Tomorrow, the Tour de France Femmes ends the way few Grand Tours do: not on a mountain summit or a sprinters’ boulevard, but on a loop. Stage 9 is 99.2km, Nice to Nice, and the entire route folds around one climb ridden four times — the Col d’Èze, the hill that shadows Monaco and the Moyenne Corniche above the Mediterranean. Three trips up one way, a fourth up a steeper back road, then a 15km technical descent straight down to the Promenade des Anglais.

That’s a genuinely different pacing puzzle than anything else in this race, and we’ve now covered most of the range. Mont Ventoux was one continuous hour-long grind — no repeats, no recovery terrain, just one long number to hold. Today’s stage into Nice is the opposite: mostly flat, with a nasty sting hidden in the final 17km. Stage 9 is neither. It’s the same climb, four separate times, with the last one deliberately made harder than the first three. If you’ve read our Flanders breakdown of the Kwaremont and Paterberg, you know this shape — but four laps of one hill is a longer, more grinding version of that problem, closer in feel to what we wrote about the double Alpe d’Huez coming later this Tour than to a one-off classics berg.

And there’s a race actually riding on it. After Stage 7’s summit finish on Ventoux, Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney holds the yellow jersey by 15 seconds over Demi Vollering, with Marlen Reusser 39 seconds back in third. Whatever happens on today’s stage into Nice, those are tight enough gaps that four ascents of a category-two-then-category-one climb, finishing with a 15km technical descent, can still flip the overall result on the final day.

Quick Verdict: Pacing a Four-Lap Repeated Climb

Ascent	Distance/Gradient	Amateur Mistake	Correct Approach
1st Col d’Èze (km 7.7)	7.7km at 5.9%	Race it like the only one	88-92% FTP, deliberately unremarkable
2nd Col d’Èze (km 33.6)	7.7km at 5.9%, same road	Chase whoever attacked lap one	Same power target, ignore the moves
3rd Col d’Èze (km 59.6)	7.7km at 5.9%, same road	Assume the hard part’s still ahead, over-save	Small step up — this is your last “easy” lap
4th ascent, via Vinaigrier (km 83.8)	6km at 7.6%, 1km+ at 12%	Discover the steep section has no matches left	Everything you rationed across laps 1-3
Final descent (15km to finish)	Technical, into Nice	Descend cooked and distracted	Fresh focus — the stage isn’t decided until the line

Race date: August 9, 2026 Stage distance: 99.2km, Nice to Nice — the final stage of the race The lesson: Four identical-looking climbs aren’t identical. The one that matters is the fourth, and it’s the steepest by a wide margin.

Why Repeating One Climb Four Times Isn’t the Same Problem as Flanders or Ventoux

Every repeated-effort stage we’ve covered this year has taught some version of “save something for the decisive rep.” Flanders taught it over two ascents each of the Kwaremont and Paterberg. Roubaix taught a looser version of it across thirty cobbled sectors. Stage 9 sharpens the lesson because there’s no ambiguity about which rep matters most — the organizers have told you outright, by making the fourth ascent longer in duration through the steep sections and steeper on paper than the first three.

That changes the math on laps one through three. On a stage where every climb is genuinely unknown in difficulty, you have to hedge — ride conservatively because you don’t know what’s coming. Here, you do know. The first three ascents are 7.7km at 5.9%, run up the same road, cresting at kilometers 7.7, 33.6, and 59.6. They’re Category 2 climbs, honest efforts, but nothing that should put a strong rider deep into the red. The temptation is to race them anyway, because racing is what a bike race does to your brain when other riders around you surge. Resisting that pull for three laps, on a climb you’ll see a fourth time in a harder form, is the actual skill this stage tests.

It’s a more patient version of what we wrote about the double Alpe d’Huez this July — riding a known climb once knowing you’ll face a version of it again later, with the accumulated fatigue changing what “again” means. The difference here is compression: instead of two efforts days apart, it’s four efforts in one afternoon, with the last one deliberately built to hurt more than the first three combined.

