The Other Tour

Thirteen women rode the Tour route to campaign for a women’s race. How realistic is their goal?

- Vern Pitt

Twenty-four hours before Geraint Thomas pulled on the yellow jersey and set off on a stage across three Alpine climbs before his thrilling victory on Alpe d’Huez, Anna Barrero was enjoying one of the toughest days she’s had on the bike over those same mountains.

“The hardest stage I would say is the one finishing in Alpe d’Huez and the stage with the Tourmalet. But if you ask the riders you’d get a different answer; some days you have a good legs others not so much,” she says. Barrero is one of 13 women, Donnons des elles au Vélo J-1, who have been riding the route of the 2018 Tour de France as a campaign to try and get Tour organiser ASO to revive a full women’s edition.

The Tour used to have a women’s race between 1984 and 1989 and the Grande Boucle Féminine Internationale (run by a separate organisation) ran between 1992 and 2009.

“The message that we want to spread is that women are capable of riding the Tour. We want to ask for the same conditions, exactly the same as the men have right now,” says Berrero. And spread it they have. The group was joined by Paralympic gold medal winner Dame Sarah Storey for some of the early stages, and has gained write-ups in national newspapers and captured imaginations on social media. She adds: “On the Tourmalet stage when we finished the 205km and 5,000m of ascent we arrived at night and there were 200 people waiting for us. We were crying at seeing lots of women out. It’s difficult to describe the sensation.”