Vollering Wins Flèche Wallonne Femmes With Long-Range Mur De Huy Move, Holds Off Pieterse By A Bike Length
Demi Vollering has mastered the Mur de Huy once more, taking her second career Flèche Wallonne Femmes title with a long-range acceleration that broke the race 700 metres from the summit and held off a late surge from defending champion Puck Pieterse by a bike length. The European Champion finished in 3h53'27" after a relentlessly aggressive day in the Ardennes.
The race had been attritional from the opening hour. Repeated attacks from Canyon-SRAM and Lidl-Trek whittled the front group to under 30 riders before the final approach to Huy. Elisa Longo Borghini, cleared only 17 days after her Flanders concussion, rode with her usual animation but was unable to match the explosive change of pace on the Mur itself.
When the climb came, it was FDJ-Suez who dictated. Vollering attacked from 700 metres out — significantly longer-range than her winning 2023 move — and drove herself into the red the entire length of the climb. Pieterse reacted immediately and chased through the steepest section, closing metre by metre as Vollering began to suffer inside the final 150 metres. On the line, it was a bike length, no more.
"It was the longest minute of my life," Vollering told FDJ-Suez's press officer in the mixed zone. "I knew I was either going to win by 20 seconds or lose by two. There was no middle option." The Dutchwoman, who joined FDJ-Suez in the off-season after leaving SD Worx, has now delivered the team's first Monument since the merger took effect.
Third place went to Paula Blasi (UAE Team ADQ), who produced the breakthrough ride of her career to finish three seconds adrift. The Spaniard had been tipped as an outside pick pre-race but had never cracked a top 10 at a Women's WorldTour Monument. A third place ahead of Kasia Niewiadoma and Pauline Ferrand-Prévot announces her as a genuine Ardennes contender for the next decade.
Pieterse, last year's winner, was magnanimous in defeat. "She was just better today. She went earlier than I expected and I had to chase on the wrong wheel." The Dutch champion, returning from a late-winter injury, will head into Liège-Bastogne-Liège Femmes on Sunday as a clear co-favourite with Vollering on a parcours that traditionally suits her style more than the Mur.
Niewiadoma finished fourth after setting Canyon-SRAM's early tempo, with Ferrand-Prévot — the Roubaix Femmes winner — a visibly fatigued fifth. Marlen Reusser abandoned 80 kilometres from the finish, still managing a vertebra fracture from Flanders, in what is becoming a chastening Ardennes campaign for Movistar.
For Vollering, the win is more than a Monument. It is an emphatic reply to a winter of questions about whether the move to FDJ-Suez would blunt her edge. Six months in, the answer is a second Flèche Wallonne Femmes title, a European jersey still on her shoulders, and a Liège-Bastogne-Liège start on Sunday where the bookmakers have already installed her as the 5/4 favourite.