It’s taken 119 years but finally, the women’s Tour de France is here

Three years ago, as founder of the InternationElles, Louise Vardeman led a group of female amateur riders around the entire 3,460km route of the Tour, covering every mountainous metre of climbing one day before Egan Bernal, Geraint Thomas and the men’s peloton.

“In fact, we did more than the men because it was the year of the crazy landslides which stopped them getting up to Tignes,” Vardeman recalls. “We had torrential rain, dangerous roads. It was freezing at times, almost sleet and snow.

“I have been rewatching some of the stories we recorded and I’d forgotten just how awful it was a lot of the time – so gruelling. We weren’t pros. We didn’t have the set-up so we were doing our own washing, cooking, very long transfers in a hot van. But it meant the world to us to be shouting the message that women should have the opportunity to have a prestigious race like the Tour de France.”

This three-week slog was Vardeman’s most high-profile, and exhausting, contribution to the campaign for women to be given their own version of the most famous bike race in the world, which was first held 119 years ago. As far back as 1955, there was a five-day women’s race and there have been many versions since, including La Course, which shifted between one and two days over recent years. But the Tour de France Femmes represents a fresh start by ASO, owners of the Tour – a week-long stage race which begins in Paris and finishes, more than 1,000km later, at the summit of the brutal Planche des Belles Filles eight days later. A total of euros 250,000 (about pounds 213,00) in prize money is on offer.

Vardeman will be cycling out from London to Paris in under 24 hours to be there for the start on the Champs-Elysees and joining her fellow InternationElles to follow the race and celebrate the progress they fought for.

“I’m just so proud to have been involved in some of the campaigning to make it happen,” she says.

Remarkably, seven years ago Vardeman had barely ridden a bike, but a bad hip curtailed her running and a divorce was an incentive to throw herself at a new challenge. “I thought cycling people were weird in all this Lycra and then I became one of them,” she laughs.

Now she rides five days a week, covers up to 12,000km a year, and has represented Great Britain as an amateur while also juggling life as an events manager and mother of two boys. And then there is the InternationElles campaign, which linked with their French equivalents, Donnons des Elles au Velo, as part of the amateur push for advancing the women’s sport and a female Tour.

Amateur involvement mattered because, according to Vardeman, it could be difficult for leading female pros to kick up a fuss. “A lot of what we were saying, they could not risk their contracts by saying it,” she says. “We could be a bit cheekier. So we had messages from pros through social media letting us know they loved what we were doing.”

She says that the campaign has been notable for its positivity rather than protests. “We were really careful from the beginning not to be stepping on too many toes and talking in a negative way,” Vardeman adds. “We are all massive fans of the Tour de France. We love the Tour. We just want the opportunity shared with the female peloton. So it’s not saying, ‘This is terrible.’ It’s saying, ‘This is great and we want more of it.’ ”

The initial reaction to seeing that the women’s race would be concentrated in northeast France was one of disappointment – “not really a tour of France,” Vardeman says – but that has turned to hope that it will make it easier for the crowds to follow. Eight stages, rather than the 21 for the men, feels about right. “I don’t think the women’s peloton is ready for three weeks,” Vardeman says. “There is not the same depth as the men. As a start, this is great for a women’s version.”

Many different ideas for a female Tour have been kicked around, including the possibility of staging it on shortened routes on the same day as the men’s event, but Vardeman thinks this race, which will set off as the men finish in Paris, is optimal.

“The men’s race is such a big spectacle that the women might not be seen [if they were at the same time],” she says.

“The way it is being done, with the men’s Tour finishing and straight into the women’s, makes sense. The momentum will be building and we are already hearing on the Tour commentary that the women’s race will be starting straight after.

“It’s historic and it should be exciting. Women’s stages being shorter, they can attack from the start. And it’s great to know that it is going to get proper TV coverage.”

Discovery platforms (discovery+, GCN+ and Eurosport) have signed up the UK rights for four years, and proper backing is vital given that a lack of funding killed off previous versions of a women’s Tour.

Cycling teams are almost entirely sponsor-funded and making the business model work is one reason, or excuse, that Team Sky (now Ineos Grenadiers) gave for not having a women’s team despite having the sport’s biggest budget.

“You would hope they would lead the way they do in so many other ways,” Vardeman says. “It’s a shame in the first Tour de France Femmes that Ineos don’t have a team because people would be looking at them to dominate. I hope it is something that will come.”

She did encounter the Ineos team in 2019 during her epic three-week ride, and was thrilled by the reaction of Thomas and Luke Rowe.

“They said they couldn’t do what we were doing,” she says. “They were on two massages a day, their meals cooked, their own washing machine on the bus. They said, ‘Hats off, that’s incredible,’ that we were making it round.”

Vardeman looks back almost with disbelief at how gruelling it was spending more than ten hours in the saddle on the toughest days, almost falling off the bike with exhaustion.

She remembers crawling to the top of the Col d’Izoard on stage 18 ready to drop and then realising that the mighty Galibier still lay ahead.

“And the Planche des Belles Filles, the 22 per cent gravel section, I thought I was going to come off my bike,” she says. “It was crazy, but I think it did make a difference. We had so many people asking questions like, ‘Why isn’t there a women’s Tour de France?’ The questions simply could not be ignored any more.

“People don’t think they can make a change themselves, but if lots of people do their bit it all adds up. That is what has happened, but I did not think that it would move so fast.

“It is a great honour to feel so involved in something that is changing history. There will be little girls who will be able to watch and think, ‘I can be a professional rider winning the Tour de France.’ They could not say that before.”

– The Times

Originally published as It’s taken 119 years but finally, the women’s Tour de France is here