Tour de France Femmes 2026 – Stage 3 [FULL STAGE] (ladies)

August 3, 2026

5th Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift 2026 🇫🇷 (2.WWT) WE – Stage 3 – Geneva – Poligny : 156,5 km

Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift is a UCI Women’s WorldTour classification stage race that traverses a diverse and demanding array of terrains across France, showcasing the country’s most iconic landscapes—from rolling vineyards and open plains to rugged mountain passes and technical descents. The parcours is designed to test every facet of a rider’s ability, with stages that range from flat, high-speed sprint finishes to grueling mountain ascents featuring gradients of 8–12% on narrow, winding roads. The climbs are often long and sustained, such as those in the Vosges, Alps, or Pyrenees, where the roads snake through dense forests and open pastures before culminating in punishing summit finishes. The descents are fast and technical, with sharp switchbacks and uneven surfaces that demand precision and courage. The race dynamics vary dramatically depending on the stage profile. The flatter stages are typically contested in high-speed bunch sprints, though crosswinds on exposed roads can split the peloton and create opportunities for late breaks. The hilly and mountainous stages, however, are where the race truly unfolds, with attacks launching on the steepest sections or during the technical descents, where gaps can open quickly. The peloton often fractures into smaller groups on the most demanding climbs, while the flatter stages allow for more controlled racing and tactical maneuvering. The finish styles range from uphill sprints on steep, short climbs to reduced-group finishes after long descents or solo moves on the most challenging stages. The Tour de France Femmes is a race of endurance, strategy, and versatility, where the interplay of terrain, weather, and tactics creates a dynamic and unpredictable test for the world’s best riders.

Sigrid Haugset (Uno-X Mobility) won stage 3 of the Tour de France Femmes with an enormous solo ride of 88 kilometres, also taking the yellow jersey in the process.

Lotte Kopecky (SD Worx-Protime) finished second while Marianne Vos (Visma-Lease a Bike) won the sprint of a reduced group for third.

Haugset had gone solo from a breakaway of 11 riders on the Col de la Savine with 87km to go. Kopecky then went on the chase from the peloton with 75km remaining, when Haugset was already 1:30 ahead.

For a long time, Haugset kept her gap to Kopecky relatively stable while the peloton sat up, letting the Norwegian champion get more than five minutes up the road. In the last 40km, Kopecky finally made inroads on Haugset, and at the top of the last climb with 24.7km to go, she was 32 seconds down.

Kopecky eventually had Haugset in sight, only 12 seconds separating them, but the Belgian had overestimated herself and lost time again on the last kilometres, finishing 1:24 behind in second place.

There had been attacks from the GC favourites on the final climb, splitting the peloton, but things came back together in the end.

“I never thought it was possible. Sitting here for the winner’s interview, it’s unreal,” said the stage winner.

Haugset admitted that she had considered waiting for Kopecky.

“It wasn’t many seconds and I thought she will catch me. I thought, ‘should I just drop down to her? Second is good’. But I kept on. The car was amazing, pushing me.

“I was thinking about all my teammates, everyone cheering from home and it was like, ‘I had to give it all’. I can’t believe that she didn’t catch me. Winnig in the Norwegian jersey, it’s fantastic,” she said, having taken the road race national title for Norway in her last race, which was June 28.

With the stage victory, Haugset also takes the overall lead, but this hadn’t been in her mind during the stage.

“I didn’t think about [yellow]. I was so dizzy at the end. I know my boyfriend will be angry at me for not celebrating, but I could not lift my arms off the bike. It was impossible,” said Haugset.

The attack, near catch and solo win
Starting in Geneva, the 156.5km stage would enter France four kilometres after the real start and almost immediately go uphill towards the first-category Col de la Faucille, cresting after 23.9km. A crash on the first kilometres of the climb took down GC favourite Demi Vollering (FDJ United-Suez), world champion Magdeleine Vallières and Noemi Rüegg (both EF Education-Oatly), but they would all quickly return to the peloton.

Double stage winner and yellow jersey Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx-Protime), Elisa Balsamo (Lidl-Trek), wearing the green jersey ‘on loan’ from Wiebes, and polka-dot jersey Océane Mahé (Ma Petite Entreprise) were among the riders dropped on the Faucille. They formed a gruppetto and were 1:20 minutes behind at the top, but it soon became clear that the sprinters would not return to the peloton.

