Defending Tour de France Femmes champion Annemiek van Vleuten (Movistar) gave wholehearted approval to the newly-published 2023 route, which she described as “an upgrade” on 2022.
Van Vleuten said she was satisfied with the length of the 2023 Tour de France Femmes, an identical eight-day configuration to 2022. However, she did not rule out the idea of extending the women’s race to match the men’s in duration in the future, albeit with reservations.
She also argued that the inclusions of a time trial this year, on stage 8 in Pau, and a well-known summit finish on a full-length mountain climb like the Tourmalet the day before made for a "more complete" Tour de France Femmes.
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On a personal note, as defending road race World Champion in the final year of her career in 2023, Van Vleuten said she was keenly looking forward to riding the Tour while clad in the rainbow jersey.
“People ask me if I’m sure if it will be my last year, but I can think of no better way than to end the career in the rainbow jersey, and to be in the start of the Tour de France in the rainbow jersey is a dream,” Van Vleuten, 40, told reporters in Paris on Thursday.
She would not mind taking yellow on the first day and 'sacrificing' her rainbow jersey to that end, she admitted. But the important thing would be to start the race with the number one dorsal on her back as defending World Champion.
Much of the outcome of the 2023 Tour will hinge on the last two stages. But Van Vleuten pointed out that given she was badly sick early in the 2022 race, she knows only too well how important the first three quarters of the route, many of which will be held on narrow, technical roads through hilly central France, could also prove to be.
“I’m not scared of those early stages, but they will be tricky, you need to stay focussed,” she insisted. “But that is no different to 2022 when I had to survive six stages and recover from my illness. It will be hard and sometimes hard to control, so I will also need my team. But that, in the end, is also the Tour de France.”
Come the crunch Tour de France weekend, in any case, Van Vleuten gave an unqualified thumbs up to the Tour’s decision to head south and take on the Tourmalet. The Pyrenean climb will play a similar role to the Superplanche des Belles Filles did in the 2022 race, but with the critical difference of a time trial coming afterwards.
“It’s important to have a famous, hard long climb because the Tour de France for men also has a hard climb and it’s nice to see they added this one. It’s high altitude and it also suits me quite well.”
Van Vleuten has never been up the Tourmalet, but she added that she was confident that she could handle it well, and that it would likely be the “one day where I can be sure of getting time. The other days I’ll be defending myself. The time trial suits me, but it also suits my rivals.”
In any case for all the 2022 race had more altitude gain overall, the addition of the Pau time trial was another boost to the Tour de France Femmes, she noted, making it a much more well-rounded event.
“Belles Filles was hard but not ‘the’ mountains,” she argued about the final weekend format, “now with the time trial the course is more complete. So it [2023] is an upgrade.”
Longer term, Van Vleuten felt the Tour de France Femmes could advance in other ways, such as lasting three weeks rather than its current eight days. But that would also require a change in training techniques in the women's peloton to get used to the greater challenge, she argued. She also was unsure if a long stage race automatically made for a more interesting one.
“I think women are able to do that [three weeks of racing], the question is more at this point do we need it?” she asked rhetorically. “The important thing is, if it’s longer, does it make a more exciting race?”
She questioned the importance of a three-week race, saying “it will not be more interesting, but we can do that.”
Switching back to 2023, she will also enjoy watching the men’s peloton tackle a very similar route in the Vosges to where she took a devastating win on stage 7 of this year’s Tour de France Femmes, she said.
The last mountain challenges for the men in the 2023 Tour will be the Col de Petit Ballon and Col de Platzerwasel climbs on stage 20, both used in the 2022 Tour de France Femmes on stage 7. The 2023 Tour stage 20 will then end in Le Markstein, also the finish town for the women’s 2022 stage.
Any recommendations for the men for next July in the Vosges? “I’d say attack from the first climb,” she answered with a laugh. “That’s what I did.”
