Date: Sunday August 4, 2024
Distance: 157.6km
Riders: 90
Start: Trocadéro, Paris
Finish: Trocadéro, Paris
Start time: 2:00pm CET
Expected finish time: 6:45pm CET
On Sunday August 4, the best female cyclists in the world will fight it out for one of the most coveted prizes in sport: an Olympic medal. The streets of Paris will be home to a spectacular display where nations like the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy are expected to attack each other until the very end of the attritional 157km route. With 1,700 metres of climbing and nine named ascents, the 2024 Women’s Olympic road race is going to suit the puncheurs of the peloton. There will be those hoping to use the climbs as springboards for attacks and faster finishers who want to keep things together for a reduced bunch sprint to the line.
The last time we saw the Women’s WorldTour peloton race was in the Giro d’Italia Donne a few weeks ago, where Elisa Longo Borghini (Italy) and Lotte Kopecky (Belgium) had a close-fought battle for the maglia rosa. Longo Borghini came out on top at her home Grand Tour, which could mean Kopecky is even more fired up to get her own back at the Olympics. The likes of Demi Vollering (Netherlands) and Kasia Niewiadoma (Poland) opted to skip the Giro to have long training camps at altitude ahead of the Olympics and the Tour de France Femmes, which starts just one week after the road race in Paris. It’s going to be intriguing to see which approach pays off.
History will be made at these Games, too, because for the first time, there will be equal numbers of male and female competitors – 90 riders in each road race. This should make the women’s race even more hotly contested, with Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and Great Britain all qualifying the maximum number of four riders in their teams. This will undoubtedly give these nations an advantage over those with fewer riders, but we all remember Anna Kiesenhofer’s surprise win in the last Olympic Road Race where the Austrian rider rode away solo; anything can happen in bike racing.
Women’s Olympic road race 2024 route:
While it is around 115 kilometres shorter than the route for the men’s Olympic road race, the women’s race features climbs which are more densely centred. In total, there are nine climbs in the race (only four less than in the men’s race.) The women’s peloton will be using the same run-out and finishing circuits as the men’s race and only one loop outside the city centre,…