Five years in, this Tour de France Femmes looks like it will be the best edition yet

I’m writing this on my way to the fifth Tour de France Femmes, which feels like one of this race’s first big milestones. Half a decade! It’s sometimes strange to think that, because it feels like this race has been around forever and is already the defining point of the calendar despite being so new to it, but amazingly this is only the fifth edition.

It’s been a whirlwind half-decade, and the race – which already felt enormous in the first year – has only grown and grown, bringing in new viewers and fans, new sponsors, platforming new teams and riders. It has also lifted the level of the sport in more ways than one, whether it's the knock-on effect of higher salaries or the rapidly rising performance that goes along with the increasing challenge of women's Grand Tours.

I was very lucky to be on the ground at the first edition of the Tour Femmes in 2022, incidentally working for Cyclingnews at the time, too. Back then, I was a freelancer, and I had the luxury of writing (and podcasting) exclusively about women’s cycling before I became staff and now do a bit of everything. It felt really cool to be able to dedicate myself full-time to the women's peloton, and it left me with a really deep understanding of the sport, I think.

Being immersed in both a pre- and post-Tour de France Femmes women’s cycling world, and having been to most of the editions, I’ve been reflecting a lot on the last five years of this race, how it has changed, and how it’s changed the sport, too.

There aren't many things that I've been able to witness from day 1 and experience those nascent, essential first years, but I have done that with the Tour – as many of you have too – and it's left plenty of thoughts swirling around my head on my travels to Switzerland.

The women’s Tour now is a huge moment for the whole industry. Everyone who is anyone will be there, all the big brands, all the most influential people in women’s cycling, from all corners of the industry.

In truth, I don’t remember the first edition being quite as big in that sense, which is sad to think in some ways, and I do wonder if some people had to see the proof of concept before they really believed this would work. Either way, the huge fanfare is here now, which is amazing to see.

(The next step will be how we extend this support and popularity to races like the Classics, Giro d’Italia Women and Vuelta Feminina. Trust me, you don’t get quite the feeling of women’s cycling booming when you’re the only person standing in the mixed zone at the finish of the women’s Dwars door Vlaanderen. But that’s a conversation for another day…)

But more than a big moment, it's also a big race, a big sporting spectacle – which I think is what anyone who loves women's cycling has always wanted. The fanfare is great, and welcomed, but even when you peel back the hype and commercialisation, you're still left with an utterly fantastic race. In fact, I think this year's might just be the best yet.

A truly fiery GC battle

I spoke to FDJ team boss Stephen Delcourt the other day (go ahead and read that Q&A if you haven’t already), and he said that there are six or seven potential winners on the start list for this year’s Tour, and he’s completely correct.

In 2022, the reality was that there was probably only one potential winner on the start list. We knew Demi Vollering and Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney were going to be good, sure, but I don’t think anyone would have bet against Annemiek van Vleuten winning the yellow jersey.

No one since Van Vleuten has replicated her level of dominance when it comes to stage racing. Even Vollering, who you'd say is the most successful stage racer right now, hasn't experienced that singular ability, as I wrote before the Giro. And to be honest, that's been the best thing about the Tour de France Femmes: not randomness, but unpredictability.

Whilst the men's Tour has been won by the same two riders for the last seven years, every edition of the women's race has had a different winner. While that might not quite continue this year – the chances of one of Vollering or Pauline Ferrand-Prévot winning seem high – it's a testament to the ever-growing depth of talent right at the highest levels of the sport. The days of there being a singular favourite are long gone.

That's because every year, more and more riders are getting stronger and stronger. A vast array of factors are behind that, but a big one is the level of resources and investment in the sport, which very simply means that more riders are able to train better and with better support. And unsurprisingly, that means the level goes up.

Which leaves us in this situation that would have felt unimaginable four years ago, with five, six, seven riders all more than capable of winning this race, even though it has one of the sport's toughest climbs as its centrepiece. A few years ago, some corners of the cycling world would have told you that including a climb like Mont Ventoux would kill the competition, as only a few riders could apparently manage it. But the peloton has resolutely proven that theory to be untrue, and now we see the inclusion of big mountains as a catalyst for exciting and open racing.

