“We’ve been at all of it 12 months with the preparation, and we’re simply ending the ultimate particulars,” declares Marion Rousse as she speaks to me from a taxi en route to a different interview at a radio station. Representing Tour de France Femmes race organisers Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO), she’s been doing the rounds with the assorted stakeholders to advertise the occasion and interact varied organisations and sponsors for ASO’s flagship girls’s occasion.
Now in its third 12 months of the revived girls’s grande boucle, Rousse is eager to maintain up the momentum in making this the ladies’s skilled race of reference, and greater than only a race in France, however a cultural occasion like the boys’s race has turn out to be over its 121-year existence.
“In the primary version of Le Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, we included La Planche des Belles Filles, because the Vosges had been the primary mountains crested within the historical past of the Tour de France,” says Rousse. “We need to step by step construct on the Tour’s historical past, and final 12 months we included the Col d’Aspin, and the Tourmalet – probably the most visited climb within the Tour de France.”
This 12 months’s version will finish on a excessive in additional methods than one with the finale being on the summit of the fabled Alpe d’Huez, a climb that first featured within the males’s race in 1952 and has been not often seen in girls’s biking.
“Well, the legend of the Tour de France is usually written in its mountain passes,” says the Frenchwoman. “So it doesn’t get higher than Alpe d’Huez – a climb recognized all through the world, and with its 21 numbered bends, has been a dramatic stage within the males’s Tour. Of course, the winner can have her title written on one of many bends.”
Part of growing the historical past of the Tour de France Femmes lies in together with parallel themes – comparable to with the Vosges, the Tourmalet, and Alpe d’Huez. Furthermore, the venue for the Grand Depart wasn’t a random selection.
The first abroad begin of the Tour de France occurred from the Netherlands – Amsterdam 70 years in the past. Rousse defined that town of Rotterdam had utilized to host the Grand Depart, and for her and her group, it appeared becoming to carry the occasion there.
“We just like the parallels between the Tour de France and the Tour de France Femmes with Zwift, and it appeared proper to have our first-ever overseas Grand Depart within the Netherlands, a wonderful nation for biking,” she says. “It’s additionally a rustic that has been on the forefront within the growth of girls’s biking. We have had plenty of girls’s champions from the Netherlands. So it’s an honour for us to have the ability to begin the Tour from this nation.”
Note that this interweaving of males’s and girls’s Tour de France races works each methods. The inaugural version of the Tour de France Femmes in 2022 included the well-known “chemins blancs” by means of the Champagne area on the stage between Troyes and Bar-sur-Aube, whereas this 12 months’s males’s Tour de France peloton acquired to benefit from the gravelly roads for the primary time throughout Stage 9, beginning and ending in Troyes. Although the routes weren’t similar, each phases had their share of carnage on the stone-strewn tough roads, and each races had surprising winners within the form of Marlen Reusser and Anthony Turgis, respectively.
One characteristic on this 12 months’s Tour de France Femmes, which has been current in males’s Tours de France passed by, is a two-stage day. Day Two, which encompasses a 67km street race, adopted by a 6.3km particular person time trial, was exceptionally permitted by the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) given how calendars have needed to be rejigged throughout this Olympic 12 months.
Rousse explains: “This is a unique form of 12 months due to the Olympics, so discovering a date was not straightforward. We needed to nonetheless be capable to maintain the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift throughout the summer time holidays in order that extra individuals might watch it. At the identical time, we nonetheless needed to have eight phases, so to do that, we selected this date in August, however we needed to get distinctive authorisation from the UCI to carry two phases in someday. Having the 67km street race, after which the quick time trial might entice extra spectators and create a little bit of suspense among the many Dutch viewers.”
Since the inaugural version of the Tour de France Femmes in 2022, the previous French Road racing champion has seen how girls’s racing has developed each within the conversations and curiosity round girls’s racing, in addition to the extent of the racing.
“Even on the first version of the Tour, we had a lot of spectators on the roadside,” Rousse says. “But what we now see is that spectators have begun to recognise the riders and know the names of the highest contenders. People start to talk extra about particular riders they like or determine with. I’ve additionally observed adjustments within the questions from the journalists,” Rousse says.
“In the primary version, the questions had been extra round whether or not it’s factor to have a girls’s Tour de France. Whereas within the second version, they had been asking concerning the favourites to win the completely different phases, or discussions round who the sprinters rouleurs, or climbers are – so people can get extra enthusiastic about watching the phases over the long-lasting routes.”
Rousse continues: “We have additionally observed the change within the degree of racer. In the second version of the Tour, we noticed a peloton that was extra homogeneous by way of the extent in contrast with the earlier 12 months. We have carried out lots of work with the UCI to assist elevate the general degree, and that is additionally because of the assorted sponsors who’ve invested in girls’s cycle racing. Consequently, an increasing number of girls are higher paid, higher resourced and so can practice higher, and we’re starting to see that once you have a look at the race outcomes.”
This 12 months, the levelling up has continued, with La Vuelta Feminina and Giro d’Italia Women having racers from completely different groups topping the overall classification – Demi Vollering (SD Worx-Protime) and Elisa Longo Borghini (Lidl-Trek). In addition, each races had an array of groups celebrating stage victories as their racers had been first throughout the end line, in some circumstances, riders from smaller groups.
