Although Chris Froome might defend his Tour de France title this year, he won’t be the first rider to cross the finish line on the Champs-Elysees on July 27. Race organizers from the Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO) recently announced that an elite women’s race, La Course by Le Tour de France, will finish on the storied avenue ahead of the men.
The ASO, which also runs the Ladies Tour of Qatar and women’s Flèche Wallonne, will announce the full details of the race’s course and format at a press conference this spring. Organizers say La Course will be covered live by French television and Eurosport International.
The push for a women’s race at the Tour de France began this past July when four women—pro cyclists Kathryn Bertine, Emma Pooley, and Marianne Vos, and four-time world Ironman champion Chrissie Wellington—circulated a petition, which received more than 90,000 signatures. Their goal was a full-length Tour for the women run concurrently with the men’s race.
More From Bicycling
Saturday’s announcement from the ASO is only a partial victory for the women’s Tour advocates. La Course will be a one-day, criterium-style event, not a three-week Grand Tour.
Pooley still hopes to see a three-week women’s event at the Tour someday, but views the announcement as an important first step. “I am confident that La Course by Le Tour de France marks just the beginning of a long-term and very exciting strategy for women’s cycling at the Tour de France,” she says. “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
Reactions from women riders were overwhelmingly positive. Olympic and world champion Marianne Vos is a lifelong cycling fan and used to travel every year with her family to watch the Tour de France. She never imagined that she would race there.
“I am delighted that the ASO has decided to organize a women’s race this year,” she wrote on the official Tour de France site. “I am very excited to be taking part, especially with the majestic finish on the Champs Elysées.”
Advocates for women’s cycling disagree over the merits of trying to tie women’s races to men’s events. The 2014 women’s Tour of Britain, for example, will run independently of the men’s race. But the Tour de France remains the biggest event in world cycling. Broadcast in 190 countries, the Tour receives more media attention than any other race.
“Having a women's race at the Tour de France is fantastic,” said Specialized-lululemon team owner Kristy Scrymgeour. “I've never been a big advocate of adding women's races to men's races, because I think the best way to grow women's cycling is to create something uniquely for women, built around what inspires women. The Tour de France, however, is something special.”
This is not the first time a women’s race has taken place during the Tour de France. Between 1984 and 1989, a women’s stage race took place during the men’s event. The first Tour Cycliste Feminine included eighteen stages and was won by American Marianne Martin. The women endured long transfers, but they finished on the Champs-Elysées on the same day as the men’s Tour.
The 1989 edition was the last time the women raced at the same time as the men. The race was not held again until 1992, when it was moved to August. Over the next decade, the event struggled due to financial shortfalls and organizational difficulties. In 1998, after Tour de France organizers contended that the race’s name was a breach of trademark, the women’s event was renamed the Grande Boucle Feminine. Controversy over unpaid prize money dogged the race in 2003 and longtime title sponsor Monoprix withdrew.
After a year off, a new organizer stepped in and revived the Grande Boucle, but it was a national-level, as opposed to UCI-level, race. The final edition ran in 2009, when Emma Pooley won the overall. By then, the event had been reduced to four stages.
To some degree, the women’s race calendar has paralleled the story of the women’s Tour de France. In recent seasons, races have steadily dropped off the calendar due to the difficulties of finding sponsorship. The ten-day Tour de l’Aude was discontinued after the 2010 edition, and the women’s Tour of Italy—the Giro Donne, renamed the Giro Rosa by its new organizer—dropped from ten days to eight.
In this context, the initiative from the ASO is cause for celebration for many in women’s cycling. La Course is not only an addition to the women’s calendar, but also a race for women on cycling’s biggest stage.
“This is an important start to improving the quality of our races and to drawing new fans to our sport,” says US time trial champion Carmen Small. “Women’s cycling is on the upturn right now, and this can only help our cause.”
Click below to watch American pro cyclist Alison Tetrick explain why she prefers to race at the same events as men.
