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Million Euro contracts, expansive budgets and trickle-down economics - the Tour de France Femmes effect

TOPSHOT - Team SD Worx's Dutch rider Demi Vollering wearing the overall leader's yellow jersey reacts before taking the start of the eighth and final stage (out of 8) of the second edition of the Women's Tour de France cycling race a 22,6 km individual time trial between Pau and Pau, south-western France, on July 30, 2023. Dutch rider Demi Vollering won the women's Tour de France on July 30, 2023. (Photo by JEFF PACHOUD / AFP) (Photo by JEFF PACHOUD/AFP via Getty Images)
(Image credit: Getty Images)

In the last few years, women’s cycling has been through waves of dramatic and wide-reaching change. Go back to 2019, and you’ll find a situation that was very different to today: no real Tour de France for women, no Paris-Roubaix, no WorldTour team status, no minimum wage for women, and no huge contracts. Fast forward to today, and the women’s peloton has all those things and more, with the trajectory only heading upwards.

Part of this is down to global trends in women’s sports - viewership is growing exponentially, commercial value is up across the board - but much of it is down to some specific changes in women’s cycling. In 2022, Tour de France organisers ASO put on the first Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, the first multi-day Tour de France race for women in decades, and the change stemming from just this one race has been impossible to ignore. 

Assistant Features Editor

Matilda is an NCTJ-qualified journalist based in the UK who joined Cyclingnews in March 2025. Prior to that, she worked as the Racing News Editor at GCN, and extensively as a freelancer contributing to Cyclingnews, Cycling Weekly, Velo, Rouleur, Escape Collective, Red Bull and more. She has reported from many of the biggest events on the calendar, including the Giro d'Italia, Tour de France Femmes, Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix. She has particular experience and expertise in women's cycling, and women's sport in general. She is a graduate of modern languages and sports journalism.