Leah Kirchmann on the evolution of La Course by le Tour de France

When Marianne Vos launched from the bunch, Leah Kirchmann made sure do go as well. “I saw her going,” Kirchmann said of the the ccc-liv rider, “and that’s when I started going as hard as I could, to try to match her. But she’s incredibly explosive. It was an impressive final attack.” Vos made her move in the final few hundred metres of the La Course by le Tour de France. She passed Amanda Spratt of Mitchelton-scott, who had been leading from the 25-km to-go marker. Kirchmann couldn’t catch Vos, but she held on for second. Since La Course started in 2014, the Winnipeg rider hasn’t missed an edition. This July, she nabbed her best result at the event put on by the Amaury Sport Organization (aso).

About a week after La Course, Kirchmann was back at her home base in Sittard, Netherlands. She looked back at the various incarnations of La Course. At the first edition on the Champs-élysées, which Vos also won, Kirchman was third. In 2017, the aso turned the one-day race into a twostage affair. The final day featured a pursuit-style time trial in Marseille. “It was an interesting event. I wouldn’t repeat that format. It’s hard to chase down Annemiek when she already has a lead,” Kirchmann said with a bit of a laugh as she referred to the dominant Annemiek van Vleuten that year.

In 2018 and 2019, La Course was back to one day. “All of us would really love it to develop into a stage race. I think it would be a great race if they added a few more days to the event. There’s a feeling that having a stage race would be the next step for it,” she said. It seems the aso agrees, at least somewhat, with the sentiment within the women’s peloton. At the time of this year’s race, Reuters reported that the aso was working on a women’s race that was more of an equivalent to the men’s Tour de France. Even a month later, the details on such a race were sparse. The women’s peloton, however, was ready.— MP