Women's Tour de France 2025: Frenchwoman Maëva Squiban wins in Ambert against all odds

Cédrine Kerbaol is no longer alone. After three editions of the women's Tour de France, which returned in 2022 after years of wandering, the Brest native was the only Frenchwoman to have raised her arms at the finish of a stage . This Thursday, July 31, another Breton, also born in Brest, succeeded her: Maëva Squiban, 23, won solo in Ambert (Puy-de-Dôme) at the end of a hilly sixth stage.

The rider from the depleted Emirati team UAE-ADQ (three of the seven riders have abandoned since July 26) took off 32 kilometers from the finish, on the penultimate climb of the day, just as the peloton had just caught up with the breakaway. The favorites let her do it, not particularly worried by the Frenchwoman who was in 36th place in the general classification at the start of the day. Perhaps Demi Vollering , Pauline Ferrand-Prévot , or Katarzyna Niewiadoma thought that their rival wouldn't hold on alone until the finish line. That the pacesetters in the peloton would just need to accelerate a bit at the end to nibble at the lone tortoise before the finish.

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None of this happened. For a long time, the thin peloton looked at each other, with no team taking the initiative to launch a chase. Comfortable in the mountains (she moved to the Var region to work on her altitude skills), gifted in time trials (she finished as a silver medalist at the European Under-23 Championships in the discipline in 2020), Maëva Squiban dug deeper and deeper. And when the favorites woke up, the Frenchwoman was already too far behind to be caught. This Thursday afternoon in Auvergne, there was no point in running; she had to start on time.

Once across the finish line, the Frenchwoman ended up in tears in the arms of her team members. She didn't see her compatriot, Juliette Labous, give France a one-two finish a full minute later. On the Tour de France last year, Maëva Squiban had already cried, finishing second at the finish of the seventh stage in Le Grand-Bornand, frustrated at having come so close to the greatest victory of her career. It took her a year for tears of joy to erase the sadness.