The third edition of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift promises to be a memorable one, with the first foreign Grand Depart in the Netherlands, more chances to take stage wins at cycling's biggest race and a historic finale up Alpe d'Huez all on the menu.
Flat routes in The Hague and Rotterdam, a double stage on day two and a Classics parcours en route to Liège bring the race back into France on day four before the GC action looks set to kick off right from the Vosges to Le Grand Bornand and on the famous 21 bends up l'Alpe.
Racing has been moved from its original late July spot to mid-August so France could account for the Paris Olympics, meaning there are extra kilometres in the legs with the anticipation building more than ever throughout the long season.
The stakes are high and there is something on offer for everyone as the peloton race for the yellow leader's jersey sponsored by LCL, green points jersey sponsored by Škoda, polka-dot mountains jersey sponsored by E.Leclerc, white best young rider jersey sponsored by Liv, team classification sponsored by Krys, most aggressive rider sponsored by Teisseire, plus of course the stage victories sponsored by Zwift.
Cyclingnews highlights the biggest talking as we look ahead to the eight stages of racing, finishing with a double hors categorie summit finale on August 18, that will crown the winner of the 2024 Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift.
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Giro, Olympics, and Tour, oh my!
There is no disputing the jam-packed summer schedule that has taken the professional women's peloton across the Giro d'Italia, the Paris Olympic Games and into the Tour de France Femmes.
Competing in back-to-back Grand Tours and adding the magnitude of the quadrennial Olympics in between would be a tough ask for even the most accomplished racers.
Therefore, riders who were selected to represent their nations at the Olympic Games have also been forced to pick and choose the Grand Tours they would focus on; some have opted to race all three events, while others have skipped one because it wasn't impossible to hold peak form for five or six weeks and expect top performances.
The Tour de France Femmes's defending champion, Demi Vollering, chose to skip the Giro d'Italia Women this year even though she would have been one of the favourites to win the overall title after she had already won La Vuelta Femenina and has continued a stage racing winning streak through Itzulia Women, Vuelta a Burgos and Tour de Suisse.
She instead opted to preview the Tour de France Femmes route while on a training camp in her camper van before competing at the Olympic Games in Paris. She heads to the Tour in top form, likely well-recovered from a searing spring campaign and ready to tackle her yellow-jersey defence.
Last year's Tour de France Femmes mountains classification winner and runner-up, Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon-SRAM), chose a similar pathway, skipping the Giro and racing at the Olympics and the Tour.
On the other hand, Elisa Longo Borghini (Lidl-Trek) decided to focus on the Giro d'Italia, where she secured the overall victory on home soil. While she was disappointed with her performance at the Olympic Games, she now heads to the Tour de France as a darkhorse contender, with the team likely to focus on Gaia Realini for the GC.
Whatever the pathway riders have selected to take to get to the Tour de France Femmes, we can all expect to see an in-form peloton and a thrilling battle for the yellow jersey.
Muzic and Labous lead French hopes
Half of the 2024 Tour de France Femmes may take place outside of France as Rotterdam plays host to the first foreign Grand Départ, however, home French hopes will be looking to star and net both the first stage win and podium finish on GC.
FDJ-SUEZ’s Evita Muzic and DSM-Firmenich PostNL’s Juliette Labous will be the key hopes for the overall, having been two of the best climbers in recent seasons. Muzic is also one of the few riders to beat defending champion Demi Vollering in a summit finish this season, while Labous has taken fourth and fifth on GC at the past two editions of the Tour.
They’ll be teammates next year as Labous joins the French squad FDJ-SUEZ but for 2024, they will be vying for the top spot for a home rider and hoping they can write themselves into history on one of France’s most famous climbs - the legendary Alpe d’Huez.
The first 16 stages of the Tour de France Femmes have seen 12 different winners from the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, Switzerland and Germany but none yet from France, with the closest being Muzic with second on the gravel stage behind Marlen Reusser.
A lack of French success has also been present throughout the jersey competitions, with Cedrine Kerbaol’s best young rider win in 2023 being the only French victory of any sort since the women’s Tour de France was revived as a stage race in 2022.
Kerbaol (Ceratizit-WNT) will once again be at the Tour this season, although ineligible to defend her white jersey. However, she makes up part of a whole host of French talent chasing that first stage win, such as veteran TT expert Audrey Cordon-Ragot (Human Powered Health), former national champion Victoire Berteau (Cofidis) and 19-year-old super-talent Marion Bunel (St Michel - Mavic - Auber93 WE).
Bunel is certainly set to be a big part of France’s future in women’s racing having already shown she has the ability to do so as a teenager, taking fifth on Jebel Hafeet at the UAE Tour in February which landed her fifth overall behind the likes of Lotte Kopecky and Neve Bradbury. She then went on to beat Muzic uphill to Chamrousse at the Alpes Gresivaudan Classic in just her neo-pro season, so will be one to watch.
Could this be France’s year to star at its home Tour de France Femmes?
Wiebes, Vos and Kool to sprint for home yellow jersey
An opening stage in the Netherlands provides the perfect chance for the fastest women in cycling to battle it out on flat roads of the nation which dominates women's cycling for the first yellow jersey. Dutch stars will be among the most likely candidates: Lorena Wiebes, Marianne Vos and Charlotte Kool. But who among them can thrill home fans with a home? Or will they be upset by the likes of Italy's Elisa Balsamo (Lidl-Trek)?
