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The Tour de France Femmes Avec Zwift is turning it up to 11 for volume three.
Starting Monday, defending champion Demi Vollering and the women’s elite will be walloped with the windy flats of the Netherlands, a “back to the future” split stage, a taste of Liège-Bastogne-Liège, and the iconic 21 switchbacks of Alpe d’Huez in the race’s most ambitious course yet.
A peloton packed with every big name you could wish for – except for one rainbow-clad exception – will be jousting for prestigious stage wins and the iconic maillot jaune in a race that treks from sea level Rotterdam to the 1,850m-high Alpe d’Huez.
Olympic champion Kristen Faulkner, Italian sensation Gaia Realini, and do-or-die climber Kasia Niewiadoma will all be in the radar during ASO’s season centerpiece.
The 2024 Tour de France Femmes will be the first of the race’s three editions to be totally divorced from the men’s competition.
An Olympic-enforced gap between the end of the men’s Tour de France and the start of the women’s Tour will give the TDFF space to breathe, totally separate from Tadej Pogačar and Co.
The narratives are bubbling toward delivering a bang for the race’s unprecedented late-summer slot.
Will stage-race dominator Vollering blow the doors off everybody once more, or can Lidl-Trek and Canyon-SRAM defy the SD Worx stampede?
Can “The Boss” Marianne Vos scoop the Tour’s first yellow jersey on home soil in Rotterdam? Or will Lorena Wiebes reassert her sprinter superiority?
Here’s everything you need to know about the 2024 Tour de France Femmes.
Overview: Tour de France Femmes Avec Zwift 2024
- Dates: Monday, August 12 to Sunday, August 18 (7 days / 8 stages)
- Total distance: 950km
- Total elevation: 13,600m+
- Total prize purse: €250,000 (overall winner prize: €50,000)
- How to watch:
- USA: NBC, Peaco*ck
- Canada: FloBikes
- UK: Discovery, ITV4
- EU: Eurosport, Sporza, RTBF, France 24, France TV, RTVE, DKTV2, NOS
Top riders:
GC Contenders:
Demi Vollering (SD Worx-Protime), Gaia Realini, Shirin van Anrooij (both Lidl-Trek), Juliette Labous (DSM-Firmenich PostNL), Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon-SRAM), Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig, Évita Muzic (both FDJ Suez), Ashleigh Moolman Pasio (AG Insurance-Soudal), Mavi García (Jayco AlUla), Riejanne Markus (Visma-Lease a Bike)
Sprinters:
Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx-Protime), Elisa Balsamo (Lidl-Trek), Charlotte Kool (DSM-Firmenich PostNL), Marianne Vos (Visma-Lease a Bike).
Designated hitters:
Kristen Faulkner (EF-Oatly-Cannondale), Chloé Dygert (Canyon-SRAM), Grace Brown (FDJ Suez), Pfeiffer Georgi (Lidl-Trek), Lianne Lippert (Movistar), Blanka Vas (SD Worx-Protime), Puck Pieterse (Fenix Deceuninck).
Who’s not racing?
Lotte Kopecky.
That’s right, no Tour de France Femmes for the reigning world champion. Kopecky structured her season around the Giro d’Italia and Olympic Games, where she raced both the TT and road race already, with the omnium still to come Sunday on the track.
And what of Olympic MTB ace Pauline Ferrand-Prévot? You’ve got to wait until she transfers to Visma-Lease a Bike in 2025 to see what “PFP” can do on road racing’s biggest stage.
The race for yellow: Who can stop the Vollering stage-race stampede?
Can Vollering defend?
It’s the narrative at the center of the 2024 Tour de France Femmes.
The Dutchwoman won the maillot jaune at a canter last summer and stampeded through this spring with equal speed.
Four GC wins in four stage-races in 2024 make Vollering and her SD Worx-Protime team the women to beat this month.
Who can do it?
All eyes were on newly crowned Giro d’Italia Women champ Elisa Longo Borghini to lead the way until she withdrew just days ahead of the grand départfollowing a training crash.
Longo Borghini nipped at Vollering’s heels all season and was poised to land into the Femmes loaded with grinta after she publicly blasted her own failings at the Olympic road race.
But Longo Borghini’s exit doesn’t rule Lidl-Trek out of the race. Its young duo Realini and 2023 TDFF white jersey Shirin van Anrooij have all the potential to keep Vollering checking her shoulders.
Nieiwiadoma and Juliette Labous will be right all of their wheels in what could make for a “peloton vs. Vollering” dynamic.
Lidl-Trek will bring all its climber power into the Femmes. They, Canyon-SRAM, and FDJ Suez will be piling pressure onto an SD Worx team short of superdomestiquesKopecky and Marlen Reusser.
There will be a couple of interesting subplots in the Vollering-SD Worx storyline during this Tour.
SD Worx-Protime is so omnipotent it’s taking sprinter of the season Wiebes to hunt for the stages that won’t impact Vollering’s GC charge.
Can the slightly depleted SD team successfully balance climbing and sprint opportunities?
It’s not been a problem before but could be worth watching.
Secondly, this is likely Vollering’s last Tour with the team that made her queen of women’s classification racing before she reportedly transfers to FDJ Suez in 2025.
Vollering’s upcoming move shouldn’t shift SD Worx-Protime’s ambition or strategy this summer, but it could be something to keep an eye on.
The US contingent: Small in number, mighty in power
US riders: Kristen Faulkner (EF-Oatly-Cannondale), Chloé Dygert (Canyon SRAM), Ruth Edwards, Lily Williams (both Human Powered Health)
The U.S. contingent for the Femmes is small but loaded with power.
Olympic pursuit teammates Faulkner and Chloé Dygert bounce straight out of their gold medal race Wednesday in Paris to Monday’s grand départ in Rotterdam.
