Hello lovely subscribers! ✨
The Tour de France Femmes countdown is well and truly on (T-10 days!) Does anyone else feel like it’s come around so fast already? I can’t believe that we’ll soon be in Clermont-Ferrand ahead of the first stage — I can’t wait.
Just in time for this year’s race, Tour de France Femmes title sponsor, Zwift, have released the findings of a report – compiled by a third party – commissioned by them to illustrate the impact of the 2022 race. Anyone who went to, or watched, last July will remember the huge crowds and reports of unprecedented TV viewership numbers, but this report highlights the real, tangible ways that the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift has impacted the sport.
Zwift have been integral in pushing the race forward and making the impact illustrated in this report and the woman at the centre of Zwift’s efforts is Director of Women's Strategy, Kate Veronneau. I spoke to Kate about the report, and what she’s looking forward to ahead of the second edition of the race.
At the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift last year, Kate Veronneau could be seen running around excitedly, huge beam on her face, handing out #WatchTheFemmes caps and musettes to anyone who stood still. Her enthusiasm for the race, and women’s cycling in general, is infectious.
As Zwift’s Director of Women's Strategy Veronneau was instrumental in getting the #WatchTheFemmes message out there, and played a significant role in ensuring that people were indeed able to watch.
“This has just been the project of a lifetime. To come on board as the title sponsor. The race needed a title sponsor, quite honestly. So to know that our partnership is helping make it happen is exciting. And it's truly a partnership, so that means that with our name in the title, we want to help evolve this race in the right way,” she tells me over Zoom.
Despite her literal job being to get everyone as gassed as possible about women’s cycling and the TDFF, Veronneau, like many of us who were at the race in 2022, was still pleasantly surprised at just how much of a runaway success the race became.
“It was almost surreal on the ground,” she recalls. “You almost had to come back and be like, 'did that really happen? Was that as good as it felt?'”