Olympic champion Marianne Vos rides in the jersey of the overall leaders at the Tour de France Femmes.
Photo: imago/frontalvision.com
The women’s Tour de France produces its first history pictures. The race through Paris, in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe, was already familiar from the editions of the previous race, La Course. Marianne Vos, World Champion and Olympic Champion in London in 2012, also won the opening race in 2014. However, she always advocated that a one-day race like La Course is not enough. Give us a real stage ride, she demanded, and even made representations to Christian Prudhomme, the head of the tour, as he recalled to »nd« this year.
It then took many more seasons of trying things out, weighing things up, hesitating. But before the now 35-year-old athlete ended her career, the tour came. And Vos was smart enough to break away on stage 2 with a lead group in the final and strong enough to win the sprint as well. It means a lot to her to win the yellow jersey, said Vos afterwards. »As a child, I followed the tour along the route and watched the boys. They were all heroes, the last as well as the first. But the yellow jersey was never a dream of mine because it didn’t exist for women.”
Well, that was already there. But Vos was just two years old when Jeannie Longo was last feminized in the 1989 Tour de France winner’s yellow jersey. Christian Prudhomme’s predecessor Jean-Marie Leblanc then had the tour discontinued for economic reasons.
This year, however, Vos stopped watching men in yellow. She herself was among those chasing after the camisole. At the start, on the Champs Élysées, she had missed it. The next day she was crowned queen. When is it that someone fights for a major event, that it is held and has the strength to still be a protagonist on this stage? Even Prudhomme, whom Vos and many of his fellow campaigners had to support in the decision to create a women’s Tour de France as part of his organization, was touched. He posed for the winning photo next to Vos, the pioneer, and Marion Rousse, the director of the race, who in turn was never allowed to take part in a Tour de France during her active time. She was too young for the Tour de France Femmes and retired from active cycling too early to still compete in the Tour de France Femmes. Although four years younger than Vos, she belongs to the “lost generation” with no yellow chance, while Vos, the grand dame of this sport, extended her reign long enough to avoid this vintage trap. She thinks it is unlikely that she will also carry yellow up the Planche des Belles Filles at the end of the women’s tour. “I didn’t come here with that in mind. There are so many good climbers in the peloton. I don’t stand a chance,’ she said. All the more she enjoys the days in yellow. »The atmosphere is simply spectacular. So many people are standing on the street, not only at the start and finish, but also on the way. Of course I’m trying to concentrate on the race. But the emotions that this tour triggers in me are enormous,” she said.
The many people along the route in the flat country are also thanks to a successful mobilization campaign by the women’s tour boss Rousse. Many children from holiday and leisure facilities come to the route in groups. And in Épernay, she had the city tour laid through suburbs where the residents were obviously very enthusiastic that a major French event was coming to them one day. This women’s tour is becoming an event for both young and old.
