A year ago, Kasia Nieviadoma won the Tour de France. In typical Nieviadoma fashion, she attacked her rivals and rode alone to the biggest win of her career. But it didn’t go the way she dreamed: in the final kilometers of the Col du Tourmalet, Demi Vollering caught up with her, passed her and took the yellow jersey.
A year later, the tables have turned: Niewiadoma ran a near-perfect race to become the next Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift champion at the summit of Alpe d’Huez.
“There have been so many times in my career where something has kept me from winning, but this week was a perfect week for me and the team,” Niewiadoma said after the race. “Despite a few crashes, we managed to stay calm and stay focused on our goal. You need everything to be on your side to win big races.”
Long awaited
For Niewiadoma and her team, this victory was a dream come true. After eight years in business, Canyon SRAM had seen some riders come and go and had to rebuild in recent years, adding new riders, hiring a new director and working to grow as an organization and as a part of cycling.
Niewiadoma was a star rider from the moment she signed in 2018. In her first two years, she won multiple WorldTour events, including the Amstel Gold Race, but began to stagnate in 2020. From that year until the spring of 2024, Niewiadoma experienced a drought. Her only win was the Gravel World Championship at the end of 2023.
“The most decisive race was the Gravel Worlds,” Nieviadoma said of her path to the Tour victory. Her win in Italy made her realize she was spending too much energy in fear of her competitors. “When I was able to specifically pass Demi (Voellering), I knew I could do it. It was just a matter of being more confident or using my strength in a better or smarter way.”
There were already hints of the story that unfolded on Sunday at Alpe d’Huez in 2022. Nieviadoma had been a consistent force in the inaugural Tour de France Femme, finishing third overall, nearly six and a half minutes behind winner Annemiek van Vleuten. She didn’t attack like crazy, but she was hungry.
After the 2022 season, she reworked her plan: she worked on her weaknesses, and the team worked on theirs. New riders were hired, and the following year, Canyon-SRAM was a new team. They won a stage at RideLondon with Chloe Dygert, a stage at the Giro d’Italia with Antonia Niedermeyer, and a stage at the Tour with Ricarda Bauernfeind.
Nieviadoma’s time came on the seventh stage of the 2023 Tour. On the Col d’Aspin, the climb before the fearsome Col du Tourmalet, Nieviadoma took advantage of the fact that Vollering and Van Vleuten had each other in their sights and launched an attack. The effort earned her third place overall. It was the same result as the previous year, but a lesson had been learned.
These seemingly small moments were the start of the avalanche that led to the Niewiadoma we see on our screens now.
There were signs in 2022 and 2023, but 2024 would be Niewiadoma’s comeback year. Her victory in La Flèche Wallonne, her first WorldTour win since 2019, was just the beginning. She had her eye on the Tour de France Femme.
Niewiadoma has spent the past two years working on improving her training methods, learning from her mistakes in races and adapting herself. The athlete who won the Tour by just four seconds on Sunday was able to stay calm in the face of defeat. She was able to expend only as much energy as necessary to maintain the pace. This is what Niewiadoma has been working on, and her team knew it was what it took to win the race.
After all, Canyon SRAM came into the race with one of the strongest teams on the start list and one goal: a team of young people eager to be part of something big. The yellow jersey was their only ambition. Niewiadoma has changed over the past two years, but her overall win is also thanks to the changes in the team around her.
“I think she’s grown a lot over the last two years,” Canyon Slam athletic director Adam Szabo said. “I think there’s been a big change in the way she trains over the last couple of years and the makeup of our team has changed quite a bit. We’ve grown a lot as a team and that’s helped us a lot.”
It all started with Riju
Niewiadoma made the first move in the race on the fourth stage from Valkenburg to Liège, a classic-style race that suited her aggressive racing style, and with Vollering catching up to her the battle was on.
“It was a good mix of Ardennes Classics and of course I love these types of races,” Niewiadoma said of Stage 4, in which he moved from 46th to third overall. “I like short, steep climbs so I was targeting that stage. Unfortunately I lost the sprint but I was happy that I was able to put some distance between me and the others on that stage.”
The race changed when Vollering crashed on Stage 5. Niewiadoma was brought out under yellow flags and suddenly not only was the Tour victory within reach, but the jersey was on her shoulders. All she had to do was keep up with Vollering and not let him drop behind. Of course, Niewiadoma thrives on the attack and that’s exactly what she did on Stage 7.
At the end of the stage, which ended in Le Grand-Bornand, Vollering and Niewiadoma went head-to-head and it looked like Vollering had taken the lead. She was four seconds ahead of Niewiadoma, but the Polish rider and her team said they weren’t worried and that four seconds was no big deal. After Sunday’s race, which she won by that margin, she saw it a little differently.
