The 2024 edition of the Women’s Tour de France will start from Rotterdam on August 12, the day after the closing ceremony of the Paris Olympics, event director Marion Rousse announced on Monday.
Published on: 07/10/2023 – 12:32
It was an open secret in “radio peloton”. The director of the women’s Tour de France, Marion Rousse, put an end to the suspense on Monday July 10: the 2024 edition, Olympic year, will start from the Netherlands. To avoid encroaching on the dates of the Paris Olympics, it will begin on August 12 in Rotterdam. the day after the closing ceremony.
Three of the eight stages will take place in the Netherlands, including two on the same day, including a time trial in the streets of Rotterdam, before the finish on Sunday August 18. The rest of the route will be unveiled on October 25.
Read alsoWomen’s cycling, year 2: “We must continue to structure ourselves, otherwise everything can stop”
“The magic of the Tour always spreads further”
This will be the first departure abroad for the women’s Grande Boucle which was revived last year when it set off from Paris.
“We are proud to organize the first Grand Départ abroad of the Tour de France Women with Zwift, with The Hague and Dordrecht,” Rotterdam Mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb said in a statement. “The magic of the Tour spreads always further. This unforgettable event will encourage our citizens to get on their bikes and broaden their horizons.”
“It seemed logical to us that the flagship nation of women’s cycling could host the biggest cycling race in the world”, explained Marion Rousse, director of the event, in the same press release. “It is among the Dutch that we find the greatest champions of recent years. Going to their land bodes well for a great popular celebration. We can expect the massive presence of their supporters.”
The 2023 edition of the Tour will start on July 23 from Clermont-Ferrand, and defending champion Annemieke van Vleuten is Dutch. She has just won the Giro and the Vuelta 2023.
The 2024 edition represented a headache because of the holding of the 2024 Olympics in Paris (July 26-August 11) which made it impossible to organize the Women’s Tour directly as an extension of the Men’s Tour as is currently the case. .
“We had to find new dates. The most important thing was to stay on French holidays because the Tour de France must remain a popular festival”, explained Marion Rousse.
The women’s Tour de France now hopes to sanctuary every four years this space between the Olympic Games and the Paralympic Games.
The departure from Rotterdam, co-organized with the cities of The Hague and Dordrecht, also makes it possible to circumvent another difficulty posed by the holding of the Olympic Games in France: the mobilization of the police, which moreover led the organizers of the men’s Tour de France to start the event a week earlier next year, from Florence in Italy.
Departures from abroad have become commonplace among men. Bilbao was this year the 25th foreign city to organize one. The first had been given in 1954 in a Dutch city already, Amsterdam.
With AFP
