Women's Cycling Weekly Issue 76 - the Tour de France Femmes edition

A weekly curation of women's cycling news and content straight to your inbox

Jul 22, 2022

Hello! Welcome to Women’s Cycling Weekly issue 76 🚴‍♀️🇫🇷

It’s nearly here! Just TWO days (really more like one, now) to go until the Tour de France Femmes is upon us!

It’s been a week of build-up and excitement and the bumper ‘read’ section of this week’s newsletter speaks for itself. One Tour de France is about to end but another is about to start and, with it, a new chapter for women’s cycling.

I could go on but I leave for Paris tomorrow and I still haven’t packed my bags so until next time (which *might* be sooner than a week).

Amy x

News 📰

Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig has extended her contract with FDJ - SUEZ - Futuroscope until 2024.
Le Col - Wahoo are giving away 10,000 FREE GCN+ passes for the eight days of the Tour de France Femmes – click here for more info.
The reigning New Zealand national road race champion, Olivia Ray, has admitted in an interview to using banned substances. The 24-year-old was dropped from her team, Human Powered Health, earlier this year.
Cynisca Cycling, a new Continental women’s team with the aim of bringing more American riders to Europe, launches this weekend.

Read 🗞️

TDFF:

Elsewhere:

*That* interview with Elisa Longo Borghini from the wonderful Sadhbh O’Shea in which she dropped the now-infamous line: “After that, I don’t know what there is. Probably only death” when asked about the sacrilegious act of putting ketchup on pasta.
Niamh Fisher-Black on her breakthrough Giro Donne ride to 5th overall.
Kate Courtney is back to having fun on her bike.
“The women’s calendar needs to be changed.”

Watch 📺

FDJ’s account of the Giro d’Italia Donne at which Marta Cavalli proved herself to be a strong TDFF contender:

The Run Up is back!

Listen 🎧

A Freewheeling special in which I speak to Niamh Fisher-Black who is firstly a fan of the pod and incidentally an extremely good bike rider.

Aaaand regular programming in which we preview the Tour de France Femmes!

Results 🏆

Road

Baloise Ladies Tour:

Stage 3a: Lorena Wiebes (DSM)

Stage 3b: Ellen van Dijk (TFS)

Stage 4: Lorena Wiebes (DSM)

Overall:

Ellen van Dijk (TFS)
Lorena Wiebes (DSM)
Audrey Cordon-Ragot (TFS)

MTB

🇦🇩 UCI Mountain Bike World Cup Vallnord - DHI #4 & XCO/XCC #5

DH juniors: 🥇Phoebe Gale 🇬🇧 🥈 Gracey Hemstreet 🇨🇦 🥉 Jenna Hastings 🇳🇿

DH elite:🥇 Valentina Holl 🇦🇹 🇫🇷 🥈 Nina Hoffmann 🇩🇪 🥉 Camille Balanche 🇨🇭

XCO U23:🥇 Line Burquier 🇫🇷 🇩🇰 🥈 Ronja Blöchlinger 🇨🇭 🥉 Puck Pieterse 🇳🇱

XCO elite:🥇Anne Terpstra 🇳🇱🇫🇷 🥈 Mona Mitterwallner 🇦🇹 🥉 Ramona Forchini 🇨🇭

Upcoming Races 📆

Road

It’s the big one!!

24th-31st July: Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift (2.WWT)

Preview here
Stages guide here
Start list here
Contenders here
Live on GCN/Eurosport in Europe, SBS in Australia, CNBC in the USA and FloBikes in Canada.

Tour of yore 🇫🇷🥐

Warning: This instalment of ‘Tour of Yore’ also comes as an unwelcome reminder that the year 2014 was EIGHT years go.

Last week, Tilda went over the various iterations of a women’s stage race in France (none of them officially affiliated with the Tour or the ASO) that followed the Grand Boucle Feminin of the 1980s.

On the eve of the revival of an official Tour de France Femmes there is only one version of a women’s TDF left to talk about, La Course.

In 2013, with a Tour de France for women merely a distant memory, a group of current and former cyclists calling themselves ‘Le Tour Entier’ (The Whole Tour) initiated a petition to The ASO to re-introduce a women’s Tour de France. The group, consisted of Kathryn Bertine, World Ironman champion Chrissie Wellington, Marianne Vos, and Emma Pooley and the petition garnered over 93,000 signatures.

As a result, the following year the peloton raced the first La Course by Le Tour de France. A circuit race around the Champs-Élysées on the final day of the men’s race, which, fittingly, was won by Vos in the rainbow jersey.

While the introduction of La Course got hopes high that a full stage race would soon become a reality, that wasn’t to be the case for another eight years. La Course took various guises as it followed different stages of the men’s Tour but always remained a one-day race — with the exception of an anomalous edition wherein the format was changed to a mountaintop finish with a handicapped ITT the following day.

It wasn’t until the pandemic that ASO was finally forced to reassess its flagship women’s event. While rumblings of a ‘proper’ women’s Tour de France had been going on for years with various groups pushing the organisation for more, the lockdowns of 2020 forced the ASO to run a women’s stage race under the Tour de France brand for the first time since the 1980s in the form of Le Tour de France virtuel, which took place on Zwift.

I’d be lying if I said I knew exactly what went on BTS but somewhere along the line thereafter, Zwift used their considerable corporate clout to steer the recalcitrant French organisation towards bringing in a proper Tour de France Femmes.

And so it was that the 2021 edition of La Course, won by Demi Vollering, was the last of its kind, to be replaced by eight days of racing under the name Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift.

Fittingly, on Sunday, the race will kick off in the same format as that first La Course with laps of the Champs-Élysées. This time, seven more stages will follow with a yellow, green, polka-dot, and white jersey up for grabs along with all the other iconic trimmings of the Tour de France.

While the unstoppable sprinter Lorena Wiebes is the out-and-out favourite for the win on the Champs, it would be a neat twist of fate if one of the driving forces behind that initial step towards a Tour de France Femmes, Marianne Vos, were to repeat her 2014 victory and pull on the first yellow jersey of this modern era.

Prizes for pups 🐶

Who knew that the motivation behind Lorena Wiebes’ near clean sweep of Baloise Ladies Tour was her dog’s dinner. As if we needed a reason to like her more.