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The size and the significance of the inaugural Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift is plain and ‘you’re not going to idiot anyone’ in any other case, says Rachel Hedderman.
Talking in Paris on the morning of the race, the EF Training-TIBCO-SVB director-turned-manager underlined that it might be onerous to persuade her riders that this was simply one other race within the face of the massive fanfare in Paris.
“You’re not going to idiot anyone that that is simply the identical as, , Joe Martin Stage Race,” she mentioned. “You possibly can say what you wish to attempt to remind riders, however they nonetheless see all of this. Yesterday the entire rider briefing and the images and every part, it’s completely different to every other races.”
In addition to the size of the race as an entire, it’s clear every crew is bringing extra folks and extra sources to what has already grow to be a centre level of the ladies’s calendar.
“For us, one of many greatest issues is that I’m used to being at a race with a mechanic, two swannies and me and that’s it,” Hederman mentioned. “And right here, we’ve 10 or extra employees and loads of sponsors with us. Even simply the crew, the entire arrange, as an alternative of it being the traditional 10 folks, I feel we’ve 30 folks right here.
“Proper from the beginning, it’s a very completely different scale from what we’re used to.”
A part of that is because of the truth that groups now have extra entry to such sources, as a result of a rise in sponsorship that has emerged for the reason that announcement of the Tour de France Femmes.
“No sponsor is particularly saying ‘as a result of there’s a girls’s Tour, we’ll now sponsor a girls’s crew’,” Hederman mentioned. “It’s simply that the profile of ladies’s biking is rising that a lot, and the Tour is a sign of that. It’s a step up in worldwide visibility of ladies’s biking and that’s what will get the sponsors concerned.”
While lots has been made in regards to the Tour de France and the perceived progress of ladies’s biking, Hederman considers that the industrial progress of the game doesn’t essentially imply a change within the racing or stage.
“After we have been racing, we raced simply as aggressively because the raiders do now in order that’s not completely different,” she mentioned. “The precise dynamics of the race itself are much like what they have been earlier than, it’s simply that now, extra folks can see it. That’s been the most important change, the visibility, not the race itself.”
Nonetheless, there are some limitations to the size of the race which might be already rising. Many riders spoke excitedly earlier than the race about being on the rostrum in Paris, however the girls’s race is not going to characteristic on the primary, iconic stage 21 podium. The post-stage displays have been made on an extra stage, and there might be no handover of the yellow jersey on Sunday night.
Moreover, a lot of the infrastructure across the race was nonetheless being arrange even throughout the final hour of the ladies’s race, and the VIP stands that line the Champs-Élysées weren’t welcoming visitors within the early afternoon, schedules seemingly nonetheless aligned to the lads’s race.
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