The Long and Winding Road

The first question those unfamiliar with cycling are likely to ask any half decent bike racer is: “So, do you race the Tour de France?” The three-week Grand Tour is a household name that transcends the otherwise relatively niche sport of professional cycling, but, since 2009, the women’s peloton haven’t had any other answer than ‘no’.

This year, however, that is all set to change with the creation of the first Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift (TDFF). The race, which will take place over eight stages starting on the Champs Élysées before the final stage of the men’s Tour and culminates with a mountaintop finish on the Super Planche des Belles Filles in the Vosges mountains in the east of France, has been years in the making.

While many are calling this the ‘first’ Tour de France for women there have, in fact, been several versions of a women’s Tour in the past. As far back as 1955, journalist Jean Leulliot organised a women’s Tour de France consisting of five stages, won by Manx cyclist Millie Robinson. That race turned out to be a one-off, however, and it would be almost 30 years before the next one came about, in 1984.

Launched in the same year as the first Olympic road race for women, the 1984 Tour de France Féminin was introduced by the Société du Tour de France (which later became part