Nancy Baranet – Tackling the Tour de France predecessor that redefined women’s racing in 1956

Nancy Baranet 1954 women's national champ between Jack Disney, left, and Robert Zumwalt Jr (Credit Nancy Baranet)
Nancy Baranet 1954 women's national champ between Jack Disney, left, and Robert Zumwalt Jr (Credit Nancy Baranet) (Image credit: Courtesy of Nancy Baranet)

From March 6-12 - conveniently coinciding with International Women's Day on March 8 - Cyclingnews is excited to welcome our readers to Women's Week, in which we'll be running a series of exclusive interviews, features, blogs, tech, advice and more. 

The upcoming second edition of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, featuring eight consecutive days of road racing in France, follows the format created in 1956 when intrepid European women and an American national champion were expanding traditional boundaries. The event showed women were capable of competing in stage races. That strengthened a campaign that culminated with the Union Cycliste Internationale introducing the women’s road race in the 1958 UCI World Championship program in Reims, France, paired with track championships in Paris.

Peter Joffre Nye is author of the updated second edition of Hearts of Lions: The History of American Bicycle Racing (University of Nebraska Press).