The riders who have ruled the top step the last six years are retired, making it a wide-open battle for pink at the 35th edition
Juliette Labous (dsm firmenich PostNL), Lotte Kopecky (SD Worx) and Elisa Longo Borghini (Lidl-Trek)(Image credit: Getty Images)
The 2024 Giro d'Italia Women marks a fresh chapter in its 35th edition, complete with a rebrand under new management, RCS Sports, who took over organising responsibilities as part of a four-year term through 2027.
The event has been reduced to eight stages from its traditional ten, but it still promises a challenging route complete with an opening time trial, two sprint stages, two intermediate stages, and three mountain tests, including a summit to Blockhaus.
This season, the Women's WorldTour calendar has adjusted to accommodate the Olympic Games, separating the two big Grand Tours; Giro d'Italia Women and Tour de France Femmes, previously held back-to-back in July.
For this year, the ASO has pushed the Tour to a temporary August date following the conclusion of the Olympics, which could have allowed for more riders to target both events due to the increased number of days and more recovery time in between.
Still, some riders will focus on one or the other, especially if they also represent their nations at the Olympic Games.
Just four days out, the field appears to be racing without Tour de France champion Demi Vollering (SD Worx-Protime) and Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon-SRAM), among others, who are not yet confirmed to compete.
That means it is the most open edition in many years, particularly given that the riders who swept up the last six editions between them, Annemiek van Vleuten and Anna van der Breggen, are both—at this point at least—retired.
Cyclingnews has selected the top riders to watch who are confirmed to race at the 2024 Giro d'Italia Women.
RCS Sports has not yet released an official start list for the 2024 Giro d'Italia Women, so we will update this page accordingly in the days leading up to the event that starts on July 7.
Join Cyclingnews' coverage of the 2024 Giro d'Italia Women with race reports, results, photo galleries, news and race analysis.
The maglia rosa has Elisa Longo Borghini's name written all over it. The Italian Champion will undoubtedly want a re-do after she crashed on stage 5 while she was in second place overall and was then forced to abandon altogether ahead of stage 6.
She had a turbulent season last year, also contracting COVID-19, a nasty skin infection and sepsis.
But she managed to turn things around this year with a victory at the Tour of Flanders, podiums at the Ardennes Classics, Vuelta España Femenina, and Tour de Suisse, and a defence of her road race title at the Italian National Championships.
Longo Borghini has finished on the overall podium twice in 2020 and 2017, and she could find herself in the perfect position this year to secure the maglia rosa. The course is challenging, as always, but the relentlessly undulating terrain combined with the longer high-altitude climbs suit her best. She is a powerful all-rounder, and without Vollering, Niewiadoma, and with Annemiek van Vleuten now retired, she is the outright favourite for this Grand Tour.
Lidl-Trek also have a contender in Gaia Realini, who finished third in last year's edition. She will be especially eyeing the Blockhaus stage as a place to claim a victory and also fight for the GC if it comes down to that climb.
Juliette Labous will lead the GC charge for dsm-firmenich PostNL and after finishing second overall last year, she is one step away from claiming her first Grand Tour victory.
Labous enjoys racing the Ardennes Classics but she truly excels in stage racing, so this is the time of the year when we usually see her shine. Whether it's in the shorter Spanish stage races such as Vuelta a Burgos, which she won in 2022, or Itzulia Women, where she has finished on the podium, Labous' strengths cater to both long, sustained climbs and time trials.
The Giro d'Italia Women, therefore, will be right up her alley with an opening time trial in Brescia to give her an optimal start to the eight-day race.
Although Labous tends to remain under the radar, she shouldn't be underestimated. She is a consistent and tactical rider and will be one to watch for any dangerous breakaways, while she is also capable of riding a high pace on the longer ascents, even while her rivals battle it out.
The Giro d'Italia Women will be the beginning of an important block of racing. She just won the road race title at the French Championships and was selected for the Paris Olympic Games and will focus, too, on the Tour de France Femmes, both events on home soil.
