"My helmet saved my life" - How Tour de France Femmes hero Maeva Squiban bounced back from near-fatal training crash in May to back-to-back stage wins in August

There is little doubt about who has been the breakout star of the 2025 Tour de France Femmes. With back-to-back solo wins on stage 7 and stage 8, UAE Team ADQ's Maeva Squiban has powered herself right into the thick of the action.

Having soloed to the stage 6 success from the breakaway on Thursday afternoon, becoming just the second Frenchwoman to win a Tour de France Femmes stage and the first UAE Team ADQ rider in the process, Squiban attacked from the flag drop on stage 7, and after having been joined by a few other riders in the breakaway, the French star kicked again on the final climb of the day, going solo all the way to the finish line.

Two extraordinary performances, but when you take into account what happened to Squiban just a few months before the start of the 2025 Tour de France Femmes, these performances are made even more spectacular. During a training ride in May, Squiban was hit by a car in a near-fatal accident.

"My helmet saved my life," she wrote following her fall on Instagram. "I'm doing well. I have a neck brace and some pain, but nothing's broken."

Just 77 days later however, Squiban announced herself to the wider cycling world in style with her first Tour de France Femmes stage win. "It wasn't easy after the accident, even if it's now just a distant memory," she reflected of her road to recovery in conversation with France Télévisions afterwards. "The team always told me not to worry, that I was going to do the Tour."

A Breton rider, this year's Tour de France Femmes also gave Squiban some extra motivation. "It's always been a goal, especially with the start in Brittany. That's what kept me motivated," she explained. "I thank them for having faith in me, I'm giving it back to them."