As it often does, the recent announcement of the route for La Course by Le Tour de France led to debate.
Is the 96-kilometre course covering two laps of the same circuit around Nice with two climbs too short? Is it hard enough? Well, possibly not, although the sprinters who can get over a bit of a hill should be happy enough. But the debate didn’t change the fundamental issue that has dogged La Course since it began as a circuit race on the Champs Elysees in 2014: like it or not, hard or easy, great race or snooze-fest, the event doesn’t have a true identity and its profile suffers calamitously because it is run alongside the second largest sports event on the planet.
There are many good reasons why the cycling world wants ASO to run a proper stage race for women. The overall boost to the sport, in sponsor and “inspiration” terms, would be immeasurable. ASO has unique power in cycling: the quid pro quo it can offer towns, cities and regions – a stage in this race for a stage in the Tour – and the pull it has with sponsors and television companies mean it could put on the biggest women’s race in the world. With the Giro Rosa, the UK Women’s Tour, it would mean stage racers are truly catered for with three races with totally unique identities, with a fourth if the proposed Battle of the North in Scandinavia happens.
It’s long past time for ASO to put their cards on the table and cater for women seriously with a proper stage race. They’ve said they are looking into it. They’ve put a work group in place, and it will now be interesting to see how the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic affects that: will the hiatus in racing this year be a spur for true change, having given more space for thought and for dreaming up new events, or will the heavy lifting involved in moving the men’s Tour to a late August start have had the opposite effect?
Whichever is the case, it’s worth putting yourself in the shoes of a person in that work group. How could you run that stage race, when and where? Let’s start from an important premise: this race shouldn’t be a slavish replica of the men’s Tour de France, but should learn from the Tour. That doesn’t mean make the stages short, and it doesn’t mean don’t have mountains. It just means that you shouldn’t blindly assume that because three weeks and half a dozen mountain stages works for the men’s peloton, it will be fab for women’s cycling.
The chances are that if you were trying to create a men’s race from tabula rasa, one that would engage the public and create excitement, you wouldn’t have a Tour de France that was that long or that hard. Recently, the Tour has changed rapidly: barely a time trial worthy of the name since 2012, microscopically short mountain stages on occasion, summit finishes here there and everywhere. As it stands, the men’s Tour creates epic imbalances within that side of the sport, dominating to the detriment of other races; why replicate that?
The Giro Rosa, currently the longest and hardest stage race on the women’s calendar, runs for 10 days. The UK Women’s Tour is six days. Eight to 10 days should span two weekends, so start there; it’s long enough to be an endurance test, to include varied stages, and to create narratives around the participants. If you want real prestige, for a properly “French” race, you have to include the capital city: you need to visit the centre of Paris, which means starting or finishing on a Sunday. This would, of course, tie in nicely with the current pro-cycling moves being taken at warp speed by the city’s mayor, Anne Hidalgo.
What about the date? Take the original 2020 calendar: with the Tour of California on hold, there was a frankly embarrassing gap between May 9 when the Tour of Chongming ends and June 8 when the UK Women’s Tour kicks off. Plenty of time for an 8-10 day stage race, even allowing for riders to fly back from China.
If you look at ASO’s other commitments – and assume that they don’t want to take on an extra 8-10 days racing in June, July or August given the herculean task of organizing the men’s Tour – mid May would work. In 2020 that would have been May 16-25. Handily, that also spans a French public holiday: Ascension Day. Alternatively, they could try for a pre-World’s slot on the first two weeks of September but that is pretty much when the Battle of the North is expected to be.
What of the actual race? For flexibility, my suggestion would be alternate starts and finishes in Paris, with an consistent formula. You could use the same iconic backdrop as the men’s Tour de France; if you look for something different – Paris is not short of monuments to race past – you have to be careful it doesn’t look like second best. To be truly spectator-friendly, why not a short time trial and a brief (60km) criterium, either to set the scene for the week ahead, or maybe decide the final outcome?
In 8-10 days, with place to place stages, you can start from pretty much anywhere in France and get to Paris, or vice versa, without crazy transfers. Given that the men’s Tour misses out a substantial chunk of France each year, the rational thing to do is send a new women’s stage race to the bit that doesn’t get the Tour in any given year. Think Paris-Strasbourg with a climax in the Vosges, Toulouse-Paris though the Massif Central with perhaps a nod to the Pyrenees, depending on what’s open in late May. Let’s not solely look for mountains; much as we all love to see riders grovel up a good big pass, that’s not all cycling is about: there is off-road to be raced as well, as we’ve seen in Tro Bro Leon and Paris-Tours as well as, obviously, in Paris-Roubaix. So maybe Paris-Nantes or Brest, but through the north and Normandy.
ASO should learn from other races. In Britain, the Women’s Tour doled out equal prize money and guaranteed riders the same conditions as the men in terms of road closure and hotels. It also started with a sense of mission: to get more women on bikes. So why not circuit finishes rather than just racing into town, and why not back up the headline race with mass participation events or a junior and under-23 race on that circuit either before or after? Similarly, look for connections with Zwift and Strava to broaden the appeal still further.
What about the name? Let’s not call this race the women’s Tour de France. Let’s give it its own name, its own identity. The Route de France has historical resonance, so too La Grande Boucle. Add a By Le Tour if you want it to be obvious who is running it. But please, just do it.