“Four seconds seems like magic to me now.”
Cassia Niewiadoma
The epic final stage
Vollering went into the final mountain stage feeling confident. Her team sent four riders to the front, but the plan fell apart before it could come to fruition. A breakaway of 22 riders failed to create the gap needed, and Vollering’s teammates were unable to reach the valley before the final climb to match the pace. Vollering took the race into her own hands, attacking on the Col du Glandon, taking Pauliena Reujackers with her.
“It was awful,” Niewiadoma said of the moment Vollering attacked on the Col de Glandon, the penultimate climb of Sunday’s stage. “The climb was very tough and I could feel my legs giving out, and then she attacked, so it wasn’t ideal. I knew I just had to be patient and keep the pace. On the descent I was able to refuel and I felt like I had strength back.”
At this point, both Vollering and Niewiadoma were isolated. Vollering had no teammate in the lead; her only teammate, Niamh Fisher-Black, was in the same pack as Niewiadoma. Similarly, Niewiadoma was the only Canyon-SRAM rider in the pack.
However, the 29-year-old Polish rider had received help from others in the valley before the race reached the slopes of Alpe d’Huez. She was particularly grateful to Lucinda Brand, who was running as support for Lidl-Trek’s Gaia Realini and who eventually got the two leaders, Völlering and Royackers, close enough to Niewiadoma.
On reaching Alpe d’Huez it was a showdown between Vollering and Niewiadoma: Niewiadoma didn’t need to win a stage to win the Tour, he just needed to pace himself, control his forces, and maintain a lead of less than 1 minute 15 seconds, taking into account the bonus time Vollering would receive at the finish line.
“In Alpe d’Huez I knew I had to control the pace well and give my best in the last five kilometres to close the gap as much as possible,” Niewiadoma explained.
“This climb was all about the legs,” Szabo said. “Once she got to the front, I could see she was picking up seconds, so I just encouraged her to stay as far in front as possible and to keep a steady pace, and everything would work out.”
For Niewiadoma, it wasn’t so easy.
“To be honest, I still couldn’t believe I could do it,” she said. “Everyone was yelling on the radio in the last two kilometers, I was having a terrible time on this climb, I hated it all, and then I reached the finish line and found out I’d won the Tour de France. It’s unbelievable.”
“Today was my first race in 10 years,” said Eric Zabel, another Canyon SRAM sports director. “I was confident in the valley. I wasn’t confident with 10 kilometers to go. But then when there were 5, 4, 3 kilometers to go, hope started coming back.”
“Kasia actually told us at the 10km mark to ‘shut up,’ so we just said ‘find your rhythm, go at your own speed and don’t go over your limit.’ With four kilometres to go we said ‘hard, hard, hard’.”
Eventually Vollering beat Rooijjackers to win the stage, and the clock started to tick. The entire cycling world held its breath as Niewiadoma sprinted the final 500 meters. The explosion of sound and emotion as Niewiadoma crossed the finish line could have set off a Taylor Swift-like earthquake. And she did. Kasia Niewiadoma won the Tour de France Femme by four seconds.
What it means
“During the stage I was going through a rollercoaster of thoughts and emotions so to cross the finish line with just a few seconds between us is a dream come true,” Niewiadoma said. “I need a moment to process it all and I’m really looking forward to going to the team bus, celebrating with my girls and really realizing what happened.”
“I’m overwhelmed with emotion right now,” Szabo said. “It’s unbelievable.”
Against all odds, Vollering is the better climber on paper, and Niewiadoma has a history of narrowly missing out on major victories in the sport, but she took the biggest win of her career on one of cycling’s most iconic climbs, with the smallest margin of victory in Tour history (for either man or woman).
The Olympics didn’t go her way, but it only took a week for the universe to decide it was her time to shine.
“I’m just glad Kasia didn’t finish third for the third time in a row,” Zabel said after the race.
Niewiadoma hasn’t won races as frequently as Vollering, Lorena Wiebes or Elisa Longo Borghini, but she’s been a consistent force in the pack for the past 11 years. If there’s a move, Niewiadoma is there. If there’s a hill, she’s going for it. She races with her heart, but this year she’s also relied on her brain. That combination has delivered the 29-year-old a historic victory, and now the only question is what she’ll do next.
Another race that has eluded her throughout her career is Strade Bianche, where she has been on the podium four times, including second place three times, and a win there is certainly within reach for Niewiadoma.
She’s not thinking about that yet. Now is the time to celebrate that all the hard work, all the years of near misses and heartbreaking moments, has paid off. Kasia Niewiadoma has just won the Tour de France Femme, and women’s cycling is better for it.
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😐oh dear
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