Elisa Longo Borghini produced another attacking ride on Stage 6 of the Tour de France Femmes, finishing seventh after an aggressive performance that moved the Italian champion up to fourth place in the overall standings. Dominika Włodarczyk also delivered a strong ride, taking ninth place after winning the sprint from the yellow jersey group.
Stage 6 covered 153.4 kilometres from Montbrison to Tournon-sur-Rhône. After the day’s early breakaway had been reeled in, Célia Gery (FDJ United – SUEZ) launched a decisive attack. Elisa Longo Borghini immediately bridged across, forming a select lead group together with Cédrine Kerbaol (EF Education-Oatly), Puck Pieterse (Fenix-Deceuninck), Sarah Van Dam (Team Visma | Lease a Bike) and Liane Lippert (Movistar Team).
The breakaway opened a maximum advantage of around 50 seconds over the yellow jersey group before the gap gradually came down to approximately 30 seconds. Longo Borghini did much of the work on the front, receiving little cooperation from the other riders in the move.
Inside the final kilometres, Kim Le Court-Pienaar (AG Insurance – Soudal Team) and Riejanne Markus (Lidl-Trek) bridged across to the leaders. Elisa was then forced to respond to several late attacks, but still secured an excellent seventh place, gaining 26 seconds on several of her main rivals for the general classification. Le Court-Pienaar won the stage.
Marlen Reusser (Movistar Team) retains the yellow jersey, with Demi Vollering (FDJ United – SUEZ) second at 12 seconds and Kasia Niewiadoma third at 1:17. Longo Borghini moves up to fourth overall at 2:28, while Dominika Włodarczyk sits sixth at 2:54 and Paula Blasi is tenth at 3:51.
UAE Team L’IMAD also maintains its lead in the team classification.
After the stage, Elisa Longo Borghini said: “Honestly, I had nothing to lose today and I just wanted to enjoy riding my bike. I knew that if Célia Gery attacked it would be the right move to follow, and when I saw nobody reacted, I decided to go myself. It was a pure instinctive attack. I wasn’t thinking about the stage win or the general classification; I simply wanted to enjoy racing my bike, and that’s exactly what I did. Tomorrow is another day and we’ll see what happens. There are still three very demanding stages ahead and I want to enjoy every single one of them.”
(ph. Getty Sport)
