A few weeks later than its normal post-Tour de France (Hommes) slot on the calendar but with an added sense of post-Olympic hype, most of the best women in professional cycling are making their way to Rotterdam for the Grand Depart of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift.
The third edition of the race through France is only really half in France, with the first four stages taking place in the Netherlands and Belgium, but once the race enters its home country the organizers made sure to include some historic landmarks, most notably a finish on Alpe d’Huez to end the race on Sunday, August 18.
With multiple stages in the Netherlands and one in Belgium, plus the normal French flair, there is added pressure for the Dutch riders in the race, especially the SD Worx-Protime duo of Lorena Wiebes and Demi Vollering. Wiebes will be eyeing the first two road stages; as the fastest woman in the peloton she will want to repeat her success of 2022 when she won the opening stage and wore the first yellow jersey. Wiebes’ teammate Vollering is coming to the race having won both the Vuelta a España Femenina and the Tour de Suisse on top of winning last year’s TdFF, but she will find herself face to face with some tough competition. FDJ-Suez is putting everything they have behind Évita Muzic, Visma-Lease a Bike will be backing Riejanne Markus, and Lidl-Trek has a number of riders who came to play most notable of them the recent Giro d’Italia Women winner Elisa Longo Borghini.
There’s a little something for everyone on this year’s route, so everyone is coming to collect. But can anyone actually best Vollering, the best GC rider in the peloton right now?
How to watch
Streaming: 🇬🇧 🇪🇺 Discovery+/Eurosport; 🇺🇸 Peacock; 🇦🇺 SBS; 🇨🇦 FloBikes
Start and finish times will vary slightly each day but, with the exception of Tuesday’s double-stage day and the final stage, expect stages to finish around 15:00-16:00 CET. The final stage atop Alpe d’Huez should finish around 18:00 CET.
Vollering vs. the world
All season Demi Vollering has proved time and time again she is the best climber – and the best GC rider – in the peloton. Her spring one-days campaign was not at the level it was in previous years, but after some disappointment, she wasted no time proving any doubters wrong when she stormed to victory at the Vuelta. At the end of the eight-stage race, Vollering had won two of the mountain stages and taken the overall by just under two minutes.
Within a few weeks, she had also won the overall at both Itzulia Women and Vuelta a Burgos, and multiple stages along the way. After that, she took some time out of the peloton only to come back to Tour de Suisse and clean up there, with three stage wins and the overall.
Now, ahead of the Tour, she’s spent most of July training and preparing to defend the yellow jersey she won so convincingly last year. Her only two races since the Tour de Suisse were the time trial and road race at the Paris Olympics. She may have walked away from the Games disappointed, but as we learned this spring, that only means she will come into the Tour with more fire.
She will be racing without the added inter-team rivalry of Lotte Kopecky, who despite the fact there’s a stage in Belgium will be sitting out this Tour. Kopecky recently finished second at the Giro and wore the yellow jersey last year from the first stage to when Vollering took it off her on the seventh stage finishing with Col du Tourmalet. The spring came with some strange dynamics from SD Worx-Protime, but without Kopecky, they will be fully behind Vollering, even if she is set to leave at the end of this season.
What’s more, Vollering comes in with one of the strongest teams on the start list. Niamh Fisher-Black will be important for Vollering in the final two stages, while Mischa Bredewold and Christine Majerus will be in charge of supporting her throughout the first six stages.
Other top contenders
Kasia Niewiadoma, third overall at the last two Tours de France, is back this year with added vengeance. Earlier this season she took her first WorldTour win since 2019, and the La Flèche Wallonne victory was the confirmation Niewiadoma needed that she could beat Vollering. To make matters sweeter, she will line up alongside her Canyon-SRAM teammate Neve Bradbury, who has been incredibly impressive this year from start to finish and was recently third overall at the Giro.
UPDATE: On Saturday evening, Elisa Longo Borghini announced she suffered a crash in training and will not take the start. Original preview copy follows.
