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The route of the fifth edition of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, revealed at the Palais des Congrès de Paris, shapes up as the next chapter in a greatest hits tour of the mountains of France. After tackling the Super Planche des Belles Filles, the Col du Tourmalet, the Alpe d’Huez and the Col de la Madeleine, the peloton will now get to grips with Mont Ventoux, where the battle for the Yellow Jersey could well be decided.
Between 1 and 9 August, the champions will go head to head over a total of 1,175 km (the longest route since the event rose from its ashes), with a Grand Départ in Switzerland in which the puncheuses and sprinters will have their day, followed by the power riders in a time trial finishing in Dijon and the elite climbers on the Ventoux. To wrap up the odyssey and potentially shake up the hierarchy, there will be two stages with the finish line drawn up in Nice, on the Promenade des Anglais.
On 6 August, the cyclosportive riders in the second edition of L’Étape du Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift will test their legs on a tweaked version of stage 6, which will feature the daunting ascent of the Ventoux from the village of Bédoin at the tail end of the race.
Almost all the pieces have fallen into place. Now that the route of the next edition is no longer under wraps, an overlay of the five maps of the current avatar of the women’s Tour reveals a giant imaginary route spanning 67 stage towns, cities and other locations, visiting the vast majority of regions in metropolitan France, as well as three foreign countries and, crucially, some of the hallowed sites of cycling, where the champions have served up little gems of sporting feats, with more to come.
Annemiek van Vleuten’s masterclass on the Super Planche des Belles Filles (2022), her archrival Demi Vollering’s riposte the following year on the Col du Tourmalet (2023), the breathless duel between the defending champion and Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney on the Alpe d’Huez (2024), and Pauline Ferrand-Prévot’s decisive show of strength on the climb up the Col de la Madeleine (2025) surely call for the continuation of a great battle in the high mountains that fans can already picture unfolding on the slopes of the Mont Ventoux next August.
Before tackling the Giant of Provence, the riders of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift will converge on Switzerland for a series of stages that reflect the desire to mix up the challenges: the most explosive puncheuses will have their say in stage 1 in Lausanne before leaving the limelight to the sprinters in stage 2 from Aigle to Geneva. The time triallists will get their turn in stage 4, a 21 km race against the clock in Burgundy, which will also sort out the genuine contenders for the title. The peloton will catch a breather the following day in stage 5, a romp in the hills of Beaujolais, but the moment of truth will come in stage 6, held on 7 August, when the field passes through Bédoin on its way to the 15.7 km climb leading to the weather station on Mont Ventoux. However, the Bald Mountain may not have the final word, with the Yellow Jersey still liable to change shoulders in the two finishes in Nice (stages 8 and 9), particularly on the last day, which will feature four ascents of the Col d’Èze before the finish on the Promenade des Anglais.
