8 riders to watch at La Course by Le Tour de France 2021

La Course 2020 (Image credit: Getty Images Sport)

It has been a quiet month for women’s racing, with the postponement of The Women’s Tour leaving a gap in the calendar, but the calm before the storm is about to end with what’s likely to be a thunderous roar. La Course by Le Tour de France, which in 2021 runs alongside the first stage of the Grand Tour on June 26, is known for its thrilling finishes and this year seems as likely as ever to deliver exciting and aggressive racing.

The 107.4-kilometre course from Brest to Landerneau provides plenty of launching pads for attacks and then there is a finish atop the Côte de la Fosse aux Loups for the field stacked with riders determinedly building to peak form. There could, however, be some unpredictable results, with the racing break making it hard to gauge form and many of the key competitors recently having returned from training at altitude in preparation for two other big racing goals, the Giro d’Italia Donne and the Tokyo Olympic Games.

It hasn’t been the best start to the season for the defending champion, with a couple of bouts of illness putting a halt to her winning ways of 2020. Though it looks like the British rider is now back on track, coming second in the opening stage of the Tour de Suisse and then aggressively chasing bonus seconds in the next stage to secure overall victory. It was a morale-boosting effort ahead of the final stretch of training for the important block of races ahead and, while so many of her rivals headed to the mountains, Deignan stayed grounded in Monaco. It’s an approach that she believes has set her up with good form for the race from Brest to Landerneau.

The course is one that definitely suits Brown and it has been one hugely impressive season so far for the 28-year-old Australian who’s embraced the opportunity she’s been given to chase results. Brown, who is in her third season as a professional, took a first Women’s WorldTour win at Brugge-De Panne, also took at stage at Vuelta a Burgos and has been in the top 10 in two thirds of the races she has lined up in this year. She has also stepped on the podium at the end of 6 of her 15 race days. There is, however, a level of unpredictability that comes into play at La Course, as just like most of the field, the racing has been light on in recent weeks and like many Brown has also been breathing in the thin air of the mountains in preparation for the next all important block of racing.

The only other rider to have won La Course twice is Annemiek van Vleuten and Marianne Vos came ever so close to making it a third victory last year. She would be a fitting final victor for the race as Vos was, after all, among the core group who pushed hard for it to begin with and she also won the very first edition. Given her record at the race, you’d have to say the odds are on her being there in the mix for the win, with the only year she’s been on the start line but didn’t step onto the podium being in 2017, which was very much an edition for the pure climbers.

The finishing climb this year of the Côte de la Fosse aux Loups isn't that long, however it could make it tough, playing to the strengths of other riders like Anna van der Breggen. Still if Vos can hang on, the easing of the gradient in the final 500 metres could help. Her form, too, is a bit of an unknown as the only race we have seen the Jumbo-Visma rider in since Liège-Bastogne-Liège in May was the Dutch National Championships, where she came eighth. However, La Course is clearly a race that means a lot to her so you can be sure she’ll do everything she can to make what could be the last edition count.

The wins haven’t been forthcoming for Kasia Niewiadoma this year, or last for that matter, but she’s been getting close with three second places so far in 2021. The most impressive of these, and the one that made her place on the riders to watch list for La Course secure, was at La Flèche Wallonne when she was the only rider that even came close to holding van der Breggen’s wheel on the way up the Mur de Huy.

Simone is a degree-qualified journalist that has accumulated decades of wide-ranging experience while working across a variety of leading media organisations. She joined Cyclingnews as a Production Editor at the start of the 2021 season and has now moved into the role of Australia Editor. Previously she worked as a freelance writer, Australian Editor at Ella CyclingTips and as a correspondent for Reuters and Bloomberg. Cycling was initially purely a leisure pursuit for Simone, who started out as a business journalist, but in 2015 her career focus also shifted to the sport.