Professional cycling teams have realized, to a lesser or greater extent, the value of promoting their organizations through strong representation on social media. Visma Lease a Bike, one of the preeminent teams in both the Men’s and Women’s World Tour, has been active in telling its stories through its YouTube channel and a recent video looks at the team’s most recent success: the 2025 Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, the 4th edition, in which the team impressed not only by winning the overall GC but taking three of the nine stages, holding the Yellow Jersey for four and the Green Jersey for a day as well.
The “childhood dream” in the title of the video is that of overall winner Pauline Ferrand-Prévot, who watched the Tour de France growing up and wished that she had been a boy and so would be eligible to win Le Grand Boucle. A multi-discipline World Champion cyclist and an Olympic gold medalist in mountain biking in Paris, she was away from road racing between 2018 and 2025, when she rejoined the team she had ridden for in the past when it was known as Rabobank-Liv. The plan was to win the Tour de France Femmes within three years but Ferrand-Prévot is clearly not one to wait and this year after being on the podium in Strade Bianche and the Tour of Flanders she won Paris-Roubaix.
Victory on stage 8
The video offers glimpses of each of the stages of the Tour de France Femmes, with sessions in the team bus as the DS goes over the plans for the day. When asked about the team’s goals, he is hoping the women will compete for the stage wins as well as a good placing in the general classification. Needless to say, things go pretty well right from the beginning when Ferrand-Prévot breaks away and is about to be caught at the finish by a fast group when her teammate, the ageless Marianne Vos, surged by to take the win and the Yellow Jersey. At 38 Vos, also a multi-discipline cycling World Champion, clearly is still a very competitive rider and a major support for Ferrand-Prévot’s GC aspirations.
Marianne Vos
While Visma LAB is in the play for the next stage, other teams step up over the coming days and the video does not mention these although Vos is impressed with Lorena Wiebes’ sprint, but it is in the final two stages, with their big climbs, that Ferrand-Prévot really comes to the fore. While the DS in the car is saying over and over how impressed he is, the fact is that the Frenchwoman decimated the field on Stage 8, riding alone for 5 kms up the Col de la Madeleine to take the Yellow Jersey, and then to defend it the next day with another sole ride, this one for 6.5 kms.
In the team car
Of course, there is lots of celebration when you are the victorious team and particularly when your superstar is France’s Own Sweetheart
winning a big French race. French cycling fans have been inured to disappointment, with no home winner of the Tour de France since Bernard Hinault in 1985, and so many rising stars never quite making it but in Ferrand-Prévot there is some redemption at last. Winning the race by over three minutes over a talent like Demi Vollering is no mean feat.
In the team bus after the race
Marion Bunel
Following this success on the roads of France, the video takes the viewer to the headquarters of the Visma LAB team in the Netherlands where everyone gets to celebrate and “A Childhood Dream” is certainly a feel-good effort. This is not to say that there are not some issues with the video production. There are no titles to indicate who speakers are and while Ferrand-Prévot and Vos are well-known to cycling fans, team officials are not. A young rider who was injured in a crash but fought back to make it to the end of the race was not identified but it was Marion Bunel, a 20 year old rider who last week became France’s National Champion. The sound quality is not as good as it could be so several times I found myself switching to the French subtitles to better understand what was going on; happily the Dutch spoken by the team personnel is subtitled into English. And there was not much in the way of explanation of what was happening in each stage but only revealing the final kilometer or so. Lastly, while the videographers want to emphasize the solidarity in the Visma LAB Women’s World Tour team there is perhaps an overemphasis on hugging, in every permutation imaginable from teammates at the finish line to teammates on the bus to hugs for the DS and support staff to Ferrand-Prévot getting hugged by her parents. Hugs for everyone in France!
Stage 8 taking the yellow jersey
Women’s pro racing is clearly on the upswing with the emergence of a number of serious competitors and better-supported teams and while the Tour de France Femmes is not really a Grand Tour but currently a one week plus stage race it is attracting considerable fan support. It is a fine thing that Visma LAB has devoted the resources to show us what is going on with their women’s team, headed by two former Road World Champions, as they have given recognition to their mighty men’s team.
Stage 9 the dream comes true
“A Childhood Dream: Our Tour de France Femmes 2025 – Inside the Beehive”
33 minutes, released August 16, 2025
Team Visma Lease a Bike YouTube channel
Video link: https://youtu.be/Zqu9LVHS3Uk?si=PztE_pKFKth7Y1s6
Pauline Ferrand-Prevot
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