The days of there being an odds-on favorite to win a race are gone, and spectators can now interact in and benefit from the suspense of who will put on the yellow, polka dot, white or inexperienced jerseys.
With these optimistic developments, Rousse is starting to see the fruits of her work in organising and selling the Tour de France Femmes along with her group. The 32-year-old, who was appointed and appointed by Christian Prudhomme in 2021, has labored doggedly to make this occasion profitable in order that it doesn’t have the identical destiny as the unique Tour de France Féminin, which ran all through the late Eighties after a one-off race in 1955.
During that period, when the race was contested by the likes of Jeannie Longo, Maria Canins, and Connie Carpenter-Phinney, the race was run on a shoestring beneath the directorship of Felix Levitan and Xavier Louy and was an enormous loss-making venture.
As nicely because the nuts and bolts of organising the race, the previous racer has racked up hundreds of miles assembly completely different officers throughout the stage cities in France, the Netherlands and Belgium to ensure that every little thing is on level for the massive opening day on twelfth August. So the place does she get her doggedness from?
Raised in a biking household, the place her father, Didier, was a first-category street racer, and her cousins Laurent and David Lefèvre, and Olivier Bonnaire raced professionally, Rousse is the youthful of two ladies. Even as infants, there have been clear variations between them of their personalities. While Flavie was of a peaceful relaxed temperament, little Marion was a shiny bundle of power darting round, who couldn’t keep seated for lengthy. She loved operating by means of fields and parks round her dwelling close to Valenciennes in Northern France.
Marion recollects: “My mum stated after I got here dwelling from taking part in I’d gotten all soiled and I’ve lumps and bumps on my physique. When I used to be very small she used to take me along with her to go and watch my dad racing. Then I acquired fed up of watching, and needed to have a go too.”
While Didier was not eager on the teen beginning racing, her mom secretly utilized for a racing licence for her daughter. That was the debut of little Marion’s biking profession – on the age of six! Rousse learnt to juggle racing and schoolwork. Eventually, Didier recognised his daughter’s need to be a motorcycle racer and have become her coach.
As a racer for Team Vienne Futuroscope, she turned the French National Road Race champion in 2012 and later joined Lotto Belisol. It was whereas racing that she minimize her enamel in broadcasting when she was given the chance to do some TV commentary – one other exercise among the many completely different jobs she juggled to make ends meet at a time when girls’s pro-cycling salaries had been comparatively lean.
Eventually, Rousse left racing to focus extra on her off-the-bike actions. “I realised I had to decide on between media work or racing, as I acquired the impression I wasn’t doing both of them rather well. I figured I’d already had a 20-year racing profession on the age of 25, so felt able to focus extra on different issues.”
Rousse grew into that position and is now a advisor for France TV. She additionally gained expertise as an assistant race director of the Tour de Provence, and within the final couple of years has been mum to little Nino, and lives along with her companion Julian Alaphilippe. Spinning a couple of plates has been an ongoing theme as Rousse says she’s carried out that since she was six.
Inspiring the subsequent technology
Although Rousse loved a profitable profession, competing alongside the likes of Elena Cecchini, Audrey Cordon-Ragot, Marianne Vos, and Jolien d’Hoore, she didn’t get to race in lots of main high-profile occasions like a few of her former contemporaries now do. Nonetheless, the Tour de France Femmes Director is eager to give attention to giving one thing again to the game that has carried out a lot for her.
“Once I’ve carried out one thing I have a tendency to not look again a lot. My character is to maneuver on with out trying again and wishing I used to be doing what I used to do,” Rousse says.
“I feel that the Tour de France might serve a job as to encourage little ladies to have a go at racing at this degree. They will swap on the TV and can see girls on a motorcycle, they usually might even say to themselves ‘Well I might have a go at that too’ they usually gained’t pose themselves the query about whether or not they can do it or not. I’m actually completely happy to see the developments in girls’s cycle racing.”
Of course, she recognises that there’s nonetheless some approach to go by way of attitudes, however she gained’t enable that to concern her an excessive amount of.
“I simply get on with my work with out pondering whether or not I’m a person or a girl. The finest reply I may give to people who find themselves caught on the truth that a girl shouldn’t be on a motorcycle is that I don’t want to clarify something to them; I’ll simply present them – whether or not that’s with the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift or anything. We are there as a result of we’re in our well-deserved place. It’s for these individuals to vary their opinions, somewhat than us needing to clarify something to them.”
Back to the Tour de France Femmes, and Rousse is trying ahead to what guarantees to be an thrilling third version of the race, as she summarises a couple of of the fascinating phases: “All the phases have been deliberate in order that there’s something for everybody, and the several types of rider can have their alternative to shine.
“Stage 4 from Valkenberg to Liège may very well be deceptively troublesome, particularly when being carried out in August. Time gaps might undoubtedly be fashioned there because the riders go over Cote de La Redoute, Cote des Forges and Cote de la Roche aux Faucons in speedy succession close to the top of the stage.
“Stage 7 to Le Grand Bornand can even trigger some reordering of the overall classification, earlier than the climax on Alpe d’Huez, which is preceded by the onerous aspect of Col du Glandon. This guarantees to be an actual battle and can be one of many hardest phases in any girls’s race.
“For me, the crucial success components come within the form of sporting success – nice racing – but in addition with a lot of individuals participating within the sport, with many individuals smiling along side the street. I stay up for the parents doing that once more this 12 months.”
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