Tour de France Femmes: Pauline Ferrand-Prevot wins stage eight to take yellow jersey

The general classification competition was finely poised before Saturday’s dramatic action, with the top five riders separated by just 35 seconds.

Le Court, of team AG Insurance-Soudal, held a 26-second advantage over Visma-Lease a Bike’s Ferrand-Prevot, while defending champion Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney and Vollering were both within 31 seconds of the lead.

Le Court suffered a crash on a descent and lost around one minute to the peloton earlier in the day, but managed to catch the main group with more than 45km to go.

Following that recovery, rather than riding to protect the yellow jersey she claimed in winning stage five on Wednesday, Le Court pushed the pace on the Col de la Madeleine to set up an attack by team-mate Sarah Gigante.

However, Ferrand-Prevot was able to follow Gigante and launched a counter-attack to make her way to the front of the race 7km from the summit.

Only Fisher-Black and Yara Kastelijn remained from the day’s breakaway and Ferrand-Prevot soon proved too strong as she powered clear to the finish.

On a gruelling final ascent of the hors categorie Col de la Madeleine, lasting 18.6km at an average gradient of 8.1%, the 33-year-old, who rode to victory solo at Paris-Roubaix in April, put herself in a dominant position with one day of racing left.

Sunday’s concluding stage offers a final opportunity for the riders to improve their standing, with another mountainous 124.1km route from Praz-sur-Arly to Chatel featuring more than 2,800m of ascent.