Puck Pieterse (Fenix-Premier Tech) won the mountain sprint ahead of stage 2 escapee Nikola Nosková (Cofidis), and when Pieterse also beat Nosková on the Côte de Lajoux, the Dutchwoman took the lead in the mountain classification.

Lucinda Brand (Lidl-Trek) attacked right after the climb, and a chase group of nine riders consisting of Célia Gery (FDJ United-Suez), Liane Lippert (Movistar), Justine Ghekiere (AG Insurance-Soudal), Femke de Vries (Visma-Lease a Bike), Rosa Klöser (Canyon-SRAM), Kopecky and her teammate Nienke Vinke, Loes Adegeest (Lidl-Trek), and Yara Kastelijn (Fenix-Premier Tech) bridged to her after a few minutes.

Haugset came across the 25-second gap on her own to make it a front group of 11 with 107km to go. EF Education-Oatly began to chase, and the gap was down to 15 seconds at the foot of the cat. 2 Col de la Savine. Haugset decided to attack and go solo, cresting the climb 35 seconds ahead of the peloton that had caught the other ten escapees.

With 75km to go, Haugset had established a gap of 1:32 minutes, putting her in the virtual GC lead, when Kopecky decided to go on the attack again, trying to chase the Norwegian champion down on her own. The peloton did not seem to care about the attackers, losing more and more ground until they were 5:11 minutes behind at the intermediate sprint in Champagnole with 55.8km to go. Lippert and Adegeest attacked before the sprint to pick up the remaining points but sat up again after that.

Kopecky had only made up 12 seconds over those 20km, but in the sweltering heat, with temperatures reaching 39°C, the gap eventually started to come down. With 40km to go, Haugset was still a minute up on Kopecky, but at the bottom of the Côte de Chaux-Champagny, the Belgian was only 39 seconds behind.

The peloton had also made inroads, starting the 1.8km climb 3:37 minutes down, and when Kim Le Court-Pienaar (AG Insurance-Soudal) launched her attack, the field quickly disintegrated. De Vries, Gery, Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney (Canyon-SRAM), Pauline Ferrand-Prévot (Visma-Lease a Bike), Antonia Niedermaier (Canyon-SRAM), and Vollering quickly got back on the Mauritian champion’s wheel, and Le Court-Pienaar accelerated a second time, dropping Gery and Niedermaier.

As the climb flattened out, the GC contenders looked at each other, with nobody wanting to expend more energy than the others, allowing Niedermaier and Elisa Longo Borghini (UAE Team L’IMAD) to come back. Another attack by Niewiadoma-Phinney just before the top of the climb saw only Le Court-Pienaar, Vollering, De Vries, and Longo Borghini follow, with Niedermaier letting go and Ferrand-Prévot in difficulties.

The group crested the climb 2:20 minutes behind Haugset, but then the pace went away again, and Niedermaier quickly came back before Marlen Reusser (Movistar) pulled Pieterse and Ferrand-Prévot up to make it a group of nine.

Niamh Fisher-Black (Lidl-Trek), Gery, Dominika Włodarczyk (UAE Team L’IMAD), Anna van der Breggen (SD Worx-Protime), and Cédrine Kerbaol (EF Education-Oatly) were chasing in ones and twos, but an acceleration by Le Court-Pienaar to take the last 4-second bonification at the bonus point 600 metres after the climb meant they did not make it across and were instead mopped up by a chase group of around 15 riders including white jersey Paula Blasi (UAE Team L’IMAD).

Up front, Haugset was still 30 seconds ahead of Kopecky at the 20km mark and had not lost time to the group of GC contenders either who were 2:23 minutes behind, with the next group another 20 seconds down.

However, Kopecky, gave it everything on the fast descent and the rolling final 15km that followed, and she reduced her deficit to only 12 seconds with just over 11km to go. But Kopecky could not close that last gap, instead suffering cramps in the heat.

She lost ground again on the last 7km, handing the stage victory to Haugset who wrote history as the first Norwegian stage winner and overall leader in the Tour de France Femmes, having completed the longest-ever solo victory in the history of the race and its predecessors.

In the group of favourites, Le Court-Pienaar had tried to attack on a small rise with 15km to go but found nobody else willing to commit, and the chase group closed the gap 12km from the finish, with another group coming back soon after.

Justine Ghekiere (AG Insurance-Soudal) briefly started to chase for her teammate but quickly gave up again, and a group of 38 riders sprinted for third place in Poligny, with Vos beating Usoa Ostolaza (Laboral Kutxa-Fundación Euskadi) Le Court-Pienaar to the last podium spot.

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