70YEARS IN THE MAKING

The first women's Tour de France ran in 1955and then vanished. Stephanie Boland charts the long, winding road to its modern revival

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Forty years on, Clare Greenwood is ready to share the real reason she attacked on the Champs Élysées.

"I'd had a bidon that had lasted me the whole three weeks," she says. "I decided: Right, I'm going to act like one of the guys - I'm going to finish my drink, then toss it to the crowd." On one of the most iconic roads in cycling, with 'Great Britain' emblazoned over her heart, Greenwood did just that. But the move backfired.

"It hit a lamppost and ricocheted back into the peloton at the height of everybody's head." She heard a shouted complaint from behind and thought, "Oh hell, I'm in trouble now." Her only means of escape, she figured, was to attack. "Needless to say, it only lasted a few seconds." The race was the 1984 Tour de France Féminin, the first women's Tour held alongside the men's. Only five editions took place, followed by a decades-long haitus. The women rode truncated stages ahead of the men before being bundled into cars by gendarmerie to clear the finish area. They were the first women to join what Greenwood calls "the Champs Élysées elite": the few women who have ridden the Tour de France.

Another member is Liz Hepple, an Australian Olympian and former professional road cyclist. Before she arrived in France for the 1986 Féminin, she had never descended a switchback, yet she came fifth in the GC. In 1988, having honed her descending to match her climbing power, she came third the first Australian to podium at the Tour de France. "I remember the craziness of the spectators," Hepple says.

"You couldn't hear anything because the screaming and shouting were so loud." Greenwood, meanwhile, relied on fans for information: they would run alongside calling out where her rivals were.