The women's road race will conclude the road cycling events at the 2024 Olympic Games on Sunday, August 4 in Paris before attention shifts toward track racing at the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines National Velodrome from August 5-11.
The final road cycling event will start and finish in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower on the Pont d'Iéna that crosses the Seine between the Trocadéro Gardens and the Champ de Mars.
The race will cover 158km, with 1,700 metres of climbing and nine named ascents, and then finish on three challenging circuits in central Paris that visit the iconic Montmartre area of the city.
The riders to watch for these Olympic Games are also those well-suited to the Spring Classics, such as the Tour of Flanders and Liege-Bastogne-Liege.
Cyclingnews highlights the main contenders for the women's road race at the Olympic Games.
Get unlimited access to all of our coverage of the 2024 Olympic Games - including breaking news and analysis reported by our journalists on the ground from every event across road, mountain bike, track and BMX racing as it happens and more. Find out more.
Lotte Kopecky arrived in Paris aiming to win three medals in her targeted events: individual time trial, road race, and Omnium on the track.
Her performance in the time trial, which opened the Games last Saturday, suffered due to a mid-race crash on the rain-soaked and slippery parcours. She ended up finishing sixth place, 1:56 behind Australia's gold medal winner Grace Brown.
She now has two more chances at the medals, with the next opportunity in the road race on Sunday. Hopefully, she has recovered from the time trial accident and will be able to perform at her best in a road race that is well-suited to her strength and ability as an all-rounder.
Kopecky is the reigning World Champion in this event, having secured her title at the Glasgow Worlds last summer, along with world titles in the Elimination Race and Points Race, and bronze in the Omnium.
Her winning performances at Strade Bianche, Paris-Roubaix, and second overall at the Giro d'Italia Women indicate that she is at her best form for these Olympic Games. And as a two-time Tour of Flanders champion, watch for Kopecky to set the tone for the women's road race in Paris.
If Kopecky is the out-right favourite to win the gold medal in the women's road race in Paris, then Lorena Wiebes is her biggest rival.
The pair are normally SD Worx-Protime teammates in the WorldTour. The tough-to-beat duo has claimed many 1-2 victories throughout the last two seasons, meaning they know each other's strengths and weaknesses very well.
In Paris, they will be racing against one another and it will be interesting to see how they compete among their respective national teams.
While Kopecky often plays more of a wildcard in her road races, Wiebes is typically in tune with a powerful lead-out that helps position her for sprint wins. She comes into this event fresh off of five stage wins and the overall title victory at the Baloise Ladies Tour and she said she would spend time fine-tuning her form at home before heading to Paris.
Wiebes will spearhead a Dutch team which also includes Tour de France winner Demi Vollering, who could also win a medal in Paris, former multi-time world champion and Olympic champion Marianne Vos, and three-time time trial world champion Ellen van Dijk.
National coach Loes Gunnewijk confirmed the decision to appoint Wiebes as the team leader, and while she is well-known as one of the peloton's fastest sprinters, she is also capable of climbing with the best and playing tactics in a decisive breakaway.
If the race comes down to a reduced group sprint, and the Dutch team are all present at the front, Wiebes will have the best lead-out in the field, and a clear chance at the gold medal.
Despite crashing on the same leg that she injured in a horrific crash at the Imola Worlds in 2020, Dygert said she will continue on in these Games and try her best in the road race on Sunday before turning her attention to the track where she will compete in the Team Pursuit.
No stranger to the Olympic Games, Dygert has won silver and bronze medals in the Team Pursuit in 2016 Rio and 2021 Tokyo, respectively.
In the road race, Dygert is considered a dark horse, lining up alongside her teammate and national champion Kristen Faulkner, also a potential medal contender.
However, Dygert has shown that when she is healthy and not injured, she is a major contender in one-day road races. She finished fourth in the elite women's road race at the Yorkshire World Championships in 2019, where she also won her first elite time trial world title. Dygert has also been on the podium in stages at the Vuelta España Femenina, Giro d'Italia Women, RideLondon, and was sixth this year at Classic Brugge-De Panne.
