Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme has designed a extended-awaited confirmation that Amaury Activity Organisation (ASO) will launch a women’s Tour de France in 2022. It has been speculated that the women’s race will be referred to as Tour de France Femmes.
In an job interview with the Guardian, Prudhomme stated that the women’s stage race would take place next the men’s 3-7 days occasion following summer months. ASO have pressured that it would be ‘logistically impossible’ to have the men’s and women’s events held at the same time.
“It will just take area subsequent year, that’s sure,” Prudhomme informed the Guardian. “It would have transpired this year if it had not been for the COVID-19 pandemic, definitely, and previously mentioned all if the Tokyo Olympics had not been right after the [men’s] Tour, so the ideal riders may well not be accessible. But the determination has been taken. There will be a Tour de France femmes in 2022 adhering to closely immediately after the [men’s] Tour.”
ASO verified to Cyclingnews, that even with the addition of the women’s Tour de France upcoming summer, it will continue to organise its a single-day race La Program by Le Tour de France. La Class will embark on its eighth version on June 26 in Brest.
“There is no plan of not organizing La System by Le Tour [in the] following a long time,” a consultant from ASO instructed Cyclingnews.
The women’s peloton raced their first formal launch of the women’s Tour de France until 1984 won by American Marianne Martin. It was an 18-day race held concurrently as the men’s celebration and alongside a lot of the identical but shortened routes with shared end lines. The Société du Tour de France, which afterwards grew to become component of ASO in 1992, managed the two men’s and women’s occasions.
The women’s Tour de France finished in 1989, and when ASO went on to organise women’s a single-day races like La Flèche Wallonne, Liège-Bastogne-Liège, La Program, and the inaugural Paris-Roubaix (in October), the women’s peloton has not been bundled as aspect of the formal Tour de France for the previous 30 yrs.
Other women’s phase races in France, not run by ASO, took spot including the Tour Cycliste Féminin, which experienced begun in 1992, and the re-named Grande Boucle Féminine Internationale, right until it arrived to an finish in 2009.
ASO have not revealed the levels or distance of the women’s Tour de France, having said that, it has been claimed that it is expected to host an eight-day women’s race that would commence in Paris on the very same day the gentlemen complete their phase 21 of Tour de France on the Champs Élysées.
Prudhomme stated that the new edition of the women’s Tour de France will only be thriving if it has robust monetary steadiness.
“In my perspective, you have to set to one particular aspect the notion of parity concerning males and women. Why? Due to the fact there was a reason why that race only lasted for 6 several years, and that was a absence of economic harmony. What we want to do is generate a race that will stay the class, that will be established up and stand the exam of time. What that means is that the race are unable to eliminate dollars,” he told the Guardian.
Prudhomme warned, having said that, that if the women’s Tour de France loses ASO funds then it could deal with a further cancellation.
“Nowadays, all the women’s races that we organise get rid of us income,” he claimed. “Even so, we have been jogging Flèche Wallonne, Liège-Bastogne-Liège, La Study course by Le Tour. There was the Tour of Yorkshire and the Tour de Qatar Feminin, there will be Paris-Roubaix in October. If it makes revenue, that’s fantastic, but it mustn’t reduce funds or it will finish up like the Tour in the 80s and it will die.”
Prudhomme stated that if the previous women’s Tour de France held in the 80s experienced discovered a fiscal equilibrium then it would have survived.
“The challenge is to established up a race that can dwell for 100 decades. That is why we want it to adhere to the men’s Tour, so that the the greater part of the channels which broadcast the men’s Tour will protect it as properly,” he said.
Prudhomme also claimed it would be less difficult to structure a route for the women’s Tour de France, and hinted that subsequent year’s stage race will have some throwbacks to its 1980s background.
“To operate a women’s race is more basic, you never have to have 50 hyper-steep climbs, you can be extra natural about it. Women’s cycling is considerably fewer managed than men’s. I can tell you there will be back links with the earlier, with the current, and possibly the foreseeable future on the route of the [women’s] Tour,” he stated.