The Arc de Triomphe and its terrace’s panoramic views of Paris served as spectacular backdrops for a ceremony counting right down to the first Version of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift. In 100 days, 24 groups of six riders every will end in view of the Arc on the Champs-Élysées after the race’s grand départ from the foot of the Eiffel Tour. The race begins July 24, the identical day as the ultimate males’s Tour de France stage.
# Phrases and images by Barbara Giles. #
Cynisca Biking joined the countdown ceremony as a supporter of girls’s biking as our non-profit works to raise USA girls within the sport. Cynisca is within the midst of its personal countdown of types to its official launch this summer season (extra to come back quickly).
Cofidis rider Sandra Levenez, TdF Femme director and former French nationwide biking champion Marion Rousse, present French nationwide girls’s highway biking champion and FDJ Nouvelle-Aqutaine Futuroscope rider Évita Muzic, Amaury Sport Group director Aurore Amaury and Zwift director of girls’s technique Kate Veronneau.
On the countdown, Amaury Sport Group (ASO) friends spoke of the monumental significance of the revived Tour de France Femme. Skilled girls cyclists now have alternatives to compete within the highest profile races akin to this weekend’s Paris Roubaix, in addition to the Tour de France Femme.
Tour de France Femme director and former French nationwide biking champion Marion Rousse enthusiastically instructed the viewers of supporters, “And at last, at 100 days (from the beginning), to seek out ourselves on the Arc de Triomphe the place we’ll go many instances, we will say that it’s occurring, it’s right here – the Tour de France Femmes! I received’t be there as a bicycle owner, however because the director, it’s extremely thrilling.”
Present French nationwide champion Évita Muzic can be excited to race the Tour because the native favourite. “I feel that my household can come in addition to numerous folks from the area,” she stated. “I hope to see huge crowds on the roadside to encourage us.”
Zwift, who desires to assist put girls’s racing on an equal footing with males’s, spoke of their new partnership with ASO and ladies’s biking. “Tour de France and Zwift is a really curious partnership – ASO, the historic establishment that upholds probably the most sacred traditions of biking, partnering with Zwift the web platform that invitations riders to race and prepare within the digital world,” stated Kate Veronneau, Zwift director of girls’s technique.
Veronneau added that following the pandemic and Zwift’s fast development, “We acknowledged our shared imaginative and prescient to develop and elevate girls’s biking and with that the Tour de France Femme avec Zwift was conceived.”
Tour de France companion Santini Biking CEO Monica Santini was additionally available to showcase the official leaders jerseys.
Monica Santini, CEO of Santini, the official companion to produce the chief jerseys to the Tour de France Femme.
“We’re excited to have the Tour de France Femme as a first-time race for the ladies,” stated Santini. “Girls’s racing is a vital factor of Santini’s manufacturing and communication. We’re a female-owned firm, owned by my sister and I, and 75% of our staff are girls. For us to develop clothes for women has all the time been a part of our DNA as a result of it’s a part of what we do day-after-day. We’re tremendous excited that lastly the world is waking as much as girls’s biking; persons are following the races on TV and might really comply with their champions on TV precisely like they do the boys.”
And so the countdown to the Tour de France Femme avec Zwift begins, J-100, 99, …
“The ladies’s world peloton is so dynamic and vibrant.” stated Veronneau. “Once they take the stage for the Tour de France Femme avec Zwift this summer season, the world will watch and the following era of champions can be impressed.”
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