Paris road race champion Faulkner already stated her ambition to win a Tour stage having already collected victories at the Vuelta Feminina and Giro d’Italia Women.
Few would bet against the Alaskan attacker from completing her grand tour set in the slew of hilly/breakaway days that fall between the Netherlands and the Alps.
Dygert likewise will be on a mission to win a stage when she’s not busy pulling for team leader Niewiadoma.
Dygert could be in the mix for a sprint if any of the race’s opening Dutch stages are made complicated by crosswinds. If not, look to the two-time TT champion for stage 3 and its lightning-fast 6kmchrono.
Team USA nips New Zealand by 0.621 seconds to win the elusive gold medal in women’s team pursuit that the team’s been chasing since 2012. #Paris2024https://t.co/tG5SLKl9Hr
— Velo (@velovelovelo__) August 7, 2024
Human Powered Health’s deadly duo of Lily Williams and Ruth Edwards will fly into the Femmes with their mojos at maximum.
Edwards definitely didn’t slow down during her two years away from road racing. The returning 31-year-old reaped some of her best form to light up the breakaways of the Giro d’Italia and scoop two second-place finishes.
Edwards’ teammate Williams is tapping a similar mid-career run of hot form.
The 30-year-old pursuit powerhouse packs a similar marauding skillset to Edwards and is sure to be joining her on an HPH pulverization of the Tour’s mid-week transition stages.
Also, watch out for those Canucks.
EF-Oatly-Cannnondale brings a triple threat of Candian talent with Magdeleine Vallieres, Giro d’Italia women breakaway star Clara Emond, and Paris-Roubaix winner Alison Jackson.
Where Jackson goes, action follows. And that sure won’t change next week at the Tour.
The course: A Dutch start, a split stage, and some severe switchback bends
The big talking points of the 2024 parcours?
A first foreign start, that old-school split stage, and of course, the Alpe.
The Tour de France Femmes will hop over the border Monday to the Netherlands for its first foreign grand départin a sign of the race’s growing ambition and reach.
Three stages – two sprints and a TT – will take place entirely within the homelands of Vollering, Vos, and Wiebes.
Two sprint stages in a row might suggest the Dutch start will be dull, but the possibility of home speedsters Wiebes, Vos, or Charlotte Kool scooping the race’s first maillot jaune should ensure bike-mad “Low Country” spectators serve up a show nonetheless.
The official route of the #TDFF2024 avec @GoZwift!
Voici le parcours officiel du #TDFF2024 avec Zwift !
#WatchTheFemmes pic.twitter.com/rl14MqCXdn
— Le Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift (@LeTourFemmes) October 25, 2023
The peloton will take on two stages Tuesday in a “split” format that’s not been seen for decades.
Stage 2 is 67km short. It’s a flat, sightseeing tour of suburban Rotterdam that will be over in less than two breathless mid-morning hours.
Only a quick cool-down and a few bowls of pasta separate the stage 2 finish Tuesday and the start ramp of stage 3, a 6.3km afternoon time trial through the docklands of the Dutch capital.
Weird, huh?
The “split” concept allows race organizer ASO to shoehorn eight stages into seven days, and should maximize the party potential for the Dutch crowds.
But will it bring good racing?
There’s definitely nothing wrong with a short sprinter stage, but is there much point to a sub-10 minute TT at this point in the race?
There will be a stage-win up for grabs but only a few seconds available for the GC contingent.
A time trial that won’t be the all-out decider in the race for yellow is a good thing. Anything upward of 20km against the clock could tilt things way too far toward GC chronowomen like Vollering or Grace Brown.
But this “2b” stage could taste like a nothing burger to the fans and make for junk miles for most of the peloton.
Discover the Alpe d’Huez climb that awaits you on 18 August on @LeTourFemmes avec @GoZwift Challenge!
Get your bib/Prends ton dossard https://t.co/xeLEMbsBDI
Découvre la monté de l’Alpe d’Huez qui t’attend le 18 août prochain sur @LeTourFemmes avec @GoZwift Challenge ! pic.twitter.com/yBqzRUWbR7
— Le Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift (@LeTourFemmes) June 4, 2024
At the other end of the race, let’s feel the love for the Tour’s classification-confirming assault on the high Alps and its yellow jersey decider on the most picture-perfect climb in cycling.
Stage 8 will decide the race in a brutal fashion.
A 150km stage that serves the sprawling 20km HC Glandon as an appetizer for the infamous bends and torturous grades of the Alpe d’Huez summit finish will be by far the toughest day ever delivered to the Tour de France Femmes peloton.
The sights will be spectacular, and the racing could be too.
Any would-be GC contender could lose minutes on this devastating final day of racing.
But will this crusher “queen stage” overshadow the entire Tour and rob the rest of the race of ambition?
Let’s hope not.
Other stages to be sure to watch: The Ardennes and the Vosges
Also be sure to stock up on popcorn and bunk off of work for stage 4 on Wednesday and stage 6 on Friday.
Stage 4 out of Valkenburg and up to Liège is the Tour’s take on the Ardennes classics. The course packs in ascents of Amstel Gold Race icon the Cauberg before taking the peloton through a parade of leg-snappers regularly used in Liège-Bastogne-Liège.
Stage 6 is a climb-riddled 160km romp through the fiendishly complex Vosges. It’s the type of rugged terrain that could catch anybody off guard – including you, Demi V.
2024 Tour de France Femmes Avec Zwift: Stage profiles:
Stage 1 – Monday 12:
Stage 2 – Tuesday 13 (AM):
Stage 3 – Tuesday 13 (PM):
Stage 4 – Wednesday 14:
Stage 5 – Thursday 15:
Stage 6 – Friday 16:
Stage 7 – Saturday 17:
Stage 8 – Sunday 18:
