Mavi Garcia delivered a stunning ride to win stage 2 of the Tour de France Femmes in Quimper, launching a perfectly timed solo attack with ten kilometres remaining to claim the most significant victory of her long career. At 41, the Spaniard had questioned her future in the sport, but in one ride, she flipped a narrative shaped by crashes and setbacks into one of redemption.
After crashing on stage 1 and losing nearly five minutes, Garcia’s GC hopes were gone before they’d really begun. But where others might have folded, she saw an opportunity.
Photo Credit: A.S.O./Pauline Ballet“Yesterday was like the shit is really like this,” she said with brutal honesty. “Because the last races I always crash, and it’s frustrating for me, because I was training really good this year, but then in the races I don’t see this.”
Her move came just after the breakaway had been caught on the run-in to Quimper. Sensing hesitation in the bunch, Garcia surged clear and quickly opened up a gap. The terrain was rolling, the roads were narrow, and the peloton’s response lacked coordination.
“In one minute, I took 25 seconds and I thought, OK, I’ll go and we’ll see what happens,” she explained. “But I was very aware it was still a long way to go.”
The final kilometre was brutal. With the bunch closing in and the gap slashed to ten seconds, Garcia dug deep, still unsure whether she would be caught. Only when she saw the finish line with a handful of metres remaining did she allow herself to believe.
Photo Credit: A.S.O./Pauline Ballet“I saw one kilometre to go and I thought, ‘OK, all out and we’ll see,’ but I don’t expect to arrive,” she said. “At one moment I heard 10 seconds… I only believed in the victory when I had five or ten metres left.”
Behind, Lorena Wiebes led the sprint for second with Kim Le Court in third, but the bunch arrived three seconds too late. Garcia had already crossed the line, overcome with emotion, hands covering her face as the realisation set in. Her teammates screamed in celebration – it was the first win of the season for both Garcia and her team, and their first ever at the Tour de France Femmes.
“Yesterday was really sad, the crash, because it was not a really good start, but now I think everybody will be really happy,” she said. “I think sometimes you need to feel the moment, and today, I feel that now is my moment.”
Main photo credit: A.S.O./Pauline Ballet
