Kimberley Le Court Pienaar becomes first African to win a stage at the Tour de France Femmes
Le Court (AG Insurance-Soudal), 29, who led the general classification after stage two but was overtaken by Marianne Vos (Visma-Lease a Bike), won a breakneck downhill push to the finish, edging 2023 champion Demi Vollering.
'We came in with a clear plan, first to stay safe ... it was difficult because it was flat and fast, a lot of big crashes ... then try for the victory,' Le Court said.
The fifth stage, the longest in the Tour this year, went through a relatively flat terrain before three climbs in the final 35km and saw several failed breakaway attempts as the peloton covered 46.5km in the first hour despite multiple crashes.
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Green jersey holder Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx-Protime) recovered from a crash to rejoin the peloton, but struggled to keep up after the first climb, ultimately finishing 58th.
American Olympic champion Kristen Faulkner (EF Education-Oatly) abandoned the race after her third crash in three days. Maria Giulia Confalonieri, Elisa Balsamo and Monica Trinca Colonel also quit the race.
Vos, who stayed in the peloton behind a leading group for most of the race, attacked in the final 15km during the mountainous part of the stage, but fell behind during the final uphill push, dropping to sixth in the general classification.
Vollering (FDJ-Suez) rose to third overall, while Pauline Ferrand Prevot (Visma-Lease a Bike) moved up to second, sitting 18 seconds behind Le Court in the general classification.
Lara Gillespie is 95th in the general classification, with Mia Griffin (96th) and Fiona Mangan (99th) close behind her.
The Tour continues on Thursday with a mountainous 123.7km ride from Clermont-Ferrand to Ambert.
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Irish Times
18 hours ago
- Irish Times
Now it's clear who the real beneficiaries of the GAA's split season are
In the GAA the division between club players and intercounty players has never been greater. It is an issue of separation rather than conflict, though inevitably there are tensions. Everyone understands that intercounty players have another life, with a devolved government and a bespoke set of rules, goals and timetables. But all the while the distance between club and county grows. In match programmes, the clubs of intercounty players are listed directly under their names, and that attachment will never be lost. But in any given season now, many intercounty players will play fewer games for their club than their county. How many of them will even play 10 club games? This heightened separation is one of the unintended consequences of the split season. The old calendar was full of kitchen extensions and attic conversions, all of which created the illusion of extra space. And because the intercounty championship was littered with gaping holes in the schedule, some of the more confident and successful counties would slot in a midsummer round of club championship games. At one stage the GAA created a 'club month' after the National Leagues, in the hope of stimulating some early season activity in local championships. But it was an invitation rather than a directive, and by the time the GAA dreamed up this initiative many intercounty managers had a firm grip on their county executives and, by extension, the local club calendar. Most intercounty managers resented the intrusion and the temporary loss of dominion over 'their' players. READ MORE Over time it became a question of custody and power. Somewhere along the line, that control was ceded by clubs. There might have been grumbling at board level by club delegates about the overarching authority of intercounty managers, but there were no mutinies. Clubs could ask for one of their players to be released but they couldn't make a demand or assert their age-old right to access. That licence had been suspended. The split season has consistently been portrayed as a triumph for clubs and club players. In reality, nobody has gained more than intercounty managers. They no longer had to worry about an integrated calendar or defend themselves against fundamentalists who held fast to the Old Testament belief that the club comes first. Instead, they had unfettered control. Under the GAA's rules, intercounty panels are not permitted to resume collective training until the first week of December, but every intercounty panellist is handed a gym programme and a running plan in October. By then, the vast majority of intercounty players have emerged from their short club window and are back on the hamster wheel. For most counties, the season is no shorter than it was before the calendar was reformed and in some cases it is longer. In football, no county can be eliminated until June, by which time they will have been training for nearly 10 months. In hurling, some teams are gone in May which amounts to a nine-month season. During that time, they have no meaningful contact with their clubs unless an enlightened county manager releases a fringe player for a league game. Being an intercounty player is such an immersive experience now that they wouldn't have the bandwidth to worry about their clubs at the same time. Dr Noel McCaffrey, the former Dublin player, tried to address this imbalance with a motion he primed for the GAA's annual congress last February. His proposal was that players would be obliged to line out in four club league games before they were eligible to play intercounty championship. 'The rationale [behind the motion] includes basic fairness, honouring the core essence of the GAA, protecting the health of players by getting them to regularly step outside the intercounty bubble, halting the misguided race to professionalism and acting to control the extraordinary amounts of money being spent on running intercounty teams,' wrote McCaffrey in a piece for The Irish Times . The motion was passed overwhelmingly at Dublin Convention last December, but after a short debate at GAA Congress in Donegal, McCaffrey withdrew the motion before it was put to a vote. Even delegates who were sympathetic to the spirit of McCaffrey's proposal recognised the practical obstacles to implementation. Along the way, clubs had conceded too much ground for this kind of redress to be entertained. Tipperary's Bryan O'Mara and Willie Connors celebrate with the Liam McCarthy Cup. Injury meant O'Mara was the only Tipperary player not to play for his club in the week after their All-Ireland win. Photograph: Laszlo Geczo/Inpho On a parallel track, club players wait months for the games that will define their season and for their intercounty players to return. Some counties schedule club championship games for July, but most hang on until August. By then, the vast majority of club players have been training since January. Is that too early for an August championship? Absolutely. But, for club players, the post-Christmas impulse to train in January is deeply ingrained. As soon as the last dart is thrown at the Ally Pally they get restless. After that? The season can drag at times. Eight months of training and waiting and playing league games that nobody cares much about. Is that a good deal for club players? It is the only show in town. For intercounty players, especially in counties who have gone deep into the season, this time of the year is challenging too. Win or lose there is very little time to decompress. On their club teams, they are not expected to perform like ordinary mortals. In Tipperary , the divisional championships started six days after the All-Ireland final. By last Wednesday, 25 of Tipperary's matchday 26 had been in action. There was no time to be tired. The injured Bryan O'Mara was the only exception. In October last year, the Kerry players attempted to put their foot down. A few weeks after their All-Ireland semi-final loss a letter was circulated by the players indicating that they didn't want to be considered for district championship matches. Under pressure from their clubs a few players relented but the Kerry players had taken an important stance. They wanted their tiredness to be recognised. It was another expression of the gap between intercounty players and club players. The intercounty players were entitled to be tired. And the club players? By this time of the year, they're like a coiled spring. Over the next two months the club season will fly. Having waited seven or eight months for a championship match, the season will be over in seven or eight weeks for most club players. And the GAA said the split season was for them.
