The Grand Départ of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift will be in Rotterdam in 2024, Wielerflits reported, citing multiple unnamed sources.
The news should be made official this week by the Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO) in the lead-up to the start of the Tour de France in Bilbao.
After starting with a circuit race in Paris for its first edition in 2022 and then a road stage in Clermont-Ferrand in 2023, the third edition of the race will head outside of France for the first time in its history.
Wielerflits reports that the first three days of the stage race will take place outside of France, starting with a time trial in Rotterdam on August 12, one day after the end of the Paris Olympic Games.
Stage 2 will be a road stage from Rotterdam to The Hague. Starting in Valkenburg, the third stage may bring the riders to the Walloon region of Belgium.
The peloton should ultimately reach France on the fourth day of racing.
Two of the WorldTour Spring Classics taking place in Belgium, Liège-Bastogne-Liège Femmes and La Flèche Wallone Femmes, are also organized by ASO.
Last year, the Tour de France Femmes was an eight-day race that began on the Champs-Élysées in Paris in conjunction with the final stage 21 of the men’s Tour de France and ended on La Super Planche des Belles Filles where Movistar’s Annemiek van Vleuten of the Netherlands was crowned the overall champion.
The Tour de France Femmes 2023, from July 23-30, will be held across eight stages once again and will take on a whole new area of France this year, starting in the Massif Central.
The 956km route will take the peloton south and into the Pyrénées, ending with a mountaintop finish on the iconic Col du Tourmalet on stage 7, the crowning moment of the 2023 Tour de France Femmes, and a stage 8 individual time trial in Pau.
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