{"id":35216,"date":"2022-08-04T11:26:02","date_gmt":"2022-08-04T11:26:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/the-tour-de-france-femmes-surpassed-every-expectation\/"},"modified":"2022-08-04T11:26:02","modified_gmt":"2022-08-04T11:26:02","slug":"the-tour-de-france-femmes-surpassed-every-expectation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/the-tour-de-france-femmes-surpassed-every-expectation\/","title":{"rendered":"The Tour de France Femmes Surpassed Every Expectation"},"content":{"rendered":"
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For the first time since 1989, the organizers of the Tour de France tried out a radical idea last month: a real Tour de France for women. The 2022 Tour de France Femmes wrapped up this past Sunday, with Annemiek van Vleuten winning the final two stages and the yellow jersey. It was wildly popular, both on the road and through TV, affirming the case made by the women who fought for a Tour of their own for almost a decade.<\/p>\n

The success of the 2022 race is especially impressive when one considers the frustrating history of efforts to organize a women’s Tour de France. The Amaury Sports Organization, which organizes the Tour, and the UCI, which runs cycling, have spent the better part of seven decades furnishing generation after generation of star racers with excuses about why they didn’t deserve an opportunity on cycling’s biggest stage. The first women’s Tour de France was organized in 1955 by sports journalist Jean Leulliot, a real piece of shit who said after the race wrapped, \u201cI will never organize this race again because women are different from men. They talk too much in the peloton and that is not normal. In addition, once the racing is over, they do not rest as they should but fatigue their legs by going shopping.\u201d <\/p>\n

Three decades went by without a women’s race, until Tour de France race coordinator F\u00e9lix L\u00e9vitan engineered an 18-stage race for the women’s peloton in 1985. But the race ran into trouble almost immediately. Later that year, the UCI ruled that women’s stage races had to be capped at 12 stages, and two years later, the ASO fired L\u00e9vitan. The ASO failed to adequately support the women’s Tour, and the renewed race only lasted through 1989.<\/p>\n

Though the women’s peloton got to race ASO-organized stage races in France in the subsequent 33 years, there is a meaningful difference between flimsy stand-in substitutes, like the ill-fated Grande Boucle F\u00e9minin Internationale, and the Tour de France. the men’s race is the only event on the cycling calendar that breaks out into the mainstream; I’d venture that most casual Tour de France watchers have not sought out the Ronde van Vlaanderen or Paris-Roubaix. Cycling is a sponsorship-driven sport, and why would sponsors pony up serious cash to sponsor a women’s Tour de France if they weren’t going to get access to the only race that matters in the whole sport?<\/p>\n

The ASO felt the pressure in 2013 after 11-time World Champion Marianne Vos, longtime pro Kathryn Bertine, three-time British time trial champion Emma Pooley, and four-time Ironman champion Chrissie Wellington started a petition in which they laid out a clear case for a Tour de France. After the petition gained attention and people started to ask the obvious question of why the stars of the women’s peloton didn’t get to race the Tour, the ASO finally agreed to hold La Course by Le Tour de France in 2014, a one-day race for the women’s peloton held on the final day of the men’s race (the 2017 race was two stages long, but the ASO only gave the experiment one year). The ASO’s agreement was heavily compromised, and despite impressive viewership and calls for an expanded race, it refused to take any steps towards making the race more than a token gesture. The women’s peloton was happy to be able to race on the Champs-Elysees, but never fooled into thinking it was the real thing. The ASO reneged on verbal agreements to add more stages to the race, and told riders who wanted them to seek more sponsors for the race to simply do that work themselves, for free.<\/p>\n

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