Irish Times
18 hours ago
- Irish Times
Jel Pepper looks good enough to deny Joseph O'Brien in Naas
The richest race of the year at Naas highlights Ireland's Bank Holiday Monday programme where the English raider Jel Pepper can prove best in the €200,000 Ballyhane Stakes. Cross-channel raiders have won just once in the five-year history of the lucrative juvenile contest that is worth €100,000 less than in 2024. A handful of British-based hopefuls still make the journey for a 24-runner contest in which Joseph O'Brien has a quarter of the field. They are topped by the filly Green Sense, winner of the Group Two Prix Robert Papin on her last start and who boasts an official 102-rating. READ MORE She must concede 4lbs to Jel Pepper who also has Group form having finished an unlucky third to Zavateri in the July Stakes at Newmarket. The latter followed up in style at Goodwood last week. Given an unsettled weather outlook, the fact Jel Pepper won on soft ground on his debut is a plus too. 'We missed Goodwood with him to go to Naas. It is great prize money and I believe the ground will be on the easy side of good, which will play to his strengths as he likes a bit of a cut in the ground,' trainer Oliver Cole said. Henry de Bromhead's Letiza bids to follow up her June success at Down Royal in the concluding handicap at Naas. The horse she beat in the north, Dancing Steve, has won since and a 6lb hike in the ratings for that doesn't look too severe. There is also Bank Holiday jumps action in Cork. The Ribblesdale winner Garden Of Eden failed to land a blow in Sunday's German Oaks for Ryan Moore and Aidan O'Brien. The Irish filly never got into contention in the Group One Henkel-Preis der Diana in Düsseldorf and was out of the money behind the locally trained winner Nicoreni. Meanwhile, the 2025 Galway festival ended on Sunday with an almost 8% increase in attendances for the seven days. An official attendance of 125,997 was returned for the week compared to 116,374 last year. It was also up on the 2023 figure of 122,367. The biggest crowd of the week was 26,234 on Friday evening. Not surprisingly, on-course betting was also up. Turnover in the betting reached over E7.5 million during the week, an increase of 13% on 2024. Tote betting was up by 20% to E6 million. Willie Mullins was leading trainer at the festival for a 10th time. Dylan Browne McMonagle was top jockey on the flat with four winners. Jack Kennedy, who got the Galway Hurdle in the stewards room on Thursday, won the National Hunt prize with three winners. 'We've been really fortunate with the weather over the week and there has been great crowds and a great atmosphere across the enclosure. 'There has been a great mix of winners between trainers, jockeys, owners and syndicates. Everybody has been in the mix here and there has been plenty of drama and great stories,' said the Galway boss Michael Moloney.
