The debutants to watch at the 2024 Tour de France Femmes

The Tour de France Femmes arrives for a third edition in 2024 and provides opportunities on eight stages in seven days for any of the 154 riders in the 22-team peloton to earn personal glory, achieve team goals and etch their achievements in the history books yet again. Sprinters begin the proceedings for the first yellow jersey with a flat trio of openers in The Netherlands. Then the hills hit on stage 4 in Belgium and the climbers march into France for the final showdown on Alpe d’Huez.

Along with the new territory for the Tour are new riders, more than 50 of them making first-time appearances at the Grand Tour. Among them are several riders fresh from the Paris Olympic Games, including multi-discipline medallist Chloé Dygert (Canyon-SRAM), Blanka Vas (SD Worx-Protime), who was fourth in the women’s road race, and Puck Pieterse (Fenix-Deceuninck), who was fourth in the women’s cross-country MTB event. 

Age makes no difference when it comes to making first impressions. One of the most veteran riders on the start list this year is 31-year-old Ruth Edwards (Human Powered Health), who retired in 2021 and now in her return to racing gets a chance to compete in the Tour.

There are 20 riders under the age of 23, and two of them are cyclocross stars - Pieterse and Fem van Empel (Visma-Lease a Bike) - the current World Champion in the discipline. Neither have a lot of stage racing experience, so to step into the spotlight on the world’s biggest theatre for road should add a significant storyline.

Here is a list of some of the standout debutants at this year’s Tour de France Femmes, just a few riders who could easily make an impact on individual stages and with team tactics for classification battles. 

Chloé Dygert and Neve Bradbury (Canyon-SRAM)

Canyon-SRAM’s Kasia Niewiadoma delivered a third place in the GC and the mountain classification title last year, as the German Women’s WorldTour squad chased a dominant Team SD Worx the entire race. This year Niewiadoma will have the dynamic duo of Neve Bradbury and Olympic medallist Chloé Dygert on debut to amp up the charge for GC and stage wins.

Bradbury, third on GC at the Giro d'Italia this year, took victory up the demanding Blockhaus mountain stage to announce herself as a top-tier climber and contendor. Looming for the finale of this year’s Tour is the iconic Alpe d’Huez climb, which has been present in 32 Tours de France. This is the first time in years that the pro women’s peloton has finished atop the 21 switchbacks.

“I'm looking forward to stage eight, which finishes up Alpe D'Huez. It's similar to the stage I won at the Giro,” Bradbury noted.

Dygert is fresh off two podium appearances for Team USA at the Paris Olympic Games, where she earned a bronze in the individual time trial on the road and a gold in the Team Pursuit on the track. And she may have contested for a medal in the road race had it not been for a crash that held her back in 15th. She had a solid year in Grand Tours last year with three podiums at La Vuelta Femenina and two podiums at the Giro d’Italia Donne, but it's Tour de France Femmes success that she now looks to.

Gaia Realini (Lidl-Trek)

In her debut with Lidl-Trek last year at age 22, the young Italian made the UAE Tour and Giro d’Italia Donne her statement stage races, taking second in the former behind teammate Elisa Longo Borghini and finishing third on GC and the mountains classification in the latter.

Fourth on the Jebel Hafeet finish at UAE Tour Women and netting fourth overall to start 2024, Realini continued to shine with podiums on mountain stages at Setmana Valenciana, Vuelta Extremadura Féminas and then the Tour de Suisse Women. On the opening day of the Swiss stage race, she climbed to second behind Demi Vollering (SD Worx-Protime) and carried that momentum to a GC top 10 and second place in the mountains classification.

At another Giro, she was seventh overall as Longo Borghini took the win, with the young climber finishing in the top 10 on the Blockhaus climb on stage 7. She’ll look to soar again on the climbs at this year’s Tour de France Femmes, especially on the back half of the weeklong race with an uphill finish to Amnéville on stage 5, a quintet of categorised climbs on stage 6 and the back-to-back mountaintop finishes at Le Grand-Bornand and Alpe d’Huez.

