Mighty final TT sees Juliette Labous climb to 5th on GC at Tour de France Femmes

After Saturday’s epic mountain stage, the Tour de France Femmes concluded on Sunday afternoon with a testing 22.6 kilometre long time trial route, starting and finishing in Pau, where Juliette Labous claimed a brilliant sixth on the stage and moved up to fifth on GC.

A predominantly flat route, albeit with some rolling roads and tight turns, plus one short climb, it was a parcours that favoured the TT specialists. Rolling down the start ramp throughout the afternoon, each member of the Team dsm-firmenich gave it their best on the course after seven hard days of racing with Esmée Peperkamp putting in a good early time. All attention turned to Labous though as she left the start house, fully focused and with big ambitions to do a strong TT and see if that would move her up on GC come the end of the day. Flying out of the blocks, Labous set a strong tempo and managed to keep that up throughout the 22.6 kilometre route, catching her two-minute rider. Stopping the clock in 30 minutes and 32 seconds, it would be enough for a great sixth place on the stage and a time which Labous vault into fifth on GC for Team dsm-firmenich.

Speaking at the finish Labous said: “I’m really happy, especially after the first day I had. We said that we will see what comes by the end of the week and we really went for it each day, and a top five finish is really good – so I’m happy. I took the confidence out of yesterday’s ride for today. At the start I heard so many people shouting my name; it was incredible. I just gave it my all on the course. It was quite hard to hear at times because of the noise but Kelvin said to me that I was close to Van Vleuten so I thought ‘I must be going good’ and just kept going to the finish. To take a nice stage result and fifth overall is a result we can be happy with.”

Team dsm-firmenich coach Kelvin Dekker added: “It was important for us to do a good TT with Juliette. Going into it we had a bit of space behind and were looking up and wanted to go full to see if we could move-up. We did everything we could do right, did a good recon and talked through the course a lot together. We decided to go really fast from the beginning, a bit faster than the ideal plan, to try and have a really good intermediate and make Moolman a bit concerned and give Juliette more confidence. From there we knew that we were in the mix to gain a spot on GC. The second half saw Juliette fight a lot more, especially on the rolling final five kilometres, but she did great. To do a good TT on the final day and gain a spot on GC to finish fifth, especially when you look to the names ahead of us, I think we did the best we could. It was also really good to see how Juliette regrouped after the first day and fought on every stage. As a team we are really proud and happy that we could pull it off. I think in general it was a week where we just missed out on that top result with a win, as we took several other strong results, but to end in fifth place here then I think that is equally as good. The level is really high so we can all be proud of how we did this week.”