The 2023 Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift came to its conclusion with a 22.6km individual time trial around Pau, with five riders from AG Insurance Soudal Quick-Step completing the now famous race.
The final day saw the riders tackle a mainly lumpy route, with a small climb up to the first time check, and then a brutally steep finishing ramp in to the town of Pau, a course that was mastered Marlen Reusser of SD Worx. Of our riders, Maaike Boogaard would record the best time on the day, coming home in 24th place.
After her battling performances over the last 8 days, many eyes were on our team leader Ashleigh Moolman Pasio, who despite being disappointed with her personal performance against the clock, was able to secure a top 50 place on the stage, and placing herself in 6th on the overall general classification. The overall victory would go to Demi Vollering.
Reflecting on her ride today and the Tour de France Femmes Avec Zwift as a whole, Moolman Pasio said, ‘Today I gave everything I could, but it wasn’t enough - It wasn’t a great time-trial. Its a tour and you never know how the body it going to respond and unfortunately today I paid the price of yesterday. The team have been absolutely fantastic this week, it has been a great vibe and environment, and we will keep fighting for more results and more good experiences together.’
After 8 days full of hard racing, emotions and the challenges that come with the Tour de France Femmes, the team can look back on their week with some pride. Ashleigh would spend most of the week sitting in second place on GC, with her teammates either protecting her or putting in their own attacking displays, with one of our riders almost always prominent in the race.
Sports Director Jolien D’Hoore spoke of this when saying, ‘It has been a really good race. We have been riding with the green jersey for the whole week, even though we did not own the jersey, it was special for the team and great for our brand visibility. Ashleigh looked strong for the whole week and the team did everything that they could to support her. She was second in GC, right up to the last weekend, and then it was up to her for the Tourmalet and the time trial. It was a matter of if she had strong legs, and it was an honest way to finish. She has a good result yesterday and then today in the TT she went down a spot, and become 6th overall. Maybe this is a little of a disappointment on the day, but overall we can be happy with our performances all week. We have come along way from last year, where we were a small team, and now this year we stepped up. Everybody knows us now and we proved that we belong here, in the biggest stage race of the year. Hopefully next year we can come back even stronger and fight for a top 5, or even a podium’
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