Giro d’Italia winner Elisa Longo Borghini (Lidl-Trek) comes to the Tour off the back of a disappointing day at the Olympic Games but on the form of her life. Her Giro win, combined with her third overall earlier in the season at the Vuelta and again at the Tour de Suisse, shows just how far the Italian champion has come in the last couple of years. Longo Borghini’s biggest challenge will be the final two stages, where she will be climbing against Vollering, but she displayed at both the Vuelta and the Giro that she is more than capable of keeping a level head and power and riding her own race to land on the podium of a Grand Tour.
Outside favourites
Somewhere between a top contender and an outside favourite is Évita Muzic. The FDJ-Suez rider is the only rider to have beaten Vollering on a climbing stage of a stage race but lost out on a top place in the GC at the Vuelta due to an earlier stage involving echelons. Coming into the Tour she will be sharing leadership with Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig, who won a stage of the Tour in 2022 but will be the French team’s hope for the final three stages of the Tour. A podium finish is well within reach for Muzic.
Longo Borghini’s teammate Shirin van Anrooij is a bit of a dark horse for the GC. Should anything go wrong with their Italian, Lidl-Trek has the 2023 Tour de l’Avenir winner to turn to. Van Anrooij has really upped her game this year, especially at the early season Classics. She spent the weeks before the Tour at altitude preparing for the eight-stage race, and while she is there to fully support Longo Borghini, don’t be surprised if she slips into the Youth Classification jersey and a top spot on GC in the process; after all she won it in 2022.
Riejanne Markus started to target the GC in Grand Tours in 2023 after finishing fourth overall at the Vuelta. Her Tour bid ended in 11th, but this year she’s held firm to the belief that she can contest for a leader’s jersey. She was second overall behind Vollering at the Vuelta, a solid step up for the Visma-Lease a Bike rider, and will now be coming into the Tour with some solid training in the legs.
Last year’s Youth Classification winner Cedrine Kerbaol returns this year with higher hopes than 12th overall. Her win earlier this season at Durango-Durango, a 1.1-rated race a few days after Itzulia Women, showed another level of racing from the Ceratizit-WNT rider. Pulling on any jersey at the Tour will give you high ambitions, but winning it at the end is even more so. Kerbaol probably won’t win this year’s Tour, but her team will be keen to get her as high up the rankings as possible.
Juliette Labous (DSM Firmenich-PostNL) went into last year’s Tour having just finished second overall at the Giro behind 2022 Tour winner Annemiek van Vleuten. She ended up fifth overall. This year she has been consistent, with a fourth overall at the Vuelta and fifth at the Tour de Suisse and the Giro, but all signs point to a peak during the Tour. As a Frenchwoman, it will be her second biggest goal of the season after the Olympic Games, where she rode to an impressive fourth in the time trial.
Sprinters to the front
With multiple sprint stages on offer, the fastest women in the bunch are eager to start this year’s Tour, none more so than Lorena Wiebes. Winner of the Grand Depart in 2022 and a stage in 2023, Wiebes rides into this Tour as the best sprinter in the peloton right now. The first two stages are hers to lose.
Elisa Balsamo is working her way back from injury yet again, but will hopefully be going good by the first stage in Rotterdam. She just finished up her track events at the Paris Olympics and will be Lidl-Trek’s hope for the sprint stages in this year’s Tour. On her best form, she comes very close to rivalling Wiebes in the fast finishes.
Winner of the Points Classification in 2022 and second at the Olympic road race on Sunday, Marianne Vos (Visma-Lease a Bike) will be on the hunt for another Tour stage to add to her long list of victories. She may not be as strong a sprinter as Wiebes, but she is the most experienced rider in the peloton, and she knows exactly where she needs to be to get across the line first.
