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TdFF Daily | Stage 7 | Kristen puts up brave fight in the Alps

Double Olympic gold medalist and American champ rides strong on the Tour’s first Alpine stage

August 17, 2024

Kristen Faulkner hung on until the final kilometers of the last climb up to Le Grand-Bornand.

The seventh stage of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift was always going to be an uphill battle for Kristen. She prefers punchy, classics-style courses, not the high mountains, but battle is exactly what she did. 

Kristen matched the best climbers in the race over the Col de la Croix de la Sierra, Cote de Bois d’Arlod, Cote de Cercler, and Col-de-Saint-Jean-de-Sixt, as the peloton skirted from Champagnole in the Jura, around the bottom of Lac Leman, and into the Alps. She stuck with the yellow jersey group, determined to see how far her legs would take her. They took her very far indeed, before all of the climbing finally took its toll. With ten kilometers left in the 166.4 kilometer-race, Kristen had to relent. 

Once the yellow jersey group had ridden up the road ahead of her, Kristen sat up to save her strength for tomorrow’s stage.

With two hors categorie climbs on course, the final day of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift is going to be spectacular. After crossing the Col du Glandon, the peloton will race up the Alpe d’Huez for the grand finale.

Kristen, Noemi Rüegg, Alison Jackson and Lotta Henttala are looking forward to one last historic day at the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift.

Hear Kristen’s thoughts from after today’s stage.

Kristen Faulkner

It was just really hard. I had a lot of fatigue coming into the Tour and then it got better for a few days and then the fatigue really started hitting me again yesterday. It's just been a really big month and I'm just so tired. I haven't been working on my climbing legs so I didn't really expect to have them. It was like, what can you do? We had two days left. So I was like, oh, I am just going to try my best.

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