Wiebes (SD Worx-Protime) has been the superstar of sprinting almost ever since turning pro in 2018 with Parkhotel Valkenburg, with huge success at DSM, before cementing her title as the fastest sprinter with a huge move to women’s cycling’s top team - SD Worx-Protime - last season.
While she was challenged by her former DSM teammate and last lead-out rider Charlotte Kool (DSM-Firmenich PostNL) for much of the 2023 season, illness ruled Kool out of many of their scheduled early season duels, and Wiebes has also simply been stronger.
It’s been a year of real struggle for the DSM rider with just 1 win added to her palmarès compared to the 18 Wiebes has netted, with six of those seeing Kool take second behind her compatriot.
Wiebes has not just kept winning at the same rate in recent years but expanded her assets beyond just pure bunch finishes. She’s a more than capable Classics rider, with a great ability to survive over climbs and still sprint while the purer sprinters like Kool drop behind. This could be key on the undulating fifth stage to Amnéville.
Stages 1 and 2 will be the huge target for Kool and Wiebes but they won’t be unchallenged, far from in, in fact, with women’s and perhaps cycling’s greatest ever rider Marianne Vos also aiming for home wins in the The Hague and Rotterdam.
After taking two stage wins and the green points jersey in the inaugural edition of the Tour de France Femmes, Vos struggled to find top form in 2023 and suffered pain and a lack of power in her left leg for which she underwent iliac artery surgery.
2024 has seen her well back to her best, beating Lotte Kopecky to win Omloop Het Nieuwsblad for (amazingly) the first time in her career, before going on to take wins at Dwars door Vlaanderen, Amstel Gold Race - ahead of Wiebes, and the Vuelta Femenina where she netted two stage wins and the points jersey again.
While Balsamo looks like the only rider fast enough to challenge the Dutch trio should she take the start, Emma Norsgaard’s win from the break on stage 6 into Blagnac at last year’s race gives the perfect blueprint for attacking instead of waiting to get beat by Wiebes. It should be a fascinating sprint battle in those opening two Netherlands stages but beware of possible crosswinds.
Ending on a high atop Alpe d'Huez
The organisers of the Tour de France Femmes have consistently raised the bar for each edition, especially when it comes to its mountain passes. In 2022, the event was routed up Le Markstein and La Super Planche des Belles Filles, in last year it took on Col d'Aspin and the Col du Tourmalet.
This year, they have upped the ante yet again, with the race set to end on a high atop the most iconic ascent in Tour de France history—Alpe d'Huez.
"Well, the legend of the Tour de France is often written in its mountain passes. So it doesn't get better than Alpe d'Huez," race director Marion Rousse told Cyclingnews in an exclusive interview that featured as part of our countdown to the third edition of the Tour de France Femmes.
"It's a climb known throughout the world, and with its 21 numbered bends, has been a dramatic stage in the men's Tour. Of course, the winner will have her name written on one of the bends."
Alpe d'Huez has been the site of many cycling battles throughout the men's Tour de France and has also appeared in select editions of the previous versions of the women's race.
The climb has also served as a career catalyst for many riders in the women's peloton, who had either watched the men's peloton race up its unforgiving switchbacks or had spent time training on its slopes.
No longer does the women's peloton have to dream about racing up Alpe d'Huez as part of an official ASO-run women's Tour de France; they will tackle it in reality at the end of stage 8 finale on August 18, where the winner of the yellow jersey will be crowned.
In keeping with history, each of the 21 hairpin bends is named after at least one rider. The 21st bend is named after Fausto Coppi, who won the Tour de France in 1949 and 1952. Other riders honoured with bends include Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, and Bernard Hinault.
It remains to be seen who will triumph on Alpe d'Huez and have her name etched into one of its bends at the 2024 Tour de France Femmes.
Can anyone challenge Demi Vollering?
After losing out only to the great Annemiek van Vleuten in the first edition of the Tour de France Femmes, Demi Vollering (SD Worx-Protime) reached her full potential on the second attempt, dominating the uphill terrain to claim the yellow jersey by 3:03 over teammate Lotte Kopecky last year.
2023 was by far her best season, with an historic Ardennes triple coming alongside her overall victory at the Tour. Her start to 2024 wasn’t quite as successful, with it taking, by her standards, an age to net her first victory - 13 race days
Vollering went all of the Spring Classics without a win, despite podium finishes at Strade Bianche, La Flèche Wallonne and Liège-Bastogne-Liège, however, quickly proved she was still on top with a run of stunning stage race performances in May and June.
Vuelta España Femenina, Itzulia Women, Vuelta a Burgos and the Tour de Suisse appearances led to eight WorldTour stage wins, four overall GC titles and a return to absolute peak form for the Dutch climber. Vollering was on top again with no one presenting much of a challenge.
There were strong rides by the likes of Evita Muzic and Neve Bradbury to take solid podium finishes, however, the overall titles never seemed in doubt for Vollering, who heads into the Tour as the heavy favourite.
The answer then, it would seem, lies with tactics, not legs. Canyon-SRAM and Lidl-Trek have shown great ingenuity in their challenges to unsettle the dominant SD Worx-Protime’s run of wins, but knocking Vollering off top spot is a whole other test.
Elisa Longo Borghini (Lidl-Trek) and Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon-SRAM) are two of the savviest bike racers and on teams willing to try everything on the exposed Dutch roads, tricky Classics terrain to Liège and the possibility of a raid in the Vosges on stage 6.
It’s yet to be seen who will emerge as Vollering’s key contender, however, she most definitely won't just be afforded a red carpet ride to the foot of Alpe d’Huez where she can ride off to glory.
