It has been virtually a month because the route for the boys’s Vuelta a España was unveiled by organisers Unipublic, although no info is but forthcoming in regards to the girls’s version of the race, identified this yr as La Vuelta Femenina, regardless of it operating in early Might, virtually 4 months earlier than the boys’s occasion in late August.
Equally, RCS introduced the route for the boys’s Giro d’Italia final October, however the Giro d’Italia Donne – individually organised by PMG Sport and Starlight – have but to announce something in any respect. In 2022, the race route was solely introduced in mid-March, solely three months forward of the race.
In contrast, the route of the Tour de France Femmes was introduced alongside the boys’s Tour de France in October.
At a current on-line press convention organised by French Girls’s WorldTour squad FDJ-Suez, staff supervisor Stephen Delcourt went out of his approach to handle this discrepancy and demand higher from the organisers.
“There’s one factor I am not glad about in girls’s biking,” he stated. “We speak loads about professionalisation and visibility. However we goal three Grand Excursions, and there is just one Grand Tour that respects the ladies [the Tour de France Femmes – Ed.].
“At this date, we’ve no stage particulars of the Giro and the Vuelta. The Vuelta is the primary week of Might, and we do not know something, we solely have rumours in regards to the phases. If we need to spend money on girls’s biking, the organisers must respect this half.”
The present state of affairs could also be unsatisfactory, however Delcourt additionally understands that ladies’s biking is in a course of, drawing a parallel to the size of ladies’s stage races the place the limiting issue at the moment is not the power of the riders, however the staff help behind.
“Over the past UCI assembly, we pushed for this [timely race information – Ed.] loads. I do know that the UCI is attempting, however I additionally know that not all organisers – or groups – enhance on the similar pace.
“The query, ‘are you prepared for 2 or three weeks on the Tour de France’, the ladies are prepared bodily, however not the groups. We have to advance step-by-step.”
Marta Cavalli, who final yr received Amstel Gold Race and La Flèche Wallonne, additionally taking second on the Giro Donne, added the riders’ perspective.
Whereas long-term coaching plans would not change a lot, realizing race particulars would imply that coaching may very well be tailor-made to particular phases or climbs as has lengthy been the case in males’s biking. On the high stage, particulars like this will make all of the distinction.
“We all know that Grand Excursions are all the time exhausting, however we may focus extra on the race preparation within the final months earlier than the race if we all know the course,” Cavalli stated.
“We hope that the small print will arrive quickly, however on the similar time, we’re assured that the race will likely be exhausting, so we practice exhausting.”
Like her staff supervisor, Cavalli acknowledged that ladies’s biking has improved loads in the previous couple of years and was optimistic that this trajectory will proceed.
“It could be good to in a position to plan a recon camp or practice on an identical parcours, however on the similar time, we’re in a course of. We want to have every thing good as quickly as doable, however we additionally must cease and suppose.
“About two years in the past it was actually removed from the place it’s now. We’ve got to offer everybody sufficient time to develop, and we all know that not everyone is creating on the similar pace. In two years, I feel, every thing will likely be as we hope,” Cavalli concluded on a optimistic word.
