"There was no attack" - Lance Armstrong impressed by how Pauline Ferrand-Prévot paced her way into potential TDFF win

Pauline Ferrand-Prévot still has one very difficult stage to tackle at the Tour de France Femmes but the 5W/Kg she deployed over an above hour-long effort on the Col de la Madeleine earned him a large gap that she can play with. Lance Armstrong was impressed with the leader of Team Visma | Lease a Bike but warns her over the dangerous ninth stage.

"She she looked so good for the first week. You could you could see she was really smart. She was hiding out when Gigante attacked. She let her go and but what was evident at the end is she gave it her all," Armstrong said in The Move podcast. "She budgeted her effort, but she was tapped. Yeah. That was all she had".

"But I saw all these interviews and I and I kept and I was just alone at home watching. And all the answers were, yeah, I rode it once and I rode it once... I mean, we're talking about Kasia [Niewiadoma], Demi [Vollering]. I mean, I'm like, hang on a second. Like this is the race and it's the main climb of the race. And, you know, Pauline, 33 years old, she's she's not I mean, she's been around and I do think mountain biking might uniquely prepare her for that. You those you truly have to know every single inch of the course".

With 8.5 kilometers to go Ferrand-Prévot attacked Gigante on course to the stage win, after having dropped her other rivals and then later on catching and dropping the survivors of the breakaway.

It was an incredibly impressive performance from the rider that only recently returned to road racing and made the TDFF victory the main goal for her. However it was a three-year plan, and surprisingly it seems she will be able to achieve this right on the first attempt.

"Just be there, set the tempo, put Gigante on the limit. I mean, the way Pauline just, there was no attack. Nope, there was no look back, there was no games, nothing. She just rode her race and we were wild," he explains.

"I mean, I think we knew before she knew, you see a rider start to swing, stir the body out of the saddle. And then you can see the distancing, even from the camera, from the front angle. And then she finally looked back and was like 'oh I'm gone' and then boom".

She has 2:37 over Sarah Gigante, however the Australian may struggle on the descents; and 3:18 minutes on Demi Vollering. "So this the HC, the hors category climb in the middle, this is the story of tomorrow the Col de Joux-Plane and this is the downhill that we're talking about. It is incredibly dangerous, right? Especially the further down you get, the closer to Morzine you get. It is a nail biter. But this is a real day, right? 2,800 metres of climbing. Call that that's well over 10,000 feet of climbing, 124 k's.

A challenging day where bad legs can cost you the race. "I mean, Pauline's got to stay on her toes. Unlike today, look at this here [...] The first 15 k's doesn't count because we're going downhill. [Joux-Plane] is the climb that I got in trouble with. [Marco] Pantani attacked early in the stage, we definitely were caught off guard and panicked a little bit. And Jan [Ullrich] ended up dropping me on this climb. And I got left alone towards the top. I was totally bonked. I didn't know what to do. And I had to still do this downhill".

"But this is a very difficult climb, right? So that's in the middle. Then boom, next climb. Another one right here. Six k's at eight, another one at eight and a half percent. These are, there's going to be plenty of opportunities for these four or five ladies. Look, it matters, right? Getting second matters, getting third matters. You know, the second is better than third. And third's a hell of a lot better than fourth. It matters".