2024 Tour de France Femmes route announced

Mathew Mitchell

Published on October 25, 2023
in Women's Cycling

The route for the 2024 Tour de France Femmes has been released this morning! It’s pretty much as expected per the rumours with a mostly Dutch Tour de France Femmes ahead of a grand finish on the Alpe d’Huez. Along the way, there are nods to Amstel Gold Race and Liege Bastogne Liege as the peloton winds its way into France mid-way through Stage 5. That means we’ve got a Tour de France Femmes in which over half of the race is not actually in France. It’s mostly down to the Olympics taking place in Paris next year but it’s a strange quirk nonetheless.

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We’re likely to see Demi Vollering back to retain her title but we won’t see 2022 Tour de France Femmes winner Annemiek van Vleuten after her retirement. There isn’t much for the time trial specialists either this year as there is only 6.3kms against the clock. The profile starts off very very flat, where echelons are our only hope for some major time gaps early on other than the short time trial.

Over 2000 metres of climbing is ready on the Valkenburg-Liege stage which is a mix of Amstel Gold Race and Liege Bastogne Liege. It’s going to see a very similar finale to the latter race and no doubt provide Demi Vollering with a chance to get on top of the GC if she isn’t already after the TT. Stage 5 sees the race enter France with a transition stage that might be one for the sprinters or present an opportunity for someone to attack and pull off a win like Yara Kastelijn’s last season.

The finish on Stage 6 to Morteau again gives a chance for someone not in the GC hunt to maybe go clear as the GC riders look ahead to the next 2 stages. Big summit finishes at Le Grand Bornand and the Alpe d’Huez will complete the general classification.