The three Irish riders at the Tour de France, for the first time in their careers, faced a big summit finish atop a major Tour mountain on stage 8 to Col de la Madeleine, a 19km hors catégorie ascent.
Up front, legendary road, MTB and cyclocross rider Pauline Ferrand-Prévot (Visma | Lease a Bike) rode away from the fancied Australian Sarah Gigante (AG Insurance-Soudal) to take an impressive solo stage win. She also assumes the yellow jersey and is on the cusp of a rare feat; a French general classification win at the Tour de France.
For the Irish riders - Mia Griffin (Roland), Fiona Mangan (Winspace Orange Seal) and Lara Gillespie (UAE Team ADQ) - it was a day to batten down the hatches and get through the 112km stage, with 3,500m of elevation gain, in the best shape possible.
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"Today was absolutely fucking crazy," was Mia Griffin's response when asked by stickybottle how the queen stage had gone. She added the "brutal" Col de la Madeleine was so hard she had no chance, made no effort, to soak up the atmosphere. The stage, she added, was savage long before they even reached the base of the final mountain.
Before the riders reached that last ascent - 18.9km, averaging 9 per cent gradient - they had to get up and over the Col de Plainpalais, a cat 1 climb of 13.3km averaging 6.3km which began from the start line, and the Côte de Saint-Georges-d'Hurtières; some 5.1km at 5.4 per cent.
"In the women's racing, nobody really wants to go into the grupetto so they wait until they're absolutely swinging for a group to form, because people want to pass the first climb," Griffin said.
"I knew I wasn't going to pass the first climb so eventually I had to go pretty hard to get into the group I was in," she explained. "And then all day it was on the pedals.... all of the day. We went hard on the climbs as well and then the last climb was, oh..... I was pretty empty, to be honest, after the week. So it was pretty hard to keep going.
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"But then I saw the Movistar girls and I was thinking 'they have everything under control' so I could chill out a bit in last 3k of the climb. But the other 15k, or whatever it was, was just absolutely brutal.
"To be honest, I couldn't enjoy the atmosphere much because I was too tired," she lauged. "It was my first time in a race doing over 2,500 metres of elevation, so to jump to 3,500 metres.... It was unknown territory for the body and a lot, really a lot, of suffering, I would say."
Gillespie finished in 64th at 31:07, with Griffin 113th at 37:41 and Mangan placing 125th at 42:26 after her 100km breakaway ride on Friday's stage 7.
The three Irish riders now face Sunday's final stage, some 124km from Praz-sur-Arly to Châtel Les Portes du Soleil. It features the HC climb of Col de Joux Plane, at the halfway point; one of the three climbs on a stage with 3,000m of elevation gain.
?The Queen stage of this #TDFF2025 delivered a Monarch to victory. It was straight into battle but the final trial, the Col de La Madeleine, was where fortune favoured the bold. There was only one that could take the thrown and with it, the crown ?
Here are the highlights… pic.twitter.com/K8kn79a7le
— Le Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift (@LeTourFemmes) August 2, 2025