While Demi Vollering is not yet confirmed to race the Giro d'Italia Women, World Champion Lotte Kopecky will be racing the eight-day event and is a prime contender for the overall title. Despite being the winner of many one-day races, including Strade Bianche, the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix, don't rule her out for a Grand Tour victory.
Just in case anyone needs reminding, Kopecky had an incredible performance at the Tour de France Femmes last year. She won the opening stage, wore the yellow jersey for six days, climbed with the best to the summit of the Col du Tourmalet, and then stormed to third place in the time trial in Pau. She closed out the eight-day race by winning the green points jersey and taking second overall behind her teammate Vollering.
She has had a successful year of stage racing already, with overall wins at the UAE Tour, where she won the stage atop Jebel Hafeet, and the Tour of Britain Women.
She certainly has a realistic shot at the maglia rosa, and since she has opted not to race at the Vuelta España Femenina or the Tour de France Femmes this year, it will be her only chance at a Grand Tour title.
Mavi Garcia was third overall in the 2022 edition, and she has been a staple in the GC standings, finishing seventh last year, fifth in 2021, and ninth in 2020.
The former Spanish Champion excels across hilly terrain and in tough, tactical racing often ensuring that she is in a position to fight for a breakaway or finish among the selection on major ascents.
Although she hasn't had her best season so far this year, she seems to be improving ahead of the summer stage races, having finished fourth overall at Itzulia Women and just recently winning the Vuelta Ciclista Andalucia.
Garcia is likely to use the mid-mountain races on stages 3, 4, 5, and 6 to her advantage and attempt to take the maglia rosa, while holding her position on the two high-mountain stages 7 and 8.
It is largely a climbing-focused team for Jayco-AlUla this year, with Ella Wyllie also a GC focus as a contender for the youth jersey while Ruby Roseman-Gannon will be the rider for the sprints.
Australian time trial champion Grace Brown has a solid chance at taking the first maglia rosa at this year's Giro d'Italia Women, given that it begins with a 14.6km individual time trial, one of her specialties.
She will face competition from riders like Lotte Kopecky and other powerful time triallists, but this course should suit her perfectly.
The route is relatively flat and will favour the pure time triallists, even more important with the event's first leader's jersey on the line, making this race all the more important for riders like Brown.
Although she recently announced that she would retire at the end of the season, Brown is having a stellar season, which includes a victory in the time trial at the national championships, a historic win at Liège-Bastogne-Liège, and she won the overall title at the Bretagne Ladies Tour.
The following four stages will be both sprinter-friendly and medium-mountain routes designed for the punchers, and then the race heads into the higher mountains for the last three stages, which will be well-suited to Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig.
Uttrup Ludwig has finished in the top-10 overall on four occasions: sixth in 2018, fourth in 2020, seventh in 2022 and sixth in 2023.
Silvia Persico has become one of the rising talents of Italian bike racing. She's an all-rounder who won't be pigeonholed into one racing style. She's a world-class cyclocross racer who has proven herself as one of the sport's dominant one-day and stage racers, with an ability to sprint and climb with the best.
She is now in her second season on the Women's WorldTour with UAE Team ADQ, since becoming the revelation at the 2022 Tour de France Femmes, and has gained a lot of experience in that short amount of time.
She continues to test her boundaries across all sorts of terrain this year, finishing with top 10s at the Mallorca Challenge events, eighth overall at the UAE Tour, and top 10s at the Spring Classics; Trofeo Alfredo Binda, Tour of Flanders, which means that she has the strength to race among the top riders in the world.
She took a break from racing after Vuelta a Burgos and recently competed at the Italian Championships, so she should be coming into the Giro d'Italia Women as a wildcard.
UAE Team ADQ will have a punchy roster, too, with Erica Magnaldi for the climbs and Chiara Consonni and Eleonora Camilla Gasparrini for the sprints.
Given the short opening time trial, followed by a series of sprint and mid-mountains stages, it would not be surprising to see Persico land herself in the maglia rosa on home soil. Holding the overall lead in the final two mountain stages might be a difficult task, given the climbing talent in the race, but Persico is the kind of rider who will go down fighting.
