Tour de France Femmes: Demi Vollering wins final stage to clinch second title

Demi Vollering showed her prowess on the final stage of the Tour de France Femmes to become the first two-time winner of cycling’s most prestigious stage race.

The Dutch FDJ-Suez rider won the penultimate stage to snatch the leader’s yellow jersey from Katarzyna Niewiadoma-Phinney and carry an eight-second lead into Sunday’s finale.

The fifth edition of the race culminated with a 99.2km mountain stage, beginning and ending in Nice, which featured four ascents of the Col d’Eze and totalled 2,100m of climbing.

Niewiadoma-Phinney’s British team-mate Zoe Backstedt pushed the pace in the early stages before former race leader Marlen Reusser crashed on the second descent of the Col d’Eze.

Reusser was third in general classification, 72 seconds behind Vollering, and although the Swiss rider was able to keep riding, she was unable to get back in contention.

That left previous race winners Vollering and Niewiadoma-Phinney to battle it out and, just as Vollering did on Saturday, she pulled clear of her Polish Canyon-SRAM rival just before cresting the final climb and stretched her lead on the descent.

The 29-year-old went on to finish more than a minute ahead of her rivals as she claimed her third stage win from nine in this year’s race.

Vollering and Niewiadoma-Phinney, 31, kept up their record of finishing on the podium in every edition of the race while Italy’s Elisa Longo Borghini, 34, claimed her first top-three finish.

Puck Pieterse topped the mountains classification while sprinter Lorena Wiebes topped the points classification and Antonia Niedermaier, 23, was the best young rider.