Demi Vollering was finally unleashed in the mountains today, delivering an incredibly strong climbing performance on the Tourmalet to secure the yellow jersey before the final stage in Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift 2023. Not even the reigning World Champion and winner of all three Grand Tours Annemiek van Vleuten could challenge Vollering.
It was the only mountain stage in the 2023 Tour whilst in the inaugural 2022 edition there were two mountain stages, albeit both less difficult than the combination of Aspin and Tourmalet. Last year Annemiek van Vleuten dominated on both climbing days and was far ahead of everyone else but in 2023 the World Champion has not been as dominant in one-day races nor the climbs. She was dropped on Covadonga by Vollering in La Vuelta, but still won the race overall thanks to earlier time gains and also won the Giro Donne, in the absence of Vollering.
Van Vleuten attacked early on the Col d’Aspin but it was not as easy as in the 2022 Tour and Katarzyna Niewiadoma, and Demi Vollering stayed on her wheel. Vollering refused to do any work and waited for the Tourmalet, while Niewiadoma took a chance and went solo on the descent.
Col du Tourmalet is a very hard climb compared to those typically included in women’s races, which would surely make huge gaps in the GC. The second part of the climb is very difficult with gradients ranging from 8-10% in every kilometre and high altitude. Niewiadoma worked hard when going solo but the shallow beginning of the Tourmalet did not help her when Reusser was chasing for Vollering behind.
Van Vleuten and Vollering were caught by the yellow jersey group of Kopecky, Moolman, Labous, Ludwig, Spratt and Santesteban. The pace was not as high as it could be on the early slopes and it helped Niewiadoma to fight for the GC podium. The big question was when Vollering would attack.
Shortly after Labous accelerated with 6 km to go, Vollering finally launched and not even Van Vleuten could challenge her. The SD Worx leader quickly caught Niewiadoma who was incredibly strong, despite being solo for a long time. Vollering lost La Vuelta due to a mid stage nature break but in the Tour she was too strong for anyone and the questionable team tactics in the earlier stages did not matter as she had the best legs in the peloton by a mile.
Vollering for the whole Tourmalet did 5.13 ᵉW/Kg for 53:42 min which is an all time great performance for a long altitude climb. But the most impressive about her effort were the last six kilometres. Vollering pushed 5.58 ᵉW/Kg for the final 21 minutes of the climb at an average altitude of 1842 metres – putting 2:34 min into Van Vleuten. Normalising this attack section to sea level power, it would be 6.01 ᵉW/Kg for 21 minutes.
With the Col d’Aspin in the legs, Vollering did one of the greatest if not the greatest climbing performance we have in our database for women’s cycling. Vollering in La Vuelta was impressive on La Covadonga with 5.35 ᵉW/Kg for 31:01 min but this a much higher level. Gaia Realini was able to follow Vollering on Covadonga and would have been well suited for Tourmalet but was not selected for the Lidl-Trek team.
10th placed Ricarda Bauernfeind lost almost seven minutes, which shows how Vollering rode up the Tourmalet. With a 1:50 min lead in GC over Niewiadoma, Vollering will head into the final stage ITT with a comfortable gap over her rivals and yellow all but secured.
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Can you please explain how you normalize power for altitude? What is the formula? Support the claims