Who will win the 2024 Tour de France Femmes? Analysing the key riders to watch

Kasia Niewiadoma, Demi Vollering and Ashleigh Moolman Pasio (Image credit: Getty Images)

Now that the course for the 2024 Tour de France Femmes has been announced, with the Alpe d'Huez as its crowning climb, the time has come to examine which riders are likely to rise to the top in this third edition of the race, which takes place from August 12-18.

The first four stages and three days of the 946km race play out in the Netherlands and Belgium, with the flat terrain playing to the sprinters' hands for the first two, then a short time trial that could start to pull out some gaps in the overall before the race heads into the undulating terrain for stage 4 and stage 5, where it finally reaches France. Then the categorised climbs will start to make their presence felt on stage 6, but it is a downhill run to the finish at Morteau. Though after that, there is no reprieve, with stage 7 finishing atop Le Grand-Bornand and stage 8 on the iconic climb of Alpe d'Huez.

Particularly after her powerful performance on the Col du Tourmalet in 2023, defending champion Demi Vollering (SD Worx) has to remain firmly at the top of the favourites list. Still, given there is no concluding time trial this year where the powerful time trialist can claw back any missteps in the mountains there is opportunity for challengers to turn up the pressure cooker on those final two brutal days.

She is backed by the world's no. 1 team SD Worx, which supported her best season to date with victories at Strade Bianche, Amstel Gold Race, Flèche Wallonne, Liège-Bastogne-Liège, Vuelta a Burgos and Tour de Romandie. While in 2024 she may not have Lotte Kopecky, who stood alongside her on the 2023 Tour de France Femmes overall podium, the team has an impressive array of climbing talent to act as back-up, including the developing young riders of Anna Shackley and Niamh Fisher-Black.

She also took more risks, none more apparent than her attack on the Col d’Aspin descent in a courageous bid for victory atop the Col du Tourmalet. She finished second, only to Demi Vollering, and then used her well-trained power in the closing time trial to finish ninth. Although Lotte Kopecky jumped ahead of her in the overall classification on the final day, she finished third overall, holding off the previous year's winner Annemiek van Vleuten in fourth.

In her first Tour de France Femmes in 2022, Longo Borghini finished in the top 10 in six of the eight stages, and was one of the event's star protagonists. Challenging back-to-back mountain stages at Le Markstein and La Planche des Belles Filles, which closed out the event, however, cost her dearly in the overall classification, as many of the best climbers struggled at the high pace set by the overall champion that year Annemiek van Vleuten. As a result, Longo Borghini dropped from 4th to sixth overall.

Her steady progress has paid off, as the Frenchwoman has finished 4th at the Tour de France Femmes in 2022 and 5th in 2023. While those results are impressive, it has been the in-between performances where we can truly gauge her success with the overall victory at Vuelta a Burgos in 2022, the summit stage 7 victory atop Passo del Maniva at the Giro d'Italia Women, and a telling second place overall at the Giro in 2023.

The Danish champion patiently bided her time on the lower slopes of the ascent, as others burned their matches too soon. She then made her well-timed winning attack from five wheels back in a monstrous sprint up the Mur de Huy-esque final climb with her head down. As the fans cheered, treated to a spectacular finish, she passed Marianne Vos, Kasia Niewiadoma, Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio, and Elisa Longo Borghini to triumph in what was the biggest win of her career.

At the first edition of the Tour de France Femmes in 2022 the great hopes for the rider who had just taken the runner-up spot at the Giro d'Italia Donne came crashing down on stage 2. It took some time for Marta Cavalli to build back up after that devastating accident but given her solid top 20 in the race for yellow this season, which then led into overall victory at the Tour Cycliste Féminin International de l'Ardèche, it looks the rider is working her way back toward that sparkling form of the early half of 2022.

What's more the course this year is one that plays to the strengths of the 25 year old. The shorter individual time trial in 2024 works in her favour, with the Italian rider losing more than four minutes over the 22.6km in Pau in 2023. This edition she'll face just 6.3km of racing against the clock and the individual time trial taking place on the second day in Rotterdam, when there is also plenty of time left to work up the overall rankings.

Running to her advantage, also, is the team Cavalli will be surrounded by. Being French, FDJ-Suez will undoubtedly do whatever they can to be on the front foot at the Tour de France Femmes and they have some serious muscle on their roster to assist their key riders on those summit finish stages with riders like Évita Muzic and Grace Brown on the roster alongside potential team leaders Uttrup-Ludwig and Cavalli.

The rider who joined Lidl-Trek from Isolmant-Premac-Vittoria at the start of this season has yet to debut at the French race. Elisa Longo-Borghini has been a deserving leader for the squad in the race for yellow the last two years, though her sixth place overall in 2022 turned to a DNF in 2023 after a challenging run in. Particularly with the course , that's probably an outcome that will encourage a multi-option strategy for the team in 2024.

Her prowess on challenging summit was made all to clear at the start of the season when, in her first race with her new team, she was instrumental in supporting Elisa Longo Borghini to victory on the Jebel Hafeet climb at the UAE Tour, also taking second on the stage with the powerful effort. The strong results continued through the season, as on top of the Giro d'Italia Donne and La Vuelta Feminina, there was another third place overall at the Tour de l'Avenir Femmes, plus Realini also made it ito the podium at La Flèche Wallonne Femmes the Tour de l'Avenir Femmes and won a stage of La Vuelta Feminina and the Trofeo Oro in Euro.

It is an impressive build through her first year as a professional, with the German rider quickly jumping to notice when Bauernfeind started out with the Canyon-SRAM development team in 2022 with podium spots on all three stages of the Vuelta Ciclista Andalucia Ruta Del Sol and overall.

The quick rise up the ranks has delivered a strong second card for the WorldTour team, as while Niewiadoma is likely to take the brunt of the spotlight in 2024 it could well transition over in the years ahead.

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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.