end to Stage 8, when Niewiadoma-Phinney was furious with FDJ rider Célia Gery after feeling she had been blocked and pushed into the barriers by the French champion during the finale.
Niewiadoma-Phinney publicly confronted Gery after the finish and subsequently criticised the French rider and FDJ’s actions, saying she had lost all respect for the team over the incident.
Vollering said Sunday that FDJ had never intended to block Niewiadoma-Phinney and that Gery’s line had instead been dictated by the road.
“I went to Kasia this morning to say that we never had the intentions to block her,” Vollering explained. “It was also a tricky corner. There was a pothole in the middle, so it was only one way to take this line, and Célia had no other choice.
“Célia also, in this moment, didn’t realise she did anything wrong.”
The controversy spiralled overnight on social media, and FDJ-Suez’s Director Sportif Lars Boom said that Gery even received death threats.
“[Gery] got a lot of nasty messages, which makes me always very angry, especially because she’s such a young girl still, and we should always protect young people from these kinds of stupid actions from people who don’t think and just send a message,” Vollering revealed.
“It’s very sad to think that you go to somebody’s profile and send them threatening messages. I can really not understand this, but it makes me very angry. And she had a really rough time.”
The FDJ leader said she had been disappointed by how publicly the criticism had been directed at an individual rider while emotions were still running high.
“I wanted to have a chat with Kasia about this also because I was just a bit disappointed that she let all the emotions out like that about a rider and saying their name,” Vollering said.
“You should always try to avoid these kinds of things. First of all, we are riders, and then next to it, we are human beings, we are real persons. If you say somebody’s name or you really attack somebody like this, it really hurts somebody and can really do bad things to people.”
There was little time for either rider to dwell on the dispute as the stakes were as high as they can get. Vollering started the 99.2km final stage with a mere eight seconds over Niewiadoma-Phinney on general classification, leaving the yellow jersey still very much in play on a course featuring four ascents of the Col d’Èze.
Asked how she had managed to shut out the controversy with the Tour still on the line, Vollering offered a simple solution.
“Don’t go on social media. That helps a lot,” she said.
On the final ascent of the Col d’Èze, Vollering made the decisive move around 800 metres from the summit, with an acceleration to which Niewiadoma-Phinney had no response. Vollering crested the top with an 18-second advantage and continued to extend it to well over a minute on the descent into Nice to claim her second Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift victory.
By the time the celebrations began, any lingering animosity appeared to have disappeared, with the two rivals embracing and chatting amicably.
”[Demi] makes me work harder and then dream to come back here and get the yellow jersey again,” Niewiadoma-Phinney said.
Vollering and Niewiadoma-Phinney have now both finished on the final podium in all five editions of the Tour de France Femmes since its 2022 revival. They’ve also both won the Tour, so while the tension from Stage 8 appears to have been put to rest, the rivalry between the pair is certainly going nowhere.
