The scale and the importance of the inaugural Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift is undeniable and ‘you’re not going to fool anybody’ otherwise, says Rachel Hedderman.
Speaking in Paris on the morning of the race, the EF Education-TIBCO-SVB director-turned-manager underlined that it would be hard to convince her riders that this was just another race in the face of the huge fanfare in Paris.
"You’re not going to fool anybody that this is just the same as, you know, Joe Martin Stage Race,” she said. “You can say what you like to try and remind riders, but they still see all of this. Yesterday the whole rider briefing and the photos and everything, it’s different to any other races.”
As well as the scale of the race as a whole, it is clear each team is bringing more people and more resources to what has already become a centre point of the women’s calendar.
“For us, one of the biggest things is that I’m used to being at a race with a mechanic, two swannies and me and that’s it,” Hedderman said. “And here, we have 10 or more staff and a lot of sponsors with us. Even just the team, the whole set up, instead of it being the normal 10 people, I think we have 30 people here.
“Right from the start, it’s a completely different scale from what we’re used to.”
Part of that is due to the fact that teams now have more access to such resources, due to an increase in sponsorship that has emerged since the announcement of the Tour de France Femmes.
“No sponsor is specifically saying ‘because there’s a women’s Tour, we will now sponsor a women’s team’,” Hedderman said. “It’s just that the profile of women’s cycling is growing that much, and the Tour is an indication of that. It’s a step up in worldwide visibility of women’s cycling and that’s what gets the sponsors involved.”
Whilst a lot has been made about the Tour de France and the perceived progress of women’s cycling, Hedderman considers that the commercial growth of the sport does not necessarily mean a change in the racing or level.
“When we were racing, we raced just as aggressively as the raiders do now so that’s not different,” she said. “The actual dynamics of the race itself are similar to what they were before, it’s just that now, more people can see it. That’s been the biggest change, the visibility, not the race itself.”
However, there are some limitations to the scale of the race that are already emerging. Many riders spoke excitedly before the race about being on the podium in Paris, but the women’s race will not feature on the main, iconic stage 21 podium. The post-stage presentations were made on an additional stage, and there will be no handover of the yellow jersey on Sunday evening.
Furthermore, much of the infrastructure around the race was still being set up even within the last hour of the women’s race, and the VIP stands that line the Champs-Élysées were not welcoming guests in the early afternoon, schedules seemingly still aligned to the men’s race.
