Vos’s dramatic win overshadowed by off-course politics
‘Having two races at the same time would not be feasible’
Tour de France organiser ASO is looking to launch a major women’s race that “would be to women’s cycling what the Tour de France is to men’s cycling”. The news came after yesterday’s La Course by Le Tour, the women’s race which runs alongside the Tour de France, was again overshadowed by fierce debate about the event’s development.
Lizzie Deignan argued that the race had “stagnated” in the past few years, while Dame Sarah Storey wrote in The Daily Telegraph yesterday that it felt like ASO was making a “token gesture” this year by including a women’s race on the back of the men’s time trial.
The race itself was a cracker, however, with Marianne Vos, the greatest rider in the history of women’s cycling, pulling off a spectacular win. The multiple world and Olympic champion, who rides for CCC-LIV, caught and passed solo escapee Amanda Spratt (Mitchelton-scott) on the 17 per cent ramp up to the finish line in Pau.
Spratt had been out on her own for the best part of 25 kilometres, the Australian’s lead at one point up to 35 seconds as the peloton took a while to organise itself.
A few riders, including Vos and Lucinda Brand (Sunweb), tried to get across to the Australian, but none of the moves got very far.
With Sunweb and CCC leading the chase, though, the gap came down to around 10 seconds with a kilometre left, and Spratt was eventually swallowed up by the bunch on the penultimate corner.
Vos, who has just won four stages at the Giro Rosa, powered past her, before sprinting away from the rest of the pack to win by three seconds from Leah Kirchmann (Sunweb) and Cecile Uttrup Ludwig (Bigla).
“I came out of the Giro Rosa with good motivation, and La Course was a good inspiration to give it an extra go,” Vos said afterwards. “The break of Amanda Spratt was pretty dangerous, so my team-mates had to do a lot of work to bring it back. When I saw it came down to the climb, I knew I had a chance. I went and just had the legs to continue.”
It was a thrilling finish to the 121km race, which had five laps of the course being used by the men in their stage 13 time trial later.
But there was, as ever, an undercurrent of negativity. ASO has experimented with formats, with the race now back to a one-day offering, as it was when Vos won the first edition in Paris in 2014.
Deignan, who suffered two mechanical hitches yesterday and finished more than 11 minutes down, said it had “stagnated”.
“We’re obviously not moving forward. It’s still one day. It’s got its place in the calendar, and we take advantage of the platform it gives us, the media that are here. [We] take the positives from it. That’s all we can do really.”
A “senior ASO official” told Reuters it was setting up a special group to develop women’s cycling and wanted a race that “would be to women’s cycling what the Tour de France is to men’s cycling”.
“We cannot have a women’s Tour de France at the same moment as the men’s Tour, because it would be logistically impossible,” said the official. “The Tour has grown so much and is so big that having two races at the same time would not be feasible. Some 29,000 police officers are deployed for the men’s race; it would be too complicated.”