La Vuelta Femenina by Carrefour.es 2024 History
The Vuelta Femenina by Carrefour.es has grown from its humble beginnings to a key event, almost similar in stature to its male counterpart. The race, originally dubbed the ‘Challenge by la Vuelta,’ officially evolved into La Vuelta Femenina in 2023, and seems to have reset the clock with this being officially the second version of a race that’s existed since 2015.
In 2015, the Vuelta Femenina was introduced as a one-day criterium in Madrid, modelled after La Course by Le Tour de France which was a one-day race held on the Champs Elysees at the time. This format initially served to highlight women’s cycling but soon expanded due to its popularity and the growing demand for a more competitive and comprehensive event. It evolved into a multi-stage race, including individual and team time trials, significantly enhancing its prestige and challenges for riders.
Notable moments include Giorgia Bronzini’s memorable victory in 2018, which marked her retirement race, and Annemiek van Vleuten‘s recent successes, cementing her status within the sport. 3 GC victories on the trot have seen the Dutch rider bow out at the top of her form. Despite these achievements, the race’s stature as a true Grand Tour is still a subject of debate within the cycling community, with many hoping for future enhancements to solidify its position further. The Vuelta Femenina continues to strive towards matching the grandeur and challenge of the more established Grand Tours like the Giro Donne and Tour de France Femmes.
Previous Winners
La Vuelta Femenina by Carrefour.es 2024 Stage Profiles
Stage 1
Stage 2
Stage 3
Stage 4
Stage 5
Stage 6
Stage 7
Stage 8
TV Coverage
Thursday 15th February – Sunday 18th February 2024
Live on Eurosport/Discovery+ across Europe
CanalSur in Spain
NBC/Peacock in USA
FloBikes in Canada
Stage 1: 14:45-16:45
Stage 2: 14:30-16:30
Stage 3: 14:30-16:30
Stage 4: 14:30-16:30
Stage 5: 14:30-16:30
Stage 6: 14:30-16:30
Stage 7: 13:30-15:30
Stage 8: 13:30-15:30
All times in BST
Twitter: #LaVueltaFemenina
Startlist: FirstCycling
La Vuelta Femenina by Carrefour.es 2024 Contenders
After missing out by 9 seconds last season, Demi Vollering will be out to get revenge at La Vuelta Femenina this year. Her form has been fine by the standards of most riders but after her stellar 2023, it’s reverted to the mean a little bit. She’s still searching for a win in 2024 but has been on the podium of major races plenty in the hunt for it. The GC battle here might be a little bit closer than say the Tour de France Femmes last year but it’s still tough to confidently pick someone else to win. She’s supported by Niamh Fisher-Black on the climbs, who you’d love to see be allowed the freedom to go attack and get herself a stage win similar to her Tour de Suisse stage win last year. Marlen Reusser is also back after an incredible set of injuries sustained in a crash at the Tour of Flanders. She will be supportive but her form will be impossible to call until she gets going. Blanka Vas should be the sprinter for the team and the parcours suits a rider with a bit of resistance to rolling terrain. She should add to the wins she got at Suisse and the Giro last year, even if there are no results of note so far in 2024.
Canyon SRAM will come into La Vuelta Femenina with confidence now that Kasia Niewiadoma finally has a win under her belt at Fleche Wallonne. It’s a while ago now but the Pole really should have won the GC at Setmana Ciclista Valenciana only for a bit of a tactical blunder by the team, but it still propelled her into the Spring Classics campaign nicely. Out of all the women’s big tours, the Vuelta has been her worst with a pair of 10th places in GC the last 2 seasons and 6th in 2021. She has strong support in Giro Donne stage winner Antonia Niedermaier. The young German’s results last year were a taste of what’s to come with crashes at key moments preventing some big GC podium results in 2023. She is gradually finding form again with 8th recently at GP Féminin de Chambéry. Ricarda Bauernfeind is another strong option that could do well in GC as well. The German won a stage at the Tour de France Femmes last year and that might be the goal again here. She closed out the Spring with a strong 9th at Liège-Bastogne-Liège Femmes. We’ve not seen much of Maike van der Duin this year as she has her eyes set firmly on the Olympics. She could kick-start her road season here after a DNF and 76th in the flatter classics.
