Kim Le Court swoops for Tour de France Femmes stage five win and yellow jersey

Kim Le Court made the classic error of raising her arms just before the finish line, but survived a late lunge from a resurgent Demi Vollering to win stage five of the Tour de France Femmes in Guéret.

The Mauritian rider is enjoying a stellar 2025, having already worn the yellow jersey after stage two, and also led the Tour of Britain and won the Belgian classic, Liège-Bastogne-Liège.

“The big goal was to take the bonus sprint,” Le Court (AG Insurance-Soudal) said of her success in the longest stage of the Tour Femmes, “which I managed to do. Then I was thinking about the stage victory.”

“It was a bit tricky at the end. Maybe I gave a bit of a fright to people watching, and in the sprint when you lift your hands you should double check. Lucky for me, I had enough of a gap.”

Le Court and Vollering (FDJ-Suez) were part of a select group of race favourites, also including defending champion Kasia Niewiadoma, the Olympic mountain biking champion, Pauline Ferrand-Prévot (Visma-Lease a Bike), and former world road race champion, Anna van der Breggen (SD Worx-Protime), that moved ahead on the final climb into Guéret.

Three climbs in the final 35km shattered the peloton. On the first, the Cote de Chabannes, the trio of breakaway riders split apart, with Brodie Chapman, riding for UAE Team ADQ, the last to be caught.

Then a ferocious pace to the final climb, Le Maupuy, reduced the lead group even further, with defending champion Niewiadoma’s Canyon-Sram Zondacrypto team leading the way, and finally distancing the overnight leader, Marianne Vos, who ended the day sixth in the GC after finishing just over 30 seconds behind.

The heated war of words between the Visma Lease-a-Bike team of Vos and Ferrand-Prévot and that of FDJ-Suez race favourite Vollering appeared to be over after team managers Jos Van Emden and Stephen Delcourt shook hands in the team bus parking area before the stage start in the Futuroscope theme park.

After Vollering’s crash on Monday evening, Delcourt had rounded on her rivals saying: “The mentality of some teams is insane. Absolutely disrespectful. How is it possible that everyone wants to gamble with their lives?” Van Emden’s reaction to Delcourt’s criticisms only fanned the flames. “I have absolutely no respect for those comments,” he said of Delcourt. “He apparently wants a peloton of eight riders, with Demi in it, to ride in a gilded cage. He’s simply been influenced by Demi’s posturing.”

At Futuroscope, the pair came face to face, with Visma’s Jacco Verhaeren, the team’s sporting director, acting as moderator for a 20-minute discussion. “It was really good, really constructive,” Delcourt said. “We share the same idea. We want safety for everybody.” But the Frenchman still maintained that he did not regret his original remarks. “No, I don’t. We agreed to disagree.”

Vollering, meanwhile, has clearly recovered from a crash which only 48 hours earlier had looked likely to force her to leave the race. Second place, in a ferocious sprint finish, showed that her ambition and appetite remain intact.

Thursday’s sixth stage, from Clermont-Ferrand to Ambert, further ramps up the pressure with four climbs, including the first category Col du Béal, in the second half of the stage. The rolling roads of the opening stages are now behind them as the peloton braces itself for a long and gruelling weekend in the mountains.