Demi Vollering crossed the finish line in Nice as the winner of Stage 9 and the 2026 Tour de France Femmes. More than half an hour later, Eline Jansen was still fighting a very different race.
The VolkerWessels Cycling Team rider finished the final stage in 115th place, 32 minutes and 52 seconds behind Vollering. The official time limit was +32:57.
Jansen had made it by just five seconds.
Five seconds between finishing the Tour and missing the cut
At the front, Vollering’s Stage 9 victory settled the yellow jersey decisively. She attacked on the final Col d’Èze and won by 1:04, turning an eight-second overnight GC advantage into her second Tour de France Femmes title.
At the back, the same performance made the challenge even harder.
Jansen was the final rider home at +32:52. Julie Bego finished immediately ahead of her at +32:25, while Anneke Dijkstra was 113th at +29:05. With the limit set at 32:57, another six seconds would have put Jansen outside it.
For a rider who had spent nine stages working through the Tour rather than fighting for yellow, reaching Nice inside the limit represented its own kind of success.
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Photo Credit: Getty
A different kind of Tour victory
Jansen had arrived at the race as one of VolkerWessels’ main options for stage opportunities, having already won the Grand Prix du Morbihan Femmes and a stage of the Tour Féminin des Pyrénées earlier in 2026.
The final weekend of the Tour offered a very different challenge. After Mont Ventoux and the hard road into Nice, Stage 9 packed four ascents of the Col d’Èze into only 99.2km.
For Vollering, those climbs decided the Tour.
For Jansen, they became a race against the clock simply to complete it.
Cycling results naturally focus on the winner, particularly on a day when a rider secures the yellow jersey. But the bottom of the classification often contains its own battles. Jansen finished last on Stage 9, yet crossed the line knowing that every one of those final five seconds had mattered.
Vollering left Nice with the Tour de France Femmes title.
Jansen left as an official Tour finisher.
On the final afternoon, that was her victory.