It should be noted that illness seems to be affected Canyon SRAM in the run-in. Kasia Niewiadoma, Ricarda Bauernfeind and Justyna Czapla have all talked about illness in the last week.
Lidl-Trek is going all-in for the GC win in this year’s race. There’s no Elisa Balsamo and they look set to be able to drag around their stars in the opening TTT and maybe pick up some seconds on their rivals. Elisa Longo Borghini skipped La Vuelta Femenina last season but previously finished runner-up twice in 2022 and 2020. There’s a really strong chance for her to take on Demi Vollering with the Italian coming off probably her most impressive Spring campaign. Wins at Brabantse Pijl, the Tour of Flanders and Trofeo Oro in Euro came in a run that saw Longo Borghini only once failed to finish in the top 6 across all of the major Spring races. You sense Gaia Realini might be gearing up for the Giro d’Italia Women this season as her form feels a little bit off currently. With that in mind, she will always be a favourite on a major mountain stage and will look back on her stage win here last season which saw her finish 3rd in GC.
Another rider to have a surprisingly average record here is Mavi Garcia. Despite it being her home Tour (in country terms at least), Garcia’s best GC result is 9th in 4 editions. Some of that is down to the old one-day format of the race (in 2016) and largely the result is from the race’s desire to always have a TT or TTT. That leaves her too much to do to close up again. She’s had a solid Spring but will want to repeat the UAE Tour Women where she finished 3rd in GC. Teammate Ingvild Gaskjenn took a great result at the Amstel Gold Race, sneaking onto the podium in 3rd place. The Norwegian has promised plenty and hopefully now is starting to carve out a bigger role on Liv AlUla Jayco. There’s also Georgia Baker for a purer sprint and she finished 5th at the flat classic of Brugge-De Panne this year. She starts to struggle a bit if the terrain is more rolling but a flatter option like Stage 4 maybe will suit.
Surprisingly, we’ve not seen Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio at La Vuelta Femenina all that much over the years. The South African has just one participation from 2021 under her belt, where she finished 14th. The cold conditions got to her at Liège Bastogne Liège Femmes, which shouldn’t be a problem again here. She’s had an ok year so far with 2nd at Trofeo Palma Femina her best. 5th at Fleche Wallonne and 7th at Amstel Gold Race are her best Spring results.
Teammate Sarah Gigante went on an impressive solo break at Liège Bastogne Liège Femmes which hopefully shows she might have some good legs going into this race. Whilst the final result wasn’t there, it was still encouraging to see her take the race by the horns and bodes well.
We finally get to see the return of Liane Lippert! The German hasn’t raced at all in 2024 due to a stress fracture that she tried to ride on a little bit too early in the recovery process. At her best, she might be challenging for GC or stages but she will be a proper wildcard this year with no previous guide or knowledge of how close to full race fitness she is. That may mean we see Movistar in stage-hunting mode here, with Emma Norsgaard no doubt happy to get stuck in. She was 2nd on a stage here last year but the Tour de France Femmes stage win style will probably see her more likely to get some leeway. It’s a thin sprint field here too so she may have to get stuck in again there. Olivia Baril and Mareille Meijering have been totting up wins this year in good fashion. Baril has a pair of wins in Spain from January and March, with Meijering taking the stage and GC at the Vuelta Extremadura Feminas in mid-March.
Like Demi Vollering, another rider surprisingly without a win so far in 2024 is Charlotte Kool. She looked to be on par with Lorena Wiebes in 2023 but so far hasn’t been able to get the best of her former sprint leader. 2nds in Scheldeprijs and Brugge-De Panne are good but she will be wanting more. There will be opportunities here for Kool to get off the mark and add to the stage win she took in last year’s race. Juliette Labous is another like Garcia who you would think has done better here than she has. Labous finally cracked the GC top-10 in 2022 with 9th and slightly improved on that with 7th last season. The French rider finished the spring well with 8th at Fleche Wallonne and 8th at Liège Bastogne Liège Femmes. A top-5 in GC feels like it should be on the cards for Labous in this year’s La Vuelta Femenina.