Movistar heads into this race as the defending champions, but the team have restructured given the retirement of four-time overall champion Annemiek van Vleuten.
It would be unreasonable to think anyone could fill Van Vleuten's shoes after a sparkling career in the one-day races and stage races, but Lippert spent the 2023 season honing her strength and skill and learning from the one season they spent together as teammates on Movistar.
In fact, Van Vleuten felt that Lippert had a bright future and expected more top performances in her career, especially after the former German Champion won a stage into Mauriac at the Tour de France Femmes. That victory seemed to open the door to confidence, helping Lippert to realise per potential on the Women's WorldTour.
She had a later start to this season, beginning at the Vuelta España Femenina, and her results haven't been as strong as last year, yet, but Lippert is only just getting started. She comes into the Giro d'Italia Women with a question mark over her form, but that gives her somewhat of a wildcard status among the peloton, perhaps fresher than those who have been racing since January.
She will again have big targets at the Tour de France Femmes, and so the Giro d'Italia Women will be the first step toward that goal.
When Ruth Edwards returned to the professional peloton in 2024 after a retirement that lasted two years, it was immediately clear that she was doing so with form and intent. In just her second day of Women's WorldTour racing since 2021, the 30-year-old had already found her way into the top 10, then quickly upped the ante with a fourth place at the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race.
In Europe, she then returned to the podium at Trofeo Oro in Euro and on her lead-in race to the Giro d'Italia Women, the Lotto Thüringen Ladies Tour, it was a return to the top step with Edwards claiming overall victory. That means there is every reason for the rider from the United States to head into the event with considerable confidence.
She may not be a pure mountain goat, like some of her rivals, but her versatility could serve her well at the race which starts with an individual time trial. While it may be her first Grand Tour since her return to professional cycling, it's also an event at which she has plenty of powerful experience, lining up for a seventh time at a race in 2024.
Edwards raced the Italian tour for the first time in 2013, where she was part of the United States team that helped propel Mara Abbott to overall victory. In 2018, she also twice got to stand on the top step of the podium at the race, firstly as part of the opening team time trial winning squad of Team Sunweb and then with individual victory on stage 5 which also put her in pink for a day. Two more opening team time trial victories marked her most recent participations in 2020 and 2021, with the latter also delivering another day in pink, and it may not be her last.
Neve Bradbury (Image credit: Tim de Waele/Getty Images)
Neve Bradbury had hoped to open her 2024 Grand Tour book with La Vuelta Femenina but illness intervened so the rider had to reset and look further into the year for her chance in this season that promises much.
It has already been a year of firsts for the 22-year-old Australian, who claimed her first road race national jersey when she won the U23 women's category in January. It was then onto her first Women's WorldTour stage and overall podium at the Tour Down Under, quickly followed by a stage and overall runner-up spot at the UAE Tour. She then made the jump to the top step, claiming the win and second overall at the Tour de Suisse Women last month behind Tour de France Femmes winner Demi Vollering (SD Worx) but ahead of key Giro rival, Elisa Longo Borghini.
This was the perfect lead-in for the rider who is now entering her fourth year in the professional ranks and showed just what potential she had to deliver a strong overall performance right from her debut in 2022. The Zwift Academy winner may have entered the race two years ago with the goal being to help her team but in the end, she was the rider they were backing, as she steadily worked her way up the rankings and into the top ten overall. This time there is no doubt that she'll be a supported rider right from the start and one, given her form, that gives her Canyon-SRAM team every chance to hope that they will be up there in the front pack as the race hits the mountains.
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Kirsten Frattini is the Deputy Editor of Cyclingnews, overseeing the global racing content plan.
Kirsten has a background in Kinesiology and Health Science. She has been involved in cycling from the community and grassroots level to professional cycling's biggest races, reporting on the WorldTour, Spring Classics, Tours de France, World Championships and Olympic Games.
She began her sports journalism career with Cyclingnews as a North American Correspondent in 2006. In 2018, Kirsten became Women's Editor – overseeing the content strategy, race coverage and growth of women's professional cycling – before becoming Deputy Editor in 2023.
