Even when you strip away all the fanfare and crowds of race day, the road up Alpe d’Huez seems to echo with tales of some of the most memorable battles in cycling history, and on Sunday, August 18, 2024, the Tour de France Femmes will be another distinct chapter.
The ascent with 21 famous bends where so many thrilling battles of the men’s Tour de France, is dotted with signposts counting down to the top, provides more than a marker of the ever-increasing altitude, also paying homage to the winners of the stages that played out on the slopes of 13.8km climb in the Alps. The names that have earned themselves a place on those bend markers since the climb first appeared in the Tour de France in 1952, becoming the first mountain top finish of the race, include Fausto Coppi, Bernard Hinault, Marco Pantani, Thibaut Pinot, Geraint Thomas and, most recently, Tom Pidcock.
This history means the inclusion of Alpe d’Huez adds another layer to the building mystique of the latest incarnation of the women’s race, the Tour de France Femmes. It comes after the event included the unrelenting Col du Tourmalet in 2023 – where Demi Vollering rode away to claim the dramatic queen stage and the yellow jersey –and the combined challenge of gravel and gradient on the La Super Planche des Belles Filles in the first edition in 2022, won by now retired Annemiek van Vleuten.
Still, it is not the first time the Alpe d’Huez has featured in the women’s race for yellow. The climb that winds its way up from Bourg d’Oisans was, over the decades, included in different incarnations of the women’s race, from the official Women’s Tour de France, which ran through from 1984 to 1989 to the Tour Cycliste Féminin and the Grande Boucle Féminine Internationale, which last ran in 2009.
The details of those battles of old on the fabled mountain may not have drawn intense worldwide attention, though, with the spotlight, the Tour de France Femmes has turned on the sport that will change in 2024.
The location
In the first edition of the Tour de France Femmes in 2022, the race ventured to the Vosges for its key climbing stages, then it was into the Pyrenees and up the Col du Tourmalet in 2023. The 2024 Tour de France Femmes route will take the race to the Alps for the first time, but it is somewhat an unusual path to get there.
The 946.3km eight-stage and seven-day race from August 12-18 will work its way from a Rotterdam…
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