While her condition following the time trial is still somewhat unknown, her ability to rise to the top at key moments makes it hard to strike her off the list of contenders for a medal in the women's road race.
Elisa Longo Borghini came into this block of the season aiming for top performances at the Giro d'Italia Women, Olympic Games and Tour de France Femmes. She has already gone above and beyond even her own expectations, winning her first overall title at the Italian Grand Tour in July.
At the Olympic Games, Longo Borghini finished eighth in the individual time trial. While there was no medal, it would have offered her a warm-up ahead of Sunday's road race.
Always bringing a tactical and aggressive style of racing to the one-day events, Longo Borghini will likely play a pivotal role in the outcome of the event; whether it comes down to a reduced group or a breakaway, we can expect to see Longo Borghini fighting for the victory all the way to the finish line.
A winner of Paris-Roubaix, Tour of Flanders (twice), Trofeo Alfredo Binda (twice) and Strade Bianche, and this year she was also third at Flèche Wallonne and second at Liège-Bastogne-Liège, Longo Borghini excels on both technical and punchy terrain, and the Paris course might play into her advantage.
The Italian team is also packed with strength, including former world champion Elisa Balsamo, Silvia Persico, and Elena Cecchini. The Italians are known for their cohesive racing – think Leuven Worlds, where Balsamo won the rainbow jersey after a stellar team performance – which could again be what sets them apart from the other teams at the Games.
Brown will be a contender, too, for a medal in the road race, especially as this course appears to play into the hands of those who suit the Spring Classic and the Ardennes Classics.
She plans to retire at the end of this season and, in the process, is punctuating a sparkling career in professional cycling with the best results of her career.
The Australian team also has another contender in Ruby Roseman-Gannon. as while Brown often grasps her best results by playing an attacking hand Roseman-Gannon provides an option for a reduced bunch sprint. She does not define herself as one of the world's best sprinters but says she has the ability to position herself in the right place near the end of a race for the best possible result.
She is the reigning Australian road champion and recently secured her first victory on the WorldTour at Tour of Britain, outsprinting SD Worx teammates Christine Majerus, Lorena Wiebes and world champion Lotte Kopecky on the final day.
She has recovered from an injury in the Spring Classics and looks ready to compete for wins at the Olympic Games and the Tour de France Femmes.
Labous is the French Champion and the nation's top rider in the world ranking and was the sole rider representing France in the women's road events at the Tokyo Olympics Games. This season she has finished in the top 10 at Flèche Wallonne and Liège-Bastogne-Liège, fourth overall at La Vuelta Femenina, third overall at Itzulia Women, and fifth overall at both Tour de Suisse and Giro d'Italia Women.
She opened the Olympic Games with a fourth-place finish in the individual time trial, just outside the medals, showing that she is in great form for this block of the season and is likely to only get stronger as she approaches the Tour de France Femmes.
Labous will have the home advantage for the road race and has likely spent some time previewing the route with the national team, knowing every inch of the technical and challenging parcours. She will also have the support of the roadside fans out to watch and cheer on their home favourites.
Henderson will also be a contender for the road race, but the team will likely support British Champion Pfeiffer Georgi.
She has had strong performances in the one-day races this year, finishing fifth at Trofeo Binda, third at Paris-Roubaix and fourth at Amstel Gold Race. She was also fourth overall at the Tour of Britain and second overall at the Baloise Ladies Tour.
Lizzie Deignan is likely to play a support role at these Games after a season marred by injuries following a crash at the Tour of Flanders this spring. However, Deignan can never be counted out as a contender, as a former world champion and winner of the Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix, and Liège-Bastogne-Liège. Her experience is also likely to be just as valuable an asset on the road as her legs, in this race with no rider radio.
