Pauline Ferrand-Prévot will not start Stage 8 of the Tour de France Femmes after waking up feeling unwell on Saturday morning.
Team Visma | Lease a Bike confirmed shortly before the start in Sisteron that the defending champion had been assessed by the team’s medical staff and would not continue towards Nice.
“Unfortunately, Pauline was not feeling well this morning. In consultation with the medical staff, it has been decided that she will not start today,” the team said.
“We wish Pauline a speedy recovery.”
The withdrawal brings an early end to a difficult title defence for Ferrand-Prévot, who had already fallen out of general classification contention before finishing more than ten minutes behind Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney on Mont Ventoux on Friday.
Ferrand-Prévot withdraws the morning after Ventoux
Ferrand-Prévot completed Stage 7 in 18th place, 10:44 behind Niewiadoma-Phinney, after being dropped early on the decisive Mont Ventoux ascent.
The result was her biggest time loss of the Tour and confirmed that she was nowhere near the climbing level that had carried her to the 2025 title.
The full scale of that setback is covered in our analysis of what happened to Pauline Ferrand-Prévot on Mont Ventoux.
There had been no confirmation immediately after the stage that she would leave the race.
Visma’s Saturday announcement changes that picture by confirming that Ferrand-Prévot was feeling unwell on the morning of Stage 8 and that the decision not to start was made in consultation with the team’s medical staff.
The team have not given a more specific diagnosis.
That means the reason for the DNS should not currently be described as a virus, infection or any other particular illness unless Visma subsequently provides further detail.
A difficult Tour had already moved away from the defending champion
Ferrand-Prévot’s hopes of retaining the Tour had been fading well before Saturday morning.
She lost heavily in the Stage 4 time trial to Dijon, including 2:13 to Marlen Reusser and 1:55 to Demi Vollering.
That immediately changed the shape of her title defence.
The question after Dijon was whether the mountain stages could allow her to reproduce the sort of turnaround she had managed during the previous year’s Tour, something explored in is Pauline Ferrand-Prévot’s Tour de France Femmes title defence over?.
Stage 5 then provided the more serious warning.
Ferrand-Prévot was dropped when the strongest GC riders increased the pace through the Beaujolais and finished 2:35 behind the leading group.
She effectively conceded afterwards that the yellow jersey battle had gone.
Our Stage 5 analysis of Ferrand-Prévot dropping out of GC contention covered the point where the defending champion’s race changed from trying to retain the Tour to looking for something else from the final stages.
Photo Credit: GettyMont Ventoux removed the remaining hope of a revival
There had still been one obvious opportunity to change the narrative.
Mont Ventoux.
The long, sustained ascent looked much closer to the terrain on which Ferrand-Prévot had dominated the 2025 race than the shorter repeated climbs of Stage 5.
Instead, she was dropped early once the pace increased on the lower part of the classified climb.
By the time Niewiadoma-Phinney launched the attack that eventually won the stage and yellow jersey, Ferrand-Prévot was already well behind the leading GC group.
The Stage 7 race report showed just how quickly the selection happened once the race reached the forest section of Ventoux.
Ferrand-Prévot eventually lost 10:44.
That result meant Stage 8 was never going to be about recovering her GC position.
Saturday morning’s illness now means there will not even be an opportunity to target a stage or ride into the final weekend.
Her 2025 Tour could hardly have ended more differently
The contrast with last year’s race is stark.
Ferrand-Prévot won the 2025 Tour de France Femmes by taking control on the Col de la Madeleine and then confirming the overall victory on the final stage.
Her Stage 8 attack on the Madeleine was the defining performance of the race, covered at the time in Ferrand-Prévot conquers the Madeleine and takes yellow.
She eventually won the Tour by 3:42 from Vollering.
The broader story of that victory is revisited in our guide to who won the Tour de France Femmes 2025.
Twelve months later, the mountain stages have done the opposite.
Instead of distancing the other favourites, Ferrand-Prévot has repeatedly been dropped by them.
Her Tour now ends after seven stages.
Visma | Lease a Bike lose their defending champion
The withdrawal also changes Team Visma | Lease a Bike’s final weekend.
Ferrand-Prévot was no longer a meaningful GC threat, but her deficit could have given the team freedom to use her aggressively on the remaining stages.
Without her, Visma’s priorities become much more focused around stage opportunities and riders such as Marianne Vos.
Saturday’s 171.9-kilometre Stage 8 from Sisteron to Nice is expected to favour the faster riders, although two short climbs inside the final 20 kilometres make the finish less straightforward than a conventional bunch sprint.
Ferrand-Prévot will not be part of it.
Her 2026 Tour de France Femmes ends the morning after her 10:44 loss on Mont Ventoux, with Visma confirming that she woke feeling unwell and, following consultation with the medical staff, would not start Stage 8.
