Tour de France Femmes: stage three to Épernay – live updates! | Tour de France Femmes

To burst any bubbles readers may have … maybe picturing me hugging Alberto Contador for dear life on the back of a motorbike in north-east France, while trying to type something, anything one-handed on a laptop … today’s blog comes to you from my second bedroom in SG19.

Strangely, despite big talk of “each and every stage will be broadcast from the start line to the finish on Eurosport”, this doesn’t appear to be the case, and the broadcaster appears to be sticking with highlights from yesterday’s stage despite the stage now being very much under way. Curious.

We Shall Overcome. The riders burst out of Reims as one, I’m told. We’ll keep tabs on any breakaways via the SUDDENLY VERY IMPORTANT OMIGOD DON’T BREAK DON’T BREAK live tracking.

Eurosport have been replaying yesterday’s horrendous crash … and it really doesn’t get any less grim through multiple rewatches. I won’t be going to go out of my way to link you up to that one.

Today’s neutralised start has begun. Fingers crossed as much of the peloton as possible stays upright and graze-free this day.

Dani Rowe has been making predictions … the former Team GB stalwart, with a string of wins on the road throughout her career, is backing Vos, Kopecky and Longo Borghini as today’s 1-2-3.

We’re 10 minutes away from the riders rolling out from Reims.

Will Vos be similarly jubilant at the finish line in Épernay this afternoon?

Frain later apologised for her part in the incident on Twitter.

She said: “After working hard to come back to the peloton in the convoy and with my teammate, the speed we rejoined the pack would have matched their pace. Unfortunately as I came off the wheel I was unaware [of] riders on the road from another crash. My teammate went to the left off the road but I didn’t have the opportunity to do the same given I didn’t see it. This meant I crashed overtop of the rider on the ground … I did my best to avoid it but I had nowhere I could go.

“Naturally this was never the intention and I am sorry for those involved. I am sore as well, and will monitor how I feel. I’m lucky I could get back on my bike.”

Yesterday’s stage was marred by a series of ugly crashes.

The biggest involved Marta Cavalli, of the FDJ-Suez Futuroscope team, and winner of the Amstel Gold Race, La Flèche Wallonne and Mont Ventoux Dénivelé Challenge this year, was caught up in an absolutely hideous incident where she slowed to avoid a three-rider crash in front of her.

Unfortunately, the fast-moving Nicole Frain behind had failed to pick up the danger and absolutely clattered the Italian, sending her somersaulting over and landing on her back. Frain, the Australian national champion of the Parkhotel Valkenburg team, smashed into the floored bikes and torpedoed off her own, several bike-lengths down the road.

Fairly astonishingly, Cavalli got back on and continued, but was later withdrawn from the race with a concussion. Frain also remounted and finished the stage 3min 22sec behind Vos.

Sad news to arrive to this morning – Laura Kenny is more renowned for her track exploits but was also the British National Road Race Championships winner in 2014, than win coming in a run of three podium slots.

———-

Laura Kenny, Britain’s five-time Olympic gold medallist, has revealed she contemplated walking away from cycling at the start of this year after a miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy left her at “breaking point”.

Kenny said in April that she had miscarried at nine weeks in November and had a fallopian tube removed in January due to an ectopic pregnancy – when a fertilised egg implants itself outside the womb. The 30-year-old won the madison at last year’s Tokyo Games, where her husband, Jason, became Britain’s most decorated Olympian, with seven golds in cycling.

“I felt like nothing was going our way at all,” said Kenny. “January was a tipping point, I was at breaking point. Without Jason, I think I’d have just canned everything and just gone, ‘You know what, I can’t even cope with doing any of this [cycling]’. But I grabbed for my safety blanket and decided I needed to ride my bike again. That’s what I’ve done for the last 13 years. It feels like a safe place.”

Full story here, and no end of thoughts with the Kennys.

Jeremy Whittle’s stage two report

Standings after stage two

Preamble