Friday evening in Chambéry (Savoie) when expressing himself in front of the cameras of the Tour de France, Maëva Squiban was short of words, exceeded by the performance she had just achieved. How to be otherwise? The day before, the 23 -year -old Frenchwoman without a prestige success on the professional circuit had offered one, escaping alone in the Auvergne mountains to win in Ambert for the first time in her career on the big loop. Among the followers, we rightly spoke of a feat. But then, how can we qualify what the Emirati team’s runner UAE-Adq did this Friday, August 1?
As soon as the race was launched in the early afternoon, from Bourg-en-Bresse, than Maëva Squiban again made the trunk. The idea started from a promise made under the tone of the joke to one of her friends, she will explain later, once the finish line has passed. A bluffing, for fans and cameras, after a day which, necessarily, had left traces. Except that the joke has become serious. The Brestoise quickly found itself surrounded by fifteen other runners, including the recent French champion Marie Le Net, or the double Belgian world champion Lotte Kopecky.
Along a stage drawn in two stages – the dish first, over a hundred kilometers, then a chain of climbs -, the escape dug a good lead on a peloton that advanced piano. The gap exceeded five minutes when the road began to dump. And once again, as the kilometers paraded, that the organizations began to tire, the Frenchwoman appeared more impactful, astonishment as cool too, in short, simply stronger than her Cavale partners. Like the day before, Maëva Squiban passed the last summit, the Col du Granier (17 kilometers from the finish), alone, without anyone less than a hundred meters from her rear wheel, benefiting from her big mountain work in recent years, she who has moved in the Var to work on her skills at altitude.
In the descent that took her to Chambéry, she spun straight, exceeding 80 km/h, to offer herself a new moment of glory. She will say afterwards that she didn’t hear anything. Nor the noise of the very many spectators along the road. Nor the gaps, given in the headset by his sports management. The others were far away: she will cross the line with almost a minute ahead of her compatriot Cédrine Kerbaol. Almost a copy and paste of the day before: Thursday, another tricolor, Juliette Labous, had succeeded him on the finish line. In three and a half editions, only one Frenchwoman had managed to win a stage in the Tour de France. Maëva Squiban did it twice in two days.
Each time, the feat is measured by the reaction of his relatives. Thursday, it was one of her teammates, not selected on the Tour and who came to see her run who, taking her in her arms, crying, slipped to her ear, addressing Squiban as much as he herself: “Do you realize?” A stage of the Tour de France? ” Friday it was his father who questioned him, just as incredulous: “But what did you still do with me?”
The performance is all the more beautiful since the Breton could not have participated in the big loop. In May, during a training trip, she found herself projected on the bitumen, struck by a car. She will get out with pain everywhere and two months without being able to run, which will cost her participation in the French championships. “My helmet saved my life”she will write on her social networks.
With the Tour de France, its history has not always been easy either. His first, in 2022, that which ran at the time under the colors of the Rochelais stadium, had finished it in the hospital, taken in a fall during the second stage which had caused him a fracture of the sacrum. In 2024, she finished the penultimate crying stage, second on the finish line after having long believed to hang on to her record the most beautiful victory of her career. It will have taken him a year to buy it, and rather twice.
Thursday evening, Maëva Squiban flooded her social networks as photos and videos of her victory. On one of them, we saw her with the few teammates that he has left (three of the seven runners of the UAE-Adq had to abandon because of injuries) leading to a bottle of champagne. We hope that his team had kept another cool on him.
Update on August 1 at 8 p.m. with more elements
