Australian bike owner Tiffany Cromwell is about to fulfil a dream that for therefore lengthy appeared inconceivable.
The 34-year-old Olympian will line up for the Canyon-SRAM Racing Workforce for the inaugural ladies’s Tour de France Femmes, starting on July 24.
“Will probably be a historic second for girls’s biking,” Cromwell mentioned.
“We have been pushing for a ladies’s Tour de France for a variety of years and to lastly be given a world platform is so thrilling for the game.”
It’s the primary time because the Nineteen Eighties that an equal of the Tour de France for girls is being held.
The Tour de France Femmes is predicted to be one of many most-watched races on the ladies’s calendar and can begin in Paris on the identical day the lads’s race finishes.
It would cowl 1,029 kilometres and eight phases that can embody flat sprints, mountain-top finishes, cobblestone and gravel sectors, nation lanes and metropolis streets.
A highway and gravel bike owner, Cromwell mentioned the prospect for girls to don their very own yellow jersey would improve the visibility of the game.
“For those who speak to anyone who would not know something about biking, they know the Tour De France,” she mentioned.
“Simply having that [Tour De France] hooked up to the title and the worldwide protection it can obtain, will take ladies’s biking to the following degree.”
‘An amazing second for us’
Cromwell is just not the one one excited.
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Her accomplice, F1 driver Valtteri Bottas, can also be eagerly awaiting the Tour de France Femmes.
“He is excited to see ladies’s biking develop and thinks it is a fantastic second for us,” Cromwell mentioned.
Cromwell and Bottas dwell within the south of France close to Monaco, the place they cycle and practice collectively.
“He has been very supportive of my profession, coming to plenty of my races and I’m going to his F1 races,” Cromwell mentioned.
One of many largest names in world motorsport, Bottas makes use of biking as a part of his endurance coaching.
The 32-year-old included mountain biking, highway biking and gravel using as a part of his coaching routine after he started to have points with operating.
“The coaching facet has been actually nice as a result of he enjoys biking,” Cromwell mentioned.
“It helps him and he may also be a sounding ear for me.
“When you will have somebody who’s in an equally high-pressure sport — if no more high-pressure — it is enjoyable and good to have the ability to share the 2 sports activities.”
Whereas Cromwell shares her huge biking information with Bottas, she has additionally been gaining insights from the Finn.
“Valtteri’s obtained plenty of information on aerodynamics,” she mentioned.
Cromwell chasing stage wins
Former Australian Olympic bike owner and world champion Kate Bates mentioned ladies’s biking was experiencing a light-bulb second with the Tour de France Femmes.
“The Tour de France Femmes goes to be enormous,” she mentioned.
“There have been lots of people within the sport pushing laborious for girls to get their time within the solar.”
Bates mentioned the likes of Cromwell and different Australians competing within the inaugural tour — reminiscent of Amanda Spratt, Grace Brown, Nicole Frain, and Sarah Gigante — had been all able to making an influence.
“They don’t seem to be simply names which can be competing,” she mentioned.
Cromwell, who has received two phases within the ladies’s Giro d’Italia (2012 and 2016), mentioned she hoped the Tour de France Femmes would present a brand new viewers for the game.
She mentioned it will additionally give an perception into the personalities of feminine riders.
“We’re just like the lads but in addition totally different in the best way we race,” Cromwell mentioned.
“It is a distinctive type of racing, with smaller groups.”
Girls’s biking making progress
Cromwell can recall a non-existent assist community when she started her worldwide profession in 2007.
“The groups ran on small budgets, many riders raced with no salaries, you lived in workforce homes, you could not have independence and we did not have a lot media focus,” Cromwell mentioned.
There have since been important enhancements, reminiscent of cyclists receiving a minimal wage, a world tour and maternity go away.
“Earlier than, for those who wished to have a household, you principally needed to cease your profession,” Cromwell mentioned.
Cromwell credited digital biking platforms reminiscent of Zwift for addressing inequality in biking.
“Zwift has been an unbelievable assist on the ladies’s facet they usually’re a serious accomplice of the Tour de France Femmes,” she mentioned.
Throughout the first COVID-19 lockdown in 2020, Zwift hosted the world’s first digital Tour de France. Males raced alongside ladies, with equal protection and prize cash obtainable.
In the true world, equal sponsorship and prize cash stay a good distance off however Cromwell mentioned progress was being made.
“Not less than we are able to now say, we’ve got the Olympics and the Tour De France Femmes,” she mentioned.
“It is thrilling for the following technology of younger ladies who can now aspire to change into the following Tour De France champion.”
