The Tour de Suisse is wrapped, which means we now have a 40-day block of no WorldTour racing before the start of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift on August 1. Despite the large break between WorldTour events, all your favourite riders will be hard at work. This week, most of them are jetting home to compete for the honour to wear their national championship colours for a full year, and for the majority of July, everyone with an eye on the Tour will be spending their month at altitude with their teams, or solo.
Sprinters are the only ones who will continue racing throughout this period, with the Baloise Ladies Tour and the Tour of Poland both coming up, but don't expect to see any of the big names lining up for a looooong time.
Meanwhile, at the Volta a Catalunya...
Paula Blasi continues to dominate when the roads go up.
Blasi has now racked up five wins since she won the Vuelta in May: the Durango-Durango one-day, two stages and the overall at the Tour Féminin des Pyrénées, and now a stage and the overall at the Volta Catalunya.
Visma-Lease a Bike showed off a one-two punch with Nienke Veenhoven and Marianne Vos in stages 1 and 3.
The final stage marks Vos's first win of 2026, one that was a while in the making after her miss at Paris-Roubaix and crash in the opening stage of the Vuelta.
Racing continues...
This week we've got most of the National Championships of Europe, which means we will also have to get used to some new riders wearing their country's flag (although hopefully not at the expense of Elisa Longo Borghini... can you imagine anyone else in that jersey?). The USA race already happened, and former world champion mountain biker Kate Courtney took the victory. It was fantastic, and I am so thrilled for Kate. What will she do next?
Other than that, racing continues: From July 1 to 5 at the Volta a Portugal (UCI 2.2). A handful of one-day races in Belgium throughout July. The Baloise Ladies Tour from July 15 to 19, where some of the big-name sprinters will no doubt make an appearance. Two 1.1s in France (La Périgord Ladies on July 18 and La Picto en Nouvelle-Aquitaine on July 19). And the Tour of Poland from July 24 to 26.
Wheel Talk podcast
We're back! At least, Georgie, Gracie, and I are. This week we talked the Tour de Suisse, everything that happened at this key pre-Tour event, and what it means for the big lap "around" France in 39 days.
Let's discuss
Four takeaways from the Tour de Suisse
For some riders, the five-stage race served as a test of form, a trial run, you might say. For others, it was about finishing off a heavy period of racing combined with the Giro d'Italia in the hopes that getting those hard races in the legs would benefit later form.
Because of this, there were quite a few riders who came out of the race with a spring in their step, none more so than Marlen Reusser.
Now Vollering and Ferrand-Prévot can be worried...
When it comes to the Tour and who will contest the yellow jersey, there are the obvious names like Demi Vollering and Pauline Ferrand-Prévot, the recent additions like Anna van der Breggen, and then there are the ones who come out of the woodwork. Last year, Ferrand-Prévot was in that bucket. Say what you will about what was expected of her, we hadn't seen her race since she left the Vuelta early; there was no telling what she was about to do.
Only a few weeks ago, Reusser was in that third tier. A rider who will obviously put out a good time trial, but perhaps not gain enough time to challenge once they hit Ventoux. Well, that theory is nearly dead in the water now. Sure, she didn't climb as well as Vollering and Van der Breggen at the Giro, but it was her first race back after sustaining a vertebral fracture in her lumbar spine.
Did we do a good job with this story?
