Key events
82km to go: Kathrin Hammes has been caught by the bunch following her solo effort. The German earned herself seven QoM points during her breakaway but as things stand they won’t be enough to put her in the polka-dot jersey. Yara Kastelijn (Fenix-Deceuninck), who started today’s stage in the iconic garment, still leads the standings by a point.
Marianne Vos: The most successful woman in the sport spoke to Eurosport before today’s stage and was asked if she thought she might be in with a shout of winning today’s stage. “We want to be as offensive as possible,” said the Jumbo-Visma rider. “We want to try to make the race and we’ll see how that ends up. Hopefully we’ll be there with numbers to play the game.”
86km to go: Coryn Labecki has been reeled in by the peloton after going over the top of the Côte de L’Escurotte. The gap from the bunch to Hammes is down to 35 seconds.
88km to go: Not for the first time today, Jumbo-Visma’s Coryn Labecki has attacked off the front of the bunch and this time she has been reasonable successful in getting away. The American is 1min 04sec behind Hammes, with the bunch a further 35 seconds back.
97km to go: The next climb is the category four Côte de L’Escurotte, located 89 kilometres from the finish line. It’s 391m high and 2.6km in length, with an average gradient of 4.7%.
103km to go: Kathrin Hammes remains out in front and her lead is out to 1min 10sec. She’s averaged a little over one kilometre an hour over the peloton in the opening 40 kilometres but is being kept on a fairly tight rein.
109km to go: The opening stages of this year’s Tour de France Femmes are proving more attritional than those in the men’s race and by close of play yesterday we’d already lost five riders.
This morning, Cofidis rider Spela Kern didn’t sign on at the start after suffering a thumb injury in a crash yesterday, while Uno-X rider Marte Berg Edseth abandoned not long after today’s start.
Lucie Jounier, who began the day as Lanterne Rouge after suffering from abdominal issues, was dropped on today’s first climb, and has also quit the race.
110km to go: As we join today’s stage, the riders have already put almost 40 kilometres of road behind them and Kathrin Hammes (EF Education-Tibco-SVB) has launched a lone breakaway. The German was first over the opening two climbs, picking up four Queen of the Mountains points in the process. Hammes has a lead of one minute over the chasing peloton.
Who’s in what jersey?
-
Yellow: Lotte Kopecky (SD Worx)
-
Green: Lotte Kopecky (SD WOrx)
-
Polka-dot: Yara Kastelijn (Fenix-Deceuninck)
-
White: Cedrine Kerbaol (Ceratizit-WNT)
The top 10 on General Classification
-
Lotte Kopecky (SD Worx) 7hr 17min 36sec
-
Liane Lippert (Movistar) +49sec
-
Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio (AG Soudal-Quickstep) +59sec
-
Demi Vollering (SD Worx) + 59sec
-
Cecile Ludwig (FDJ-Suez) +59sec
-
Tamara Dronova (Israel Premier Tech Roland) +59sec
-
Elisa Longo Borghini (Lidl-Trek) +59sec
-
Annemiek van Vleuten (Movistar) +59sec
-
Katarzyna Niewiadoma (Canyon//Sram) +59sec
-
Ane Santesteban Gonzalez (Jayco ALUla) +1min 03sec
Lippert triumphs amid rain-induced ‘chaos’
Stage two report: The game of cat and mouse between the two strongest teams in women’s racing gathered pace in the Tour de France Femmes as the race leader, Lotte Kopecky, of Team SD Worx, was outsprinted in Mauriac by the German rider Liane Lippert, of Movistar.
Stage three: Collonges-la-Rouge to Montignac-Lascaux (147km)
Despite the presence of five categorised climbs, mere speedbumps compared to some of the climbs the riders have tackled in the past two days, today’s stage is likely to be decided by the sprinters at the end of a route that begins in the picturesque village of Collonges-la-Rouge and takes in the Vézère valley in all its glory.
With no climbs to negotiate in the final 50 kilometres the speedsters and their teams will be going all out to rein in any breakaway so they can contest the finish between them on the long 650-metre straight to the line in Montignac-Lascaux.
Charlotte Kool (DSM-Firmenich) and Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx) are the obvious candidates to duke it out in such circumstances, although the wily campaigner Marianne Vos can never be ruled out.
