Demi Vollering starts the 2026 Tour de France Femmes on Saturday as the woman to beat — and the woman with everything to prove.

The 29-year-old Dutch rider leads the FDJ-SUEZ team into a race that begins in Lausanne on August 1 and runs nine stages through to August 9. This year's edition features a first-ever visit by the women's race to Mont Ventoux, the giant bare-topped climb in Provence that has broken some of the sport's strongest riders. The Ventoux stage falls three days before the finish in Paris The Guardian.

Vollering knows the mountain. She first rode it as a teenager during a family camping holiday. Now she returns as the first €1 million athlete in women's cycling and the rider who, earlier this season, completed a grand slam of all three of Europe's Grand Tours — the Giro d'Italia Women, the Tour de France Femmes, and La Vuelta Femenina. Only one other woman in history has won all three The Guardian; The Athletic.

She won her first Giro d'Italia in June 2026, overtaking race leader Anna van der Breggen on the final stage to take the pink jersey BBC Sport. In April she claimed her first Tour of Flanders, powering up the Oude Kwaremont — one of the steepest, most feared cobbled climbs in the sport — to win in Oudenaarde.

But the Tour de France Femmes is the one that got away. Vollering won it in 2023. In 2024 she lost to Poland's Kasia Niewiadoma by four seconds on the final stage up Alpe d'Huez — a margin so thin it is measured in a single mistimed corner. In 2025 she finished second behind Pauline Ferrand-Prévot, the French rider whose explosive attack on the Col de la Madeleine in the Alps decided that race The Guardian.

After last year's defeat, some Dutch media suggested Vollering might have beaten Ferrand-Prévot had she been lighter. The remarks cut. Vollering speaks openly about mental health, athlete wellbeing, and eating disorders in a sport where weight and power are scrutinised down to the gram. She posts photos of herself riding with her dog in a rucksack. She has acknowledged that in the Netherlands she is sometimes seen as "too much" for her outspoken personality The Guardian.

This time, her preparation has been deliberately different. Vollering skipped the Tour of Switzerland and her national championships — last season she fell sick after the Swiss race and crashed at the Dutch nationals. Instead, her FDJ-SUEZ team, managed by Stephen Delcourt, held a three-week training camp at altitude in Tignes, in the French Alps The Guardian.

Stage 1 is a 138-kilometre flat loop from Lausanne to Lausanne, featuring a short 1.6-kilometre climb at a 7.7% gradient letourfemmes.fr. It will suit a strong sprinter or a late attacker rather than the pure climbers.

What makes this year's race compelling is the match-up. Vollering arrives in the form of her life. Ferrand-Prévot is the defending champion on home roads. And Mont Ventoux — a climb Vollering first rode for fun as a teenager on a family holiday — now stands between her and the yellow jersey she has not held since 2023.

For fans, the question is simple: can she take it back?