Kiesenhofer has had a strong season, winning double national titles in the time trial and road race, and will play a valuable role for the Austrian team in the road race this time around.
It might seem unlikely that the peloton will allow Kiesenhofer to power away from a breakaway in pursuit of gold again; anything can happen in bike racing and sometimes it's the outside contenders who make the most of an opportunity in a race like the Olympic Games.
The team also includes Christina Schweinberger, who had a breakout season in 2023 with memorable performances including a third in the time trial and fifth in the road race at the Glasgow Worlds.
Her performance in the road race at the World Championships was all the more impressive as she finished with a selection that broke off the front and fought to the finish despite attack after attack from rivals Lotte Kopecky, Demi Vollering, Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig and Marlen Reusser.
Another performance like that could see her reaching for the medals in Paris.
Kim Cadzow is only in her second full season of racing but she has already turned heads, winning the time trial title and finishing second in the road race at the New Zealand Championships and taking the overall title at Trofeo Ponente in Rosa.
At the Ardennes Classics she was sixth place at Liège-Bastogne-Liège and then went on to take three top-10 stage finishes and 10th overall at the Vuelta España Femenina, eighth overall at the Tour de Suisse, but didn't finish the Giro d'Italia Women where the heat took its toll.
Her performances led to a contract extension with her trade team EF Education-Cannondale, so we can anticipate her gaining experience and growing on the WorldTour over the next two seasons.
She finished seventh in the time trial at the Olympic Games and, given her season so far, has a shot at the top 10, too, in the road race on Sunday.
Katarzyna Niewiadoma, the reigning Gravel World Champion, has built this season around performance at the Olympic Games and the Tour de France Femmes.
She opted not to compete at the Giro d'Italia Women and instead finished her last block of racing at the Lotto Thüringen Ladies Tour, where she finished seventh overall.
Earlier in the year, she was seventh at Omloop het Nieuwsblad, fourth at Strade Bianche, second at Tour of Flanders and then won Flèche Wallonne, her first Classics victory since winning the Amstel Gold Race in 2019. She then took fifth at Liège-Bastogne-Liège.
This is her third Olympic Games, but she says she is more calm and focused at this stage of her career, and not as easily overwhelmed by the magnitude of the Olympics as she was in Rio (6th) and Tokyo (14th).
Niewiadoma is an all-rounder, and while she excels in climbing, she is also a powerful rider in the finals of big one-day races. She lines up alongside Polish teammates Marta Lach and Agnieszka Skalniak-Sójka with a good chance at a top 5 on Sunday.
Alison Jackson is a former Paris-Roubaix winner who looks for opportunities in every bike race she starts and races on tenacity, high energy and strength. She secured a stage win at the Vuelta España Femenina in May, her top result this year, after negotiating her path to perfection through a messy crash marred sprint.
Look for Jackson to commit 100% to a breakaway or be among a group sprint in the final. The course in Paris is demanding but not too challenging for a rider like Jackson. She finished 32nd in the road race in Tokyo, but the Paris parcours suit her strengths far better.
She lines up with national road champion Olivia Baril, who finished 20th in the time trial last weekend in Paris.
Maps for the Paris 2024 road cycling events (Image credit: IOC/Paris2024)
How long is the Paris Olympics women's road race
The women will race 158 kilometres, starting at the Trocadéro and taking in a 110 kilometre loop before returning to the centre of Paris for two 18.4-kilometre finishing circuits.
Kirsten Frattini is the Deputy Editor of Cyclingnews, overseeing the global racing content plan.
Kirsten has a background in Kinesiology and Health Science. She has been involved in cycling from the community and grassroots level to professional cycling's biggest races, reporting on the WorldTour, Spring Classics, Tours de France, World Championships and Olympic Games.
She began her sports journalism career with Cyclingnews as a North American Correspondent in 2006. In 2018, Kirsten became Women's Editor – overseeing the content strategy, race coverage and growth of women's professional cycling – before becoming Deputy Editor in 2023.