It’s been a tough season for DSM Firmenich-PostNL’s Charlotte Kool, who could beat Wiebes in sprints last year but has constantly come second to her former teammate this year. She finally won a race in July, her first win of the year, but in that stage of the Baloise Ladies Tour Wiebes was caught up in a near crash and didn’t contest the sprint. A win is a win, but Kool will be keen to prove herself against her countrywoman in this year’s Tour after missing out on a stage win in 2023.
After her stage victory in the Tour of Britain, best believe Liv AlUla Jayco’s Ruby Roseman-Gannon wants more. The Aussie will have the full support of a strong sprinting team at the Tour this year.
Stage hunters to keep in mind
Pfeiffer Georgi isn’t quite a GC rider, and isn’t a sprinter, although she will be riding in support of DSM Firmenich teammate Kool for the flat stages. She is very good, and will likely be eyeing the fourth stage for her own result. Even if she doesn’t pull it off, she’s a rider who could take a stage in this race.
Fresh off a gold medal in the team pursuit on the track the ITT world champion Chloe Dygert (Canyon-SRAM) finally makes her return to road racing after taking the vast majority of this season off to prepare for the Games. Dygert’s most obvious stage would be the time trial on Tuesday, but she could also go for the fourth stage or even a sprint here or there.
Dygert’s main competition for the ITT on stage 3 will be newly crowned Olympic TT champion Grace Brown. Brown wasn’t originally set to race the Tour but changed her schedule to support Muzic and Uttrup in the GC while targeting the time trial in Rotterdam before she refocuses on the World Championships ITT in September.
The final two stages will be on the radar of Sarah Gigante, who won the Tour Down Under earlier this year. The Australian on AG Insurance-Soudal is one of the best climbers in the peloton, and could well finish high up in the GC depending on how the first six stages go, but will also be a rider to watch for the challenging mountain stages at the end of the race.
The winner of the final stage of the Giro Kim Le Court is only getting better. Gigante’s teammate has constantly been in the mix this year, and will likely be again at the Tour.
It’s unlikely the peloton will allow Kristen Faulkner to get away ever again, but who’s to say they can stop her when she tries? She won the Olympic road race in much the same way as a stage of the Vuelta earlier this year, and a Tour stage is next on her bucket list. EF-Oatly-Cannondale will want a stage win, and their roster is packed with stage hunter types, from Faulkner to Alison Jackson to Noemi Rüegg.
Normally Liane Lippert would be on the outside favourites for the GC list, but she had a rocky season coming back from an offseason injury. She won a stage of the Tour last year and was back on top to win the sixth stage of the Giro this year. The GC might be out of reach for the Movistar rider, but a stage is not.
After a strong performance at the Giro Ruth Edwards is making her Tour debut with Human Powered Health. The American returned from racing this year after initially retiring in 2021 and has brought a new love of racing with her. She will be riding alongside team pursuit gold medalist Lily Williams, and no doubt the American team would love a Tour stage win to brag about.
When not supporting Vollering Niamh Fisher-Black, Mischa Bredewold and Blanka Vas could all walk away with stage wins of their own. Fisher-Black won a stage of the Giro this year, Bredewold won not one but two stages of Itzulia Women in May, and Vas just rode to an impressive fourth in the Olympic road race. All three have WorldTour victories, and SD Worx-Protime loves a stage win. They will be balancing allowing their team to go for stages while supporting Vollering’s GC ambitions, it’s worked well for them in the past, no reason not to try again at the Tour.
Finally, trust that Fenix-Deceuninck will be on the attack in every stage of this race; they are always aggressive and a number of their riders could walk away with a win given the right move.
The Escape Collective GC star ratings:
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️: Demi Vollering
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️: Elisa Longo Borghini, Kasia Niewiadoma
⭐️⭐️⭐️: Riejanne Markus, Neve Bradbury, Evita Muzic
⭐️⭐️: Juliette Labous
⭐️: Shirin van Anrooij, Cedrine Kerbaol
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