Blank Vas and Niamh Fisher-Black (SD Worx-Protime)

Two rising stars in the Women’s WorldTour get opportunities to ride the Tour de France Femmes for the first time, Niamh Fisher-Black and Blanka Vas, named to the top-ranked SD Worx-Protime squad to help leader Demi Vollering defend her title. Both will also help the Dutch squad make a statement on the opening three stages, scheduled across two days on home soil including the Grand Départ in Rotterdam.

Fisher-Black, who turns 24 on August 12, will showcase her climbing abilities at the Tour, as the abundance of hilly terrain is where she thrives. At this year’s Giro d’Italia Women, she won the uphill battle to Toano on stage 3, which vaulted her into the GC top 5. With a seventh place on Blockhaus, she would finish for a fourth year in the top 10 of the GC. 

Her first opportunity to do something special at the Tour will be stage 4 with a finish that replicates the finale from this year’s Liège-Bastogne-Liege, where Fisher-Black was 10th.

"Niamh Fisher-Black is there to support Demi Vollering. The climbing work is her territory and it will be her job to assist Demi Vollering as much as possible in the last two to three tricky stages. She has made strides and tanked confidence with a WorldTour-level win at the Giro d'Italia," said Sports Manager Danny Stam when the roster was announced in August.

Both riders made debuts at the Olympic Games, with Vas finishing fourth for Hungary in the sprint for medals in the road race. She has strength across varied terrain, which she demonstrated with a stage win on an uphill finish at last year’s Giro d’Italia Donne and added a runner-up result on a rolling stage at this year’s Vuelta España. 

"Blanka Vas is a super versatile rider, ideal for the diverse course of this Tour de France Femmes. She can go long uphill, she can also stand her ground in the sprints. And if she slips into a breakaway, she can be dangerous," Stam noted.

Puck Pieterse (Fenix-Deceuninck)

The multi-discipline Dutch star put much of her focus for 2024 on the flat bars after earning a bronze medal in the elite women’s category at the Cyclocross World Championships. The 22-year-old competed in eight one-day road races in the spring, then moved to the UCI World Cup mountain bike series, passing the under-23 division to the elites to qualify for her first Olympic Games. She scored three World Cup podiums and went on to finish one spot off the podium in Paris in the cross-country MTB event. 

Pieterse looks to make her statement in her first Tour, which is also the first stage race in her road career. In her eight road starts for Fenix-Deceuninck this spring, she came away with seven top 10s, including podiums at Trofeo Alfredo Binda and Ronde van Drenthe. Last year her compatriot and teammate Yara Kastelijn won the Tour de France Femmes stage 4 from a solo breakaway into Rodez for her first pro road win, so Pieterse will look to follow suit for an aggressive Feni-Deceuninck outfit.

Fem van Empel (Visma-Lease a Bike)

The Visma-Lease a Bike squad will be led by Marianne Vos and Riejanne Markus, with the former being fresh off a silver medal in the road race at the Paris Olympic Games. Part of a strong squad supporting Vos’s efforts to wear the yellow jersey in her home Netherlands, as she did for six days in 2022, will be Fem van Empel. The 21-year-old is the reigning elite women’s cyclocross World Champion and will be one to watch in the mid-week hilly stages.

In her first road season with Visma last year, Van Empel finished 11th at the Giro d’Italia Donne. At this year’s Giro, she crashed on stage 5 and could not continue. With time away from racing and a fresh reboot, she is one of the young wildcards to watch.

She's got more experience than CX rival and friend Pieterse, having also starred in the inaugural women's Tour de l'Avenir last summer, where she took a stage win, the green jersey and helped Shirin van Anrooij to overall victory for the Netherlands.

Ruth Edwards (Human Powered Health)

US rider Ruth Edwards will be a rider to watch as she will look to replicate the climbing success she achieved at this year’s Giro d’Italia Women. Edwards climbed to a pair of stage runner-up spots in the mountains, stage 6 to Chieti on the longest day of the Giro, 159km, and two days later on the hilly ride to L’Aquila. The team calls her ability to get into breakaways “a testament to her race IQ”. 

Just before taking on her fifth Giro, Edwards won the overall at the Lotto Thüringen Ladies Tour. She seems to adjust to just about any terrain and can maintain her ambition and fitness for the long haul. Endurance is one of her strengths, which she demonstrated with a number of gravel race victories when she was away from road racing for two years. Retirement did not mean relaxation for Edwards, just recharge.

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