It's been a remarkable season for Elisa Longo Borghini with victory at Paris-Roubaix Femmes, Women's Tour and fourth overall at the Giro Donne. The Italian will now bring her rising summer-stage racing form into the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift as the leader of her Trek-Segafredo team.
"It's just a bike race," Longo Borghini told Cyclingnews in an interview earlier this summer, noting the excitement and fanfare ahead of the Tour de France Femmes, a new addition to the Women's WorldTour this year.
"It's nice, I love there's a women's Tour de France. It seems like we are going to the moon. We are going to France and racing, not any different to what we do anywhere else in the world."
While France isn't quite as far as the moon, the expectations and pressure for the eight-day race held between July 24-31 are great. The women's peloton will pursue the coveted yellow jersey for the first time in more than three decades, when the race was last held in the 1980s.
Trek-Segafredo will field a strong team to support Longo Borghini that includes Time Trial World Champion Ellen van Dijk, French Road Champion Audrey Cordon-Ragot, US Time Trial Champion Leah Thomas, Dutch U23 Time Trial Champion and U23 European Time Trial and Road Champion Shirin van Anrooij.
World Champion Elisa Balsamo will also be competing, in support of Longo Borghini's bid for the yellow jersey while also focusing on the early sprint stages.
The eight-day race is set to start at the Eiffel Tower and end atop La Planche des Belles Filles, with many of the flat and puncheur stages in the first half of the event.
“The first part of the route is better for me and the other sprinters, and the last part is better for the climbers and the general classification. I will be more focused on the first part,” Balsamo said in an interview with Cyclingnews earlier this year.
“I really think that Elisa Longo Borghini can fight for the general classification, and yes, of course, I will help her in the hardest stage. I think that she is very strong and of course she can fight for the yellow jersey.”
Cyclingnews will have live coverage of all eight stages of the Tour de France Femmes along with race reports, galleries, results, and exclusive features and news.
