Julian Alaphilippe, Romain Bardet, Thibaut Pinot, David Gaudu. Throughout the years France has been waiting, less than patiently, for the next rider who will bring the yellow jersey home to France. Each rider has fallen below those hopes; at this year’s Tour de France the top French finisher was 13th-placed Guillaume Martin, 43:49 down on eventual winner Tadej Pogačar. But hope is not lost for French fans; now they have the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift.
With the addition of the women’s Tour, a new crop of French hopefuls has emerged, and judging by the calibre of France’s women, the nation should be looking to the Femmes for their dreams of yellow to come true. Juliette Labous, Évita Muzic, and now Pauline Ferrand-Prévot are only the three at the top of the list. Further out, Cédrine Kerbaol and Coralie Demay bear watching, and with the formation of the race, surely many more young Frenchwoman will emerge, all targeting the week-long race in the coming years.
After winning her long-awaited gold medal on Saturday in the Olympic mountain bike cross-country event, Ferrand-Prèvot was quick to point to her next goal, and she’s not pulling her punches. Some may want to ease back into racing on the road after six years away, but not Ferrand-Prèvot. She wants to win the Tour de France Femmes.
It makes sense. The French superstar and former road world champion, Ferrand-Prèvot is a legend in the sport even if the last WT-level road race she started was La Course by the Tour de France in 2018. Can she win the Tour? That remains to be seen. But in good news for French fans, she is far from the only home-country rider targeting yellow who could very well walk away with it in the next couple of years.
Évita Muzic has been an up-and-coming French star since she won the final stage of the Giro d’Italia Femminile in 2020. Since then she has been quietly building her body and gathering her arsenal. The process paid off at the Vuelta a España this year when the 25-year-old was the only rider able to hang onto an in-form Demi Vollering on stage 6, and then sprint around the race leader to win the stage.
The victory was a massive one for the 25-year-old who later found out she hadn’t been selected for France’s Olympic team for Paris. After the disappointment, Muzic disappeared. She didn’t race the Giro, as some expected, but instead set her sights on the Tour and the Tour alone.
It’s not the first time the FDJ-Suez rider has had her eye on the general classification of her home Tour. She came into the 2023 Tour with high hopes but was forced to abandon the fifth stage. In 2022 she finished eighth overall, almost 14 minutes down on winner Annemiek van Vleuten. But her team has been the best environment for her growth. Of course, FDJ-Suez is invested in Muzic, a French rider who hopes to someday win the Tour de France. But they are also a team that puts athlete welfare above results. Muzic’s development in the hands of her French team is yet another reason to believe she can do the impossible someday and win the yellow jersey.
The good and bad news for Muzic is the rumoured signing of Vollering to FDJ-Suez for next year. Having the 2023 Tour winner on the team will put more pressure on FDJ-Suez to deliver, but a step back for Muzic isn’t all bad. Learning from a rider who has won the Tour before, and will probably win it again, will give Muzic the edge she needs. Because she has the physical skill to do it, what she and her team are lacking is the experience needed to win a “Grand Tour,” and Vollering will bring that to them.
Newly crowned French national champion Juliette Labous has already finished second overall at the Giro, behind Van Vleuten, in 2023. She was fourth overall in the inaugural Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift and fifth in the second edition in 2023. Although just 25, this is already her eighth pro season and she has demonstrated a consistency that most riders only dream of when it comes to patiently riding a stage race and quietly slotting into a top spot.
Her most notable performance of 2024, other than her national title, was fourth in the Olympic time trial, an incredible feat. But for Labous, a victory at the Tour will depend on the course. Like so many of her male countrymen, how the route is designed will determine if she can achieve a Tour victory. She’s a strong climber, but not as quick as Vollering or even Muzic. A time trial will benefit her but not Muzic. As her consistently high GC placings (including the overall win at the 2022 Vuelta a Burgos) show, she’s a rider who is constantly there, in the mix, waiting for her moment.
Interstingly, Labous, like Vollering, will join FDJ-Suez in 2025, the team announced on Monday. Stephen Delcourt, manager for the French team, has long said that he wanted Labous on his squad, and starting in January he will finally have his wish. This move means that both French hopefuls will be riding alongside Vollering, which may make things complicated, but as a French team, they will want nothing more than to see one of their French riders win the Tour de France Femmes.
Looking past the three obvious Tour contenders and to the (even) younger generation of Frenchwomen we have Cédrine Kerbaol, Best Young Rider of the 2023 Tour de France Femmes. Perhaps one of the most exciting but lesser-known riders for France, Kerbaol rode consistently to 12th overall at last year’s Tour. She is currently fulfilling a three-year contract with Ceratizit-WNT, and when she signed for the team and won the white jersey they weren’t technically WorldTour, but they joined the WT officially for the 2024 season which means Kerbaol and her teammates now have more resources, in theory, which is only good news for the 23-year-old.
This year she started the season strong with a win at the Vuelta CV in February. She had a relatively quiet spring until she won Durango-Durango with a very gutsy attack in horrendous weather conditions. The Frenchwoman can climb, and handle a bike, very well.
It’s hard to say exactly what she needs in order to become on a level with Labous and Muzic, but experience will help. She is signed with her German team through 2025, but surely there are other teams with her on their list of potential new signings for the 2026 season.
Both Muzic and Labous will continue to ride into their talent and both have the potential to win the Tour someday, and someday soon. Ferrand-Prèvot returning to road racing adds another potential hopeful for France to swoon over, but they aren’t the only women with French racing licenses eyeing yellow.
With the Tour de France Femmes, more women than ever will be dreaming of wearing the iconic jersey, and many of them will be French. The race means everything to the French, it’s clear on all the live pictures all July long just what the race means to its people. The old women’s events helped spur a generation of women to get on bikes, but the career potential and professionalism of the sport now means it’s a real job, not just a break from earning a living until the lack of pay or want of a family makes it no longer an option.
FDJ-Suez, arguably the biggest French women’s team in the peloton, will be even more of a force come 2025 with both Vollering and Labous, and their intentions are clear. They want to win the Tour, and they will fight tooth and nail to do so.
Muzic, Labous and Ferrand-Prévot carry the weight of the nation on their shoulders, and the rest of their country will be watching and waiting, because the next French Tour de France winner is probably a woman.
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