Irish Times
a day ago
- Irish Times
Dublin turn up the heat on Meath and emerge as deserving champions
All-Ireland women's senior football final: Dublin 2-16 Meath 0-10 It ended with a pitch invasion that had to be called back, the Dublin subs and selectors rewound to the sideline like the flex on a vacuum cleaner. As Carla Rowe stood over a free at the Hill 16 end, she alone among the Dublin contingent seemed to know that the hooter wouldn't go until she kicked it dead. It was about their only misstep of the day. Dublin racked up their seventh All-Ireland here with a display of intensity and hard-nosed belligerence that burned Meath to a crisp. They attacked the final from the get-go and got their business done early, putting the game out of reach well before half-time. When Niamh Hetherton buried their second goal on 22 minutes, they were 2-8 to 0-2 ahead and Meath were goosed. All around the pitch, Dublin players hit their own personal bullseye. Rowe was a menace in attack, insistent and clinical all day. Wing-forward Orlagh Nolan ran a marathon of ball through the Meath rearguard, Sinéad Goldrick was an iron presence around the middle third. Leah Caffrey held Emma Duggan to three shots from play in the whole game. 'We knew when we met them this morning that they were ready for it,' said Dublin co-manager Paul Casey. 'They'd pep in their step and they probably came in here bouncing. But it's nothing like the way they're going to leave here because it's absolutely fantastic. You're hoping that all your big names and stars will turn up and give a performance. I think that they went over and beyond that.' READ MORE For Meath, the winter's regrets will be rooted in the fact that they came to the biggest game of the year and left so few footprints in the sand. All the vim and ruthlessness of their semi-final display against Kerry deserted them here. They didn't land their first score from play until five minutes into the second half, by which stage they were 10 points behind. Nothing Meath tried worked out. Vikki Wall had a golden chance of a goal after three minutes but hurried her shot, presuming she had an advantage after being pulled back by Caffrey. Not only did she not get her free, she wasn't set properly for the shot and pulled it well wide. It was that kind of day for Wall, who seemed to get on the wrong side of referee Gus Chapman and cut a frustrated figure all afternoon. A goal then might have settled Meath. As it was, they could never get that close to the whites of Abby Shiels's eyes again, with Dublin repeatedly fouling them any time they came into the scoring zone. Meath finished the day with 10 frees inside the men's 40-metre arc – Dublin weren't above a healthy dollop of naked cynicism when it suited them and Chapman never looked minded to produce a yellow card to warn them off it. Dublin's Niamh Hetherton scores a goal against Meath in the first half. Photograph: Leah Scholes/Inpho And so Meath went the whole of the first half without scoring a point from play. Not all of that was down to the threshing machine of the Dublin defence. The Meath attack was nothing like as slick or organised as Dublin's, with too many players frequently drawn towards the ball and acres of space left in front of goal. By contrast, Dublin's attack was layered and sophisticated, with Rowe and Hannah Tyrrell constantly pulling into space in the inside forward line before laying off to runners coming through. Rowe was particularly elusive in that devastating opening quarter, putting the first goal on a plate for Nicole Owens, drawing a foul for a Tyrrell free and slaloming through for a score of her own. Dublin led by 1-4 to 0-1 after 10 minutes, by which time the only thing that seemed to be in reliable working order for Meath was Robyn Murray's kickout. Time and again, she was able to get the ball away and beat the Dublin press, only for the Meath attack to malfunction up ahead of her. Duggan dropped a couple short, one from play and one from a free, while the busy Ciara Smyth shanked one wide. All those misses meant that Meath had no disaster insurance. Murray's kickouts were magnificent right up until they weren't. She barely missed one for the first 18 minutes and then she coughed up two in 90 seconds. For the first, Rowe put Kate Sullivan away and Murray had to pull off a diving save. Meath players Aoibhín Cleary and Vikki Wall after their side's defeat in the TG4 All-Ireland Ladies SFC final. Photograph: Seb Daly/Sportsfile She didn't get away with it a second time though. This time it was midfielder Éilish O'Dowd who snapped onto possession and fed Niamh Hetherton. All it took from there was a quick sidestep and she gave Murray no chance. It meant that with only 22 minutes gone, Dublin were 2-8 to 0-2 ahead and all six of their starting forwards scored from play. Can't ask for much more in an All-Ireland final. After that, the rest of the game was like an election night count when the tallies have already told everyone who's going to fill the seats. Meath scored the last two points of the half and the first three after the restart to bring the gap back to eight points in the 36th minute. But Dublin knuckled down and rattled off the next three on a row, with Rowe, Tyrrell and the impish Sullivan pushing them out of sight again. They saw it out like champions. Ruthless, relentless, imperious. The class of 2025. Dublin: Abby Shiels; Jess Tobin, Leah Caffrey, Niamh Donlon; Sinéad Goldrick, Martha Byrne, Niamh Crowley (0-1); Éilish O'Dowd, Hannah McGinnis; Nicole Owens (1-0), Niamh Hetherton (1-1), Orlagh Nolan (0-1); Carla Rowe (0-4, 0-2 frees), Hannah Tyrrell (0-5, 0-3 frees), Kate Sullivan (0-4). Subs: Sophie McIntyre for Owens, 49 mins; Aoife Kane for McGinnis, 51 mins; Hannah Leahy for Donlon, 54 mins; Laura Grendon for Tyrrell, 55 mins; Chloe Darby for Sullivan, 56 mins. Meath: Robyn Murray; Áine Sheridan, Mary Kate Lynch, Shauna Ennis; Aoibhín Cleary (0-1), Sarah Wall, Karla Kealy; Orlaigh Sheehy, Marion Farrelly; Megan Thynne, Niamh Gollogly, Ciara Smyth (0-1); Emma Duggan (0-7, 0-5 frees), Vikki Wall (0-1), Kerrie Cole. Subs: Katie Bermingham for Farrelly, 25 mins; Farrelly for Ennis, 42 mins; Ella Moyles for Sheehy, 42 mins; Niamh McEntee for Cole, 49 mins; Ciara Lawlor for Kealy, 51 mins. Referee: Gus Chapman (Sligo).