Kim Cadzow was another rider who went very well at Liège Bastogne Liège Femmes, finishing 6th in the end. There have been races this Spring that I thought she could do well in that were misses like Brabantse Pijl but it all came good in the last major race before La Vuelta Femenina. She also had a dominant GC-winning display at Trofeo Ponente in Rosa, which whilst only a 2.2 will have added some confidence for the Kiwi. Kristen Faulkner also had fun at Trofeo Ponente in Rosa, taking a pair of stage wins there. They went with her amazing solo break to win at Omloop van het Hageland in February. I’m hoping we see another one of her raids here. It’s a first La Vuelta Femenina for Clara Koppenburg who is one of the purest climbers in the women’s peloton. She’s raced quite a bit this year but doesn’t really have a result of note to hang her hat on. The climbs up to Laguna Negra and Valdesqui will give her a chance but the TTT will probably have killed off any GC hopes. It’s a similar story really for Veronica Ewers this year. The American also doesn’t really have a particularly strong result compared to what we know she can do and is coming here to attack stages rather than GC. It’s assumed she’s setting up for other goals later in the season.
Marianne Vos will be hunting stage wins again here, in last year’s race she took a pair of stage wins and the points jersey for a successful haul. She’s been in stellar form in 2024, chalking up wins at Dwars Door Vlaanderen, Amstel Gold Race and Omloop het Nieuwsblad already this year. Riejanne Markus should be the team’s GC threat and has been solid without a truly big result. 7th at Strade Bianche is her best WWT result and she was just outside the top-10 in the Ardennes Classics. She will be a big help for the team to try and repeat its TTT victory from last year’s La Vuelta Femenina too. Anna Henderson got to wear the red jersey as a result of that TTT win last season and looks to have come back strong after her broken collarbone at Setmana Ciclista Valenciana. She was another just outside the top-10 in the Ardennes, impressive given they were her first races since February.
I’m thinking that Evita Muzic will be FDJ-Suez’s main GC threat here, even if Marta Cavalli is on the roster. The French rider has been climbing well, including 2nd at GP Féminin de Chambéry and 4th at Fleche Wallonne. She goes under the radar a little bit with bigger names on the team but Muzic was 6th in GC here last year with a strong climb up to Lagos de Covadonga on the final day. Marta Cavalli will be a very strong support rider who could also do well on GC herself. We see flashes of that 2022 form every now and again but it feels like she won’t touch those heights again. 9th at Fleche Wallonne is her best result of 2024 so far. Grace Brown will be in some supreme confidence at the moment after Liège Bastogne Liège Femmes last weekend. There are plenty of tough rolling stages here for her to try and match her 2022 La Vuelta Femenina stage win. If the team wants to try their hand in the sprints then Vittoria Guazzini can step up. She has some stage top-10s here in the past and was certainly strong in the flatters classics this season.
UAE Team ADQ aren’t bringing their strongest possible line-up but still can get in the hunt for stage wins. Karlijn Swinkels and Alena Ivanchenko are maybe their best shout for the team and they could do a fairly solid team time trial too. Swinkels can get in the mix in sprints, breaks of tough rolling terrain and if the wind picks up will no doubt be in a front group. Ivanchenko has the potential to do well on some of the climbs near the end of the week. Not punchy, she is able to measure long climbing efforts well. Erica Magnaldi should also get herself in the mix after strong non-WWT results of 3rd at GP Féminin de Chambéry and 6th at Trofeo Oro in Euro recently.
One of the standout riders of the early part of the Spring Classics was Thalita de Jong. The Lotto Dstny rider did everything but take a win after 2nd place at both GP Oetingen and a Tour de Normandie stage behind Sandra Alonso. Her results have played a role in helping get her team an invite to the Tour de France Femmes for the first time this season. Plenty of WWT top-10s and finishes contested that she’s been absent from over the last couple of years are encouraging for her to do something at this race too.
Yara Kastelijn has the potential to either go for stages or go for the lower end of the top-10 in GC here. The team time trial will probably see the Fenix-Deceuninck lose time compared to the podium rivals but should set them up to go for stages without being as big a threat. Kastelijn we’ve seen already at the Tour de France Femmes last year can be a long-range threat in the right move. Teammate Pauliena Rooijakkers had a big ride at Fleche Wallonne this year, finishing 6th despite spending an hour in a two-rider breakaway. Between her and Petra Stiasny, the team has a pair of strong pure climbers who can contest some of the longer uphill finishes. The issue for both will be making sure they don’t start climbs at the back of the peloton.
