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The Women’s Tour de France 2023 already has a date. The director of the event, Marion Rousse, announced this Thursday that the second edition of the competition will begin on July 23 in Clermont-Ferrand, in the center of the country, and will end on July 30 in Pau, near the border with Spain. The route of the women’s Grande Boucle will have an eight-stage route.
After the successful edition this year, the director of the event, Marion Rousse, announced from Paris the holding of a second competition this Thursday, October 27, which will visit three regions -Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, Nouvelle-Aquitaine and Occitanie- for eight stages of almost 1,000 km to be covered from July 23, starting from Clermont-Ferrand.
After crossing the Massif Central and passing near the Lascaux cave, the queen stage will take place in the Pyrenees, with the sequence of the Aspin and Tourmalet passes. The arrival will be judged at the top of this mythical summit, at 2,110 meters
The Tour will end on July 30 with a 22 km individual time trial in Pau, a novelty compared to this year.
After the successful bet of the rebirth of the Women’s Tour, marked by its high audiences (20 million viewers on France Télévisions), the 2023 edition inevitably comes with its share of questions about whether the event can last.
“This year, people really got into the game, they became attached to the women riders and they watched the Tour for the same reasons as men’s cycling. But we remain cautious. It’s still a fragile object that we need to anchor. The goal is to have a solid Tour de France and not outpacing the development of women’s cycling,” Marion Rousse said in an interview with AFP.
“We don’t want to embark on a ten-day Tour de France right away, even if we want to grow in the long term. The Tour brings sponsors, light, money. But there is still a lot to do, ”added the former runner.
This also applies to salaries, which remain low despite the fact that the International Cycling Union (UCI) has established a minimum salary for World Tour teams (first division), which must reach 32,100 euros per year in 2023.
The women’s competition had previous versions in different forms in 1994, 1996 and ended in 2000 due to lack of funding, to be reborn 22 years later in 2022.
Although many women’s teams are now backed by the elite men’s team formations, the gap with the men remains significant, especially in terms of density.
An increasingly inclusive sport but still with a long way to go
Last year, several controversies accompanied the races that offered precarious prizes. For the Tour de France, the endowment has not changed: 250,000 euros in prize money, including 50,000 for the winner.
These figures are ten times less than those of the winner of the men’s Tour de France. But for Marion Rousse, it is “rather comparable to an eight-day men’s race like Paris-Nice”, for once less endowed than the women’s Grande Boucle (144,300 euros, including 16,000 for the winner).
“Like the number of race days, we hope to evolve on that as well. But it’s also about not burning our wings and having to come back in a year or two,” he said.
“We don’t want to go faster than the music. The event must become permanent, settle down”, abounds the director of the Tour, Christian Prudhomme.
Meanwhile, the Women’s Tour de France continues to grow with expansion from six to seven riders per team. Marion Rousse also measures the growing popularity of the event by the number of messages she receives.
“From now on, they contact me directly, from municipalities abroad like in France who want to have the two Tours, girls and boys. We really feel that people have already appropriated the women’s Tour. They have realized that the girls on a bike they are amazing.”
with AFP