I'm sure you'll have gathered that Demi Vollering and Pauline Ferrand-Prévot are the favourites for this year's race, but don't presume they'll go unchallenged. Marlen Reusser is a formidable GC rider, Anna van der Breggen came close to winning both the Vuelta and the Giro, and UAE Team L'IMAD have a potentially lethal combination of Elisa Longo Borghini and Paula Blasi, both Grand Tour winners.

The TT and Ventoux, plus the tough stages in between, mean that nothing is a given, and any rider who goes for it at the right moment has a chance of winning. The course is really fantastic this year, better designed that the Vuelta and the Giro combined, balancing all sorts of different challenges instead of just backloading the climbing, and ensuring that the eventual winner will need to employ every skill to win this race, which is exactly what a Grand Tour should be about, This won't just be a two-rider battle on Ventoux, I assure you – the yellow jersey battle is going to be much more fiery than that.

Finally, a new generation

One of the things that I’ve thought about a lot over the years is how the names at the top of the sport really haven’t changed that much since 2022. That’s exemplified by the fact that Vollering and Niewiadoma-Phinney have been on the podium of every single edition.

But this year, a new generation is very much arriving, and one that is more than ready to challenge the established upper echelons of the peloton. Paula Blasi has arguably already done that, with her Vuelta Femenina win that may well make her one of the highest-paid riders in the peloton for 2027.

Isabella Holmgren out-climbed her teammate Niamh Fisher-Black on the Colle delle Finestre to finish seventh in the Giro and earn a late call-up for the Tour, while Valentina Cavallar is being primed as SD Worx's next big contender. Finally, 20-year-old Lore De Schepper impressed so much that she was given her debut this year in a very strong AG Insurance-Soudal team.

Women's cycling has long been dominated by a fairly stable core of big names, which in some ways has been really good for building fandom and support, but it has sometimes made me question why new names weren't quite able to cut through to the very highest level. There's nothing to worry about on that front anymore – well, unless you're one of the established guard who suddenly has a scarily talented wave of young guns to face up to…

If there's a feeling this year that we might get the first-ever repeat winner of the Tour de France Femmes, I have an equally strong feeling that very soon, we'll have a brand new name on the podium to shake up the combination of the same few riders we have seen so far. How fantastic would that be?

What next for the Tour de France Femmes?

This is kind of the ultimate question right now, and one I hope to talk to lots of people about this week, because truthfully, I'm not sure what my ideal answer or vision would be.

It's clear that the race could be longer. It seems a given to us in the sport that women's Grand Tours are shorter than three weeks because, well, they just are, but when a friend of mine asked me why I was only going to the women's Tour for nine days when the men's is three weeks, I felt like my answer wasn't very satisfactory. I'm not expecting a three-week Tour immediately, or perhaps ever, but there is room to grow this event.

Other than that, it's hard to predict what the next step for the Tour is, and perhaps that actually is the answer: the next phase of the story isn't about continuing to evolve, as we have done every year so far, but perhaps a stage of consolidation. The constant growth and experimentation has been fantastic, but maybe it's time for this race to set down some roots, form some traditions – like the men's Champs-Élysées finish – and write some history books on big climbs that are longer than just one entry.

Five years in, I'm sure many people, from ASO to Zwift to the riders and teams, will take this year's edition as a time to stop and evaluate and think about what is really the best path forward. In four brilliant editions, this race has more than proven its worth, showing that we can do foreign Grand Departs, huge mountains, and time trials. There's nothing to prove anymore, I don't think, and this race is no longer a novelty – it's fast becoming an institution, and building those foundations should be the next priority.

What do you want from the race?

As well as thinking about the racing and the evolution of this event, as I've been on my travels to Switzerland, I've also been thinking a lot about how we're going to cover it and how we can expand what we do to match the way the race has transformed.

Of course, my colleagues and I have plenty of ideas and plans up our sleeves, but before the race gets underway, I also wanted to open the floor to you all and hear what you're looking forward to, what you hope to see, and indeed, what you'd like to read on Cyclingnews for the next 10 days or so.

Whether you're a dedicated women's cycling fan or someone who is coming to the women's Tour with mainly knowledge of men's cycling, we want to offer you the best coverage possible, covering all the storylines you're interested in – from the obvious to the not so obvious – and speaking to all the most important and interesting people.

Please do drop your ideas, thoughts, observations, questions – anything! – in the comments below. I'd love to hear from you. I'll be in the comments chatting with you, and hopefully we can all enjoy a really brilliant week of racing.

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