Roland’s Maggie Coles-Lyster has a few results of note this year, including 5th at Ronde de Mouscron at the start of the month, 5th at the UAE Tour Women and 10th at Gent Wevelgem. Again, it’s a thin sprint field here, so there will be opportunities for the Canadian to maybe sneak onto the podium with a fast finish. Teammate Anna Kiesenhofer has had a bit of a tough go of it recently form-wise, not helped by a crash whilst racing in El Salvador. She’s infamous for a long-distance raid including a notable one here in 2022 which only saw the Austrian caught in the final kilometres.
Human Powered Health will probably be hunting stages rather than a GC tilt but the way Lily Williams has been sprinting after tough one-day races this year has been encouraging. 5th on the final day at Setmana Ciclista Valenciana gave her the confidence to push for more chances and delivered with 3rd at Nokere Koerse. Since then she’s also been 7th at Omloop van Borsele. Henrietta Christie has a chance to do well in the earlier rolling stages and has some solid results already this year. 7th at Clasica de Almeria has been backed up with a steady tilt in the Spring of regular 20th-ish finishes from the young Kiwi. Silvia Zanardi should also be good at those stages based on her wins in 2023 but so far hasn’t shown that form in 2024, probably down to a focus on the Olympics later in the year. Yulia Biriukova is another option too with the Ukrainian a good one-day racer with 2nd place at Clasica de Almeria to her name this season.
La Vuelta Femenina by Carrefour.es 2024 Outsiders
Eneicat’s Adèle Normand took an impressive 6th at the Women Cycling Pro Costa de Almeria earlier this season and definitely enjoys the racing when the road starts to head upwards. She’s been otherwise solid but not spectacular this year but the potential for a big result is there. Teammate Valentina Basilico absolutely filled her boots in Central America a month ago. She won the GC and a stage at the Vuelta Femenina a Guatemala, a stage at the Vuelta a El Salvador and the Grand Prix el Salvador one-day race too. Somewhat impressively for an Italian, all 6 of her UCI wins so far have come outside of Europe. Her best European result of the year has been 17th at Trofeo Felantix-Colonia de Sant Jordi, showing she can mix it in the Euro peloton as well.
Karolina Perekitko is having a season for Winspace and would surely be snapped up by a Women’s WorldTour team for 2025 except that she’s already signed an extension to stay where she is. Her best result was 3rd at Women Cycling Pro Costa de Almeria but the Pole has been a threat at almost every race with some climbing in it in 2024. A pair of top-10s in April in France should set up nicely for La Vuelta Femenina. Her teammate Xin Tang is just starting to find her feet in the European peloton. Whilst she hasn’t matched the WWT top-10s from the Chinese races at the end of 2023 yet, her results are steadily improving. Against a relatively thin sprint field here she might get her best result of the season.
Nadia Quagliotto had a very strong start to the 2024 season, securing top results of 3rd at Trofeo Binissalem-Andratx and the final stage of the Setmana Ciclista Valenciana, 4th at Women Cycling Pro Costa de Almeria and 6th at Vuelta CV Feminas. It marked a particularly strong couple of weeks that unfortunately hasn’t been replicated since. Hopefully racing back in Spain will get her back up the result sheet again. Teammate Laura Tomasi will also be a threat in sprint finishes and similar to Quagliotto started the year well in the Spanish races with 5th at Clasica de Almeria and 8th at Trofeo Felanitx-Colònia de Sant Jordi. She can notch up top-10s on the flatter stages.
Sigrid Ytterhus Haugset is a bit of a Spanish race specialist, something that’s not always the case for a Norwegian rider. 4th in GC at Vuelta Extremadura Feminas this year was thanks to being in the lead group on the queen stage which featured the likes of Perekitko who is also in this section! She will either challenge from the break or maybe sneak into a front group on an echelon day. Stina Kagevi is another Coop-Repsol rider who won’t shy away from getting into the breakaway either. She’s a strong engine and even though it’s her first year in the Elites has already caught the attention of fans and teams. She was also 8th in GC at the Vuelta Extremaduras Feminas, finishing a bit further behind on the queen stage but pulling back time with 3rd in the final day TT.
Top 3 Prediction
- Elisa Longo Borghini
- Demi Vollering
- Kasia Niewiadoma
