“It feels very special" - Katarzyna Niewiadoma into the Maillot Jaune at 2024 Tour de France Femmes after crash-marred finale to stage 5

After a hectic and crash-marred finale to stage 5 at the 2024 Tour de France Femmes, Demi Vollering was one of those to hit the deck hard. Despite the Dutchwoman's best efforts to regain contact, she could not save the Maillot Jaune as she lost more than a minute in the general classification.

The big benefactor of this disaster for Vollering? Canyon//SRAM Racing's leader, Katarzyna Niewiadoma. “It feels very special for sure," the Pole, who finished 3rd overall at the 2023 Tour de France Femmes, reflects in her post-stage interview. "I just learned about getting the Yellow Jersey a couple of minutes ago so I feel like it [the emotion] hasn’t fully reached me."

Despite the somewhat unintended nature of Niewiadoma's capture of the Maillot Jaune, the Pole is more than delighted to be wearing one of cycling's most famous jerseys. "But we are happy, happy for my teammates, for everyone who has put in hard work and effort to get us into this jersey, so we’re definitely happy about it," she explains.

"Today’s stage was very chaotic in general. I feel like all the stages so far were very hectic so we knew that we just had to stay in the front. We’ve never done a recon like today’s stage so the main goal was just to stay in front, to avoid incidents, chaos and crashes, because we were involved in some crashes in the first stages," concludes Niewiadoma's reflections. "So I think it was just good positioning, having teammates around that allowed us to stay in front of everything.”

In the general classification, Niewiadoma now holds an advantage of 19 seconds ahead of nearest challenger Kristen Faulkner, whilst Vollering is now in 9th overall at 1:19 behind the race lead. With the high mountains still to come this Grand Tour however, it's still all to play for in the fight for the Maillot Jaune.