Most rumors about next year’s 2023 Tour de France have been focused on the men’s route, not the women’s route. While this is understandable, due to the fact that the men’s TdF is a much larger event with a past extending back 100+ years, the women’s TdF route may be of greater interest and importance.
First off, the men’s route only has so many surprises it can offer up. It’s a three week event and it will have everything – time trials, mountains, rolling stages, flat stages – along with the usual challenges from the weather, the wind, sun, rain. As always, it’s going to be long and hard no matter what kind of route it follows.
On the other hand, the type of route of the Tour de France Femmes follows can play an enormous role in the outcome. Unlike the men’s race which is almost always 21 stages, the 2023 edition of the Tour de France Femmes will consist of 8 stages only with no rest days. As a result of being shorter by almost two weeks, each stage of the women’s tour will play a much larger role in the final GC than each stage of the men’s tour.
An eight stage tour is more like riding eight spring Classics back-to-back. The men’s TdF has it’s days – still – when the peloton takes it easy for the first few hours and allows a break of lowly placed GC riders get up the road. The shorter women’s race will not have the same luxury and it will be full gas every day.
As far as team tactics are concerned, with only six riders allowed per team in the women’s tour there will be a greater focus on the abilities of the individual GC leaders. While the GC of the men’s race often depends on how well a team is able to help their leader, especially in the final week, the women’s GC will be determined by how well an individual rider can cope with each particular stage on her own. As many women’s teams discovered in 2022, the GC was not decided so much by team tactics, but by the strengths and weaknesses of individual riders against the stage profiles.
While there are a few rumors about the route of the 2023 Tour de France Femmes, there’s really only one of significance from the French journalist Nicolas Georgereau of RTL France, who claims that the Col du Tourmalet will feature in the 2023 women’s race. If this is true, we will see the women tackle an HC climb of 2000+ meters that could make or break the GC contenders. And unlike the men’s tour, where a rider can have a bad day or two and recover, the women’s tour could be easily won or lost on the Tourmalet.
Whatever the case may be, we’ll find out for sure at the unveiling of the 2023 Tour de France routes on Oct. 27 in Paris, 11:30am CET.
