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After Annemiek van Vleuten crossed the line in Le Grand-Bornand attention immediately turned to stage 10 of the men’s race.
After Annemiek van Vleuten crossed the line in Le Grand-Bornand attention immediately turned to stage 10 of the men’s race. Photograph: Justin Setterfield/Getty Images
After Annemiek van Vleuten crossed the line in Le Grand-Bornand attention immediately turned to stage 10 of the men’s race. Photograph: Justin Setterfield/Getty Images

La Course grips viewers but women’s Tour de France remains a way off

This article is more than 5 years old

The lack of a press conference for winner Annemiek van Vleuten shows the tacked-on status the race still holds despite positive noises from UCI president David Lappartient

Despite the cliff‑hanging nature of her victory there was no press conference for La Course winner Annemiek van Vleuten. Instead, with the Tour de France’s token nod to women’s racing done and dusted, the riders were quickly ushered off stage and the focus switched to the start line of the men’s Tour de France, across the valleys of the Haute-Savoie.

This was the fifth edition of La Course and by general consensus easily the best race yet. But for the second year running, the Tour organisation had merely bolted the women’s one-day race on to the men’s Tour with a truncated version of a key Alpine stage.

Despite the profile of La Course and the women’s Tour of Italy, a revitalised women’s Tour de France remains a long way off. Highlighting that, a group of French female cyclists, Des Elles au velo, are riding the route of the men’s Tour, a day ahead of the men’s race, in a bid to promote women’s stage racing and specifically a women’s Tour de France. Meanwhile the pressure on ASO, promoter of the men’s Tour, to rejuvenate the women’s Tour de France that it once organised, the long-lost Tour Feminin, is increasing.

“I want to see a women’s Tour de France within the term of my presidency,” David Lappartient, the UCI president, said after his election last autumn. “La Course is nice, but ASO can do more and I have put pressure on them to achieve this.”

Women’s racing, he says, has a bright future but adds that some women competing at World Tour level are earning less than €10,000 a year from racing. “That’s very bad, totally unacceptable. But you can see the passion around the women’s Tour of Britain, which is now one of the world’s top races for women, and the interest in La Course.

“We have a lot of women’s teams but the base needs to be stronger and we are discussing with women’s teams how to improve the situation. I think cycling can be one of the top three women’s sports.”

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It is estimated that the top earners in women’s racing are paid around €200,000 a year, with the minimum wage for a full-time pro as low as €30,000. Even then, there remain some riders racing for free, while others work part-time or continue their education.

However with a clutch of major sponsors – including Lizzie Deignan’s newly unveiled backer Trek – now able to pay riders to compete full-time, the number of riders able to focus their energies fully on training and racing, rather than stacking shelves to finance competing or studying to safeguard their futures, is growing.

Yann Le Moenner, chief executive of the Tour promoter ASO, said that cycling will soon “definitely deserve a dedicated women’s Tour de France, with a lot of media attention”.

Rachel Hedderman, who as Rachel Heal raced in the Olympics for Team GB but is now sports director for the UnitedHealthcare women’s team, is cautiously optimistic. “Women’s cycling in general seems to be on the up at the moment,” she said. “It’s a lot more talked about so I’m optimistic that ASO will run with it and start growing La Course. You’d hope there’d be a longer stage race, but if we start with a shorter race with a few stages, including a mountain stage, then good.

“Once media coverage increases, then the investment will come from sponsors. The media coverage will drive the value to the sponsors. People aren’t doing it out of charity: it has to be a viable business. But the money that it takes to run a top tier women’s team is significantly less than a World Tour men’s team.”

But even with the media circus that follows the men’s Tour on site, Le Moenner said a Tour Feminin would have to be a standalone event. “Logistically, it’s just not possible to do a women’s Tour running alongside the men’s Tour,” he said. “We need to work on the best solution to showcase women’s cycling, and the sooner the better.”

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