At 1:30am this Friday, Victoria Stansfield will pedal away from her home in Chamonix, and into the unknown. “I’ve never ridden in the dark before,” she smiles, talking to Cycling Weekly over video call. “I don’t even own lights. I’ve had to buy them.”
It’s a surprising admission from the best female gran fondo racer in the world right now. This summer, Stansfield won the 177km Marmotte in the French Alps in record time, as well as the Étape du Tour de France and Étape du Tour de France Femmes – three of the most iconic sportives in the circuit. Now, she’s less than 24 hours away from her biggest challenge yet: La Dame Blanche.
It’s an idea she conjured up herself. The name comes from French folklore and means ‘The White Lady’, the female spirit of the mountains. Stansfield’s plan is to cycle 330km around Mont Blanc, and then immediately line up to compete at the 171km UTMB (Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc), the most famous event in trail running.
Latest Videos FromCycling Weekly
Nobody has ever done both back to back. In total, the challenge counts 501km, and more than 18,000m of climbing, split 8,300m on the bike, and 10,000m on the run. “My goal is to do it all in 50 hours,” Stansfield says.
And yet, she concedes, there’s a possibility she won’t finish at all. Over the past few weeks, Stansfield has been taking bets from her family and friends on the likelihood of her completing the entire route. “My husband thinks there’s an 80% chance. I put myself at 85%,” she says.
“I’m so excited to just see what I can do. The premise of it for me is: competing in a gran fondo or riding the Tour of Mont Blanc, or doing UTMB, I know I can do them, and there’s a safety in knowing that. But the two together? I truly don’t know if I can do it. I’m not 100%. That’s what excites me so much.”
You’d be forgiven if you hadn’t heard of Victoria Stansfield until now. Born in Bristol, the 31-year-old only took up cycling properly last year, but has quickly catapulted herself to the top of the amateur scene.
“I was a cross country runner,” she says of her school days. “Then I started triathlon in 2018, and went straight into half Ironman, and it was going really well.”
The following year, Stansfield left her career as an accountant to pursue becoming a professional triathlete. Covid then ground sports events to a halt, and she began caring for her father, who had become unwell with cancer.
“I took the decision to step away from triathlon, and I never went back after dad died,” she says. “Triathlon was our thing, and I didn’t know how I would feel about it without him there.”
In its place, Stansfield took up marathon running. She clocked a 2:41 on her marathon debut in Sevilla in 2021, and later transitioned into trail running. Early last year, however, she slipped in Switzerland and broke her pelvis. The doctors gave her crutches and told her not to walk for two months. “The thing I really missed was, and this sounds really strange: the feeling of the wind on my face,” she says.
Cycling came first as a way to restore fitness. But immediately Stansfield fell in love with the rush of weaving through the mountains.
Last July, a month after she first began riding a road bike, she entered a multi-day sportive in the Pyrenees called the Campilaro, and won. The following week, she entered the Étape du Tour de France Femmes, and won that too.
Stansfield has won the Étape du Tour de France Femmes two years running.
(Image credit: A.S.O/Xavier Pereyron)
It’s curious then, that despite going on to do the Marmotte-Étape Hommes-Étape Femmes treble this year, Stansfield still feels like an “imposter” in the cycling world.
She says she doesn’t know how to descend or ride in a bunch, and only learnt how to corner this year after she crashed twice in the Mallorca 312 gran fondo, where she finished second.
“I’ve actually just been to get my bike looked at,” Stansfield says. “My husband told me my brakes were soft, but I wouldn’t know,” she adds with a laugh.
It’s a self-deprecating attitude that stands in contrast to her growing status in the cycling scene. She was a bit embarrassed, she says, when the mechanics at the bike shop greeted her by saying: “Here she is, the champion!”
Similarly, after she won the Étape du Tour de France Femmes earlier this month and fans asked her for photos at the top of Mont Ventoux, she laughed and asked them why.
Victory on Mont Ventoux sealed Stansfield’s status as a gran fondo great.
(Image credit: A.S.O/Bastien Seon)
The truth is Stansfield has never sought stardom in her riding challenges. With her upcoming La Dame Blanche, her goal is to inspire, particularly her daughter, Margot, who recently turned three.
“For me, it’s terrifying,” she says. “But I really want my little girl to go, ‘Mummy did something that really scared her.’”
The first of those fears will be riding through the night. “I should be getting to the top of the Col du Grand St-Bernard at sunrise, so it’s going to be the most stunning morning of my life,” she says.
“I’m just hoping sunrise doesn’t happen when I’m on the descent, because I think there’s a period just before sunrise when your body gets a bit freaked out… and we all know I can’t go downhill as it is.”
Barring disaster, Stansfield hopes to have two hours for her transition from cycling to starting at UTMB. She will then face a cut off of just under 47 hours to complete the 171km mountainous trail run.
“This is completely unknown,” Stansfield says. But that’s her whole reason for taking it on. “I just want more people to try and do stuff that scares them – put themselves out of their comfort zones. What’s the worst that happens?”
You can follow Victoria Stansfield’s La Dame Blanche challenge live via the tracker on her website.
Read the full article here
