Demi Vollering finished second on GC at the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift – but she finished first in the list of most-talked about riders.

The Dutchwoman was the center of attention for most of the nine days, partly due to her riding for the leading French team – FDJ-Suez – but also due to events on-and-off the bike.

Vollering, who won the 2023 Femmes, crashed on stage three, and initially there were concerns that she would not continue in the race. She allayed those fears, though, by bouncing back strongly to finish runner-up to Pauline Ferrand-Prévot.

But before the mountains arrived, her team manager Stephen Delcourt was involved in a heated multi-day war of words with Ferrand-Prévot’s sports director Jos van Emden.

The latter accused Vollering of being in a “gilded cage” after Delcourt said the peloton doesn’t respect his star rider, to which Delcourt responded by calling Van Emden “a stupid man”.

Vollering addressed the topic for the first time in her post-race press conference, saying that “I’ve been hunted for this a little bit.”

This article was published by Velo during the 2025 Tour de France Femmes. You can read the full article here.