The Four Ascents, Broken Down

Ascents 1, 2, and 3 (km 7.7, 33.6, 59.6): 7.7km at 5.9%. Same road, same gradient, same category. This is the Col d’Èze’s standard face — a steady, mid-single-digit grade that a fit amateur can hold at endurance-to-tempo power without much drama. The danger isn’t the climbing. It’s the racing that happens on top of the climbing, as teams test each other before the stage decides anything.

The fourth ascent (km 83.8): a different road entirely. Instead of repeating the same line a fourth time, the route turns onto the Chemin du Vinaigrier and over the Col des Quatre Chemins — a Category 1 climb of 6km at 7.6%, with more than a kilometer sitting around 12%. That’s not a harder version of the same climb. It’s a different climb, steeper by roughly two full percentage points on average and holding double-digit gradient for longer than anything else on the route. Riders arriving at the base of it with 84 kilometers and three prior ascents already in their legs are about to find out exactly how much they overspent earlier in the day.

The finish: a 15km technical descent to the Promenade des Anglais. From the summit of the fourth Col d’Èze, the road drops for 15 kilometers back into Nice, technical enough that positioning and nerve matter as much as whatever gap exists at the top. On a Grand Tour’s final stage, with the overall potentially still open, that descent isn’t a formality — it’s where a 15-second lead either survives or doesn’t.

Power targets across the four laps

Section	Target Power	RPE	What You’re Doing
1st Col d’Èze (7.7km, 5.9%)	85-90% FTP	5-6/10	Restrained. Let attacks go if they’re not the ones that matter.
2nd Col d’Èze (7.7km, 5.9%)	88-92% FTP	6/10	Same climb, marginally higher effort — you have three laps of data on your legs now.
3rd Col d’Èze (7.7km, 5.9%)	90-94% FTP	6-7/10	The last “easy” lap. Stay disciplined — the real climb is still ahead.
4th ascent via Vinaigrier (6km, 7.6%, 1km+ at 12%)	95-105%+ FTP	8-9/10	Everything. The steep kilometer is where restraint on laps 1-3 pays off — or doesn’t.
Descent to finish (15km)	Variable	6-9/10	Power matters less than line choice and staying mentally present.

The pattern across the table is deliberate: a small, controlled ramp across the first three laps, then a real step up for the fourth. That’s the opposite of how most amateurs would naturally pace it, which is to treat lap one like a fresh, exciting new climb (because it is) and lap four like just another rep (because by then, fatigue makes everything feel similarly awful, which is exactly the problem — your legs stop being able to tell you how much is actually left in the tank).

How Should You Pace Four Repeated Ascents of the Same Climb?

If you’re riding an event with this shape — a short, repeated climb ridden multiple times, with the hardest version saved for last — the pacing plan comes down to five decisions:

1. Treat the early reps as boring on purpose. The first ascent should feel too easy relative to what you could do. That’s correct, not a mistake — it’s insurance for the lap that actually decides things.
2. Don’t let other riders’ surges reset your plan. Someone will attack on lap one or two because it feels good and the group is fresh. Let them. A move made three laps before the hard climb rarely survives it.
3. Use the identical terrain to calibrate, not to relax. Riding the same 7.7km three times gives you real-time feedback — heart rate drift, perceived effort at a known power — that a stage with four different climbs never would. Use that data to sharpen your fourth-ascent target, not to zone out.
4. Spend everything on the climb that’s actually different. The fourth ascent isn’t a harder version of the first three — it’s a steeper, longer-in-the-steep-section climb on a different road. Ride it like the separate effort it is.
5. Stay sharp on the descent regardless of how the climb went. A gap made on the final climb, or a deficit that needs clawing back, both live or die on 15 technical kilometers back into town. Tired focus loses more time here than tired legs.

The GC Math: Why This Stage Can Still Flip the Race

Fifteen seconds separates first and second overall. Thirty-nine separates first and third. Those are Ventoux’s numbers, carried forward — Niewiadoma took the jersey on the mountain and nobody’s built a cushion large enough to consider the race decided.

