Stage & Teams Guide
The organisers have served up a tantalising first edition contained within northeastern France
It can’t be overstated just how much work, focus and persistence has gone into the creation of this, a new era for women's racing at the Tour de France. That this race, the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, to give its full title, exists, isn’t some sop to appease people who’ve been urging for this race to be created. ASO, the organisers, aren’t in this business for charitable endeavours – they’re in it to make money. And they clearly feel that there’s a business case for the Tour de France Femmes.
They’ve built slowly, first with La Course, then with Classics such as Paris-Roubaix and Liège–Bastogne–Liège, and now they’ve taken their biggest step yet with the formation of an eight-stage Tour de France. The route looks fascinating, a proper, rounded stage race that tests multiple facets of the stage racer’s repertoire. Okay, there’s no time trial, but there’s just about everything else: a circuit race on the Champs-Élysées to open proceedings, fast sprint stages, stinging finishes, gravel roads, cobbles and a gruelling back-to-back stint in the Vosges mountains to finish. The winner will have proven herself as the strongest and most versatile rider on the planet, and that’s what the new biggest race on the calendar should be doing.
The start of the race comes a little under two weeks on from the end of the Giro Donne, the women’s Giro d’Italia – an even longer 10-day stage race – so those riders targeting success in both will have a tricky balancing act in regards to their peak form. Annemiek van Vleuten (Movistar), winner of just about everything in the sport, will go into the race with a target on her back as the outright favourite. Now 40 and with an extensive back catalogue of huge wins, she’s hardly one to buckle under that sort of pressure, but there are riders beneath her ready to capitalise on any weakness or mistakes, such as Ashleigh Moolman Pasio (SD Worx), while Marianne Vos (Team Jumbo-Visma), an all-time great, will light up the race as she always does.