A gap that small doesn’t need a summit finish to change hands. It needs one rider producing watts that another can’t match on a Category 1 climb with 15 kilometers still to race, or one rider taking a corner on the descent with more conviction than the rider defending yellow. Four ascents of the same hill sounds, on paper, like a stage built for whoever climbs best in isolation. In practice, on the final day of a Grand Tour with this little separating the top of the standings, it’s built for whoever paced the first three laps well enough to have something left when the road actually got hard — and who then didn’t give it back on the way down.

A Workout to Train This

You don’t need the Riviera to practice this pattern. Any short climb you can repeat four times — or a trainer session structured the same way — teaches the same discipline.

Warm-up: 15 minutes progressive, building to endurance pace.

Main set:

1. 12 minutes at 85-90% FTP (RPE 5-6/10) — simulates ascent one. Deliberately restrained.
2. 6 minutes easy spin (RPE 3/10) — simulates the flat/rolling terrain between ascents.
3. 12 minutes at 88-92% FTP (RPE 6/10) — simulates ascent two. Small step up, same discipline.
4. 6 minutes easy spin (RPE 3/10) — recovery between ascents.
5. 12 minutes at 90-94% FTP (RPE 6-7/10) — simulates ascent three. Last chance to stay patient.
6. 6 minutes easy spin (RPE 3/10) — final recovery before the real effort.
7. 12-15 minutes at 95-100%+ FTP, with the final 3-4 minutes as hard as you can sustain (RPE 8-9/10) — simulates the steeper fourth ascent, including the 12% pitch.
8. 8-10 minutes variable, alternating hard 30-second efforts with soft-pedal recovery — simulates descending with tired legs and needing to stay mentally sharp.

Cool-down: 10 minutes easy.

Total time: 100-115 minutes.

The test: Compare your power across ascents one through three. If they’re essentially flat — same watts, similar heart rate drift — you paced correctly. If ascent three required noticeably more RPE for the same watts as ascent one, you spent too much on laps you didn’t need to. Either way, look hardest at block 7: if your power collapses in the final three minutes rather than holding or rising, the first three ascents cost you more than you thought.

If your FTP hasn’t been retested since you built this season’s climbing fitness, get a current number before setting targets for a session like this — a stale threshold turns a well-paced fourth ascent into either a survival crawl or an easy jog, and neither teaches you anything useful.

What to Watch For on Stage 9

1. Whether anyone attacks on ascents one through three. A move this early only matters if it’s backed by a team willing to work through the flat and rolling sections between climbs. Most won’t survive to the fourth ascent.
2. Body language on the Vinaigrier’s steepest kilometer. The switch from 5.9% to a sustained pitch near 12% is where riders who overspent on the first three laps get exposed — hands to the tops, cadence dying, gaps opening that won’t close.
3. Whether Vollering or Reusser can match Niewiadoma’s acceleration on the fourth climb, not just survive it. Matching a wheel and attacking a wheel cost very different amounts of energy, and only one of them changes 15 or 39 seconds.
4. How the group descends the final 15km. We wrote about tired-legs descending after Milan-San Remo’s Poggio earlier this year — the same principle applies here, on a longer, more technical descent, on the last day it will possibly matter this race.
5. The finish-line time gaps, not just the stage result. On a final stage with the GC this tight, the stage winner and the overall winner may not be the same rider — watch both scoreboards.

The Bottom Line

Ventoux tested whether you could hold one honest number for an hour with no relief. Today’s stage tests whether you’ll stay switched on through 150 boring kilometers for a finale that matters. Stage 9 tests something else again: whether you can ride the same climb three times without letting it fool you into thinking that’s the whole test, then find something extra when the road actually gets steep.

If you’re riding any event built around repeated laps of one hill — a local training crit on a climbing loop, a gran fondo with multiple passes of the same ascent — the lesson transfers directly. Ride the identical reps like they’re identical. Save the difference for the lap that’s actually different. And however the legs feel at the top, stay present for whatever comes down the other side.

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Stage route and profile details from the official Tour de France Femmes stage 9 page. GC standings and Stage 7 context from Cyclingnews’ live coverage of the Mont Ventoux finish. Pacing targets are training estimates based on power-based training principles — adjust for your own tested FTP and conditions.