The top of the Tourmalet will crown the second women's Tour de France

The women's Tour gains weight and height, and presence.

Eight stages, from Sunday to Sunday.

On July 23, while the men finish their three-week task on the Champs-Elysées, the women will begin their eight-day march from Clermont Ferrand, in the shadow of the mythical Puy de Dôme, which they will not ascend, south, to Pau , at the foot of the Pyrenees, where they will arrive on Sunday, July 30.

Almost a thousand kilometers.

The teams will also grow, they will have seven cyclists each, and not six as in the first year.

Two million viewers a day on French television, recalls Marion Rousse, the director of the race, who expects even more this year and announces a spectacular arrival for the stage on Saturday 29: a finish at the top of the Tourmalet, at 2,110 meters, after having climbed it, and after the Aspin, on its hardest slope, that of La Mongie.

When the women's Tour was called the Women's Grande Boucle, and Joane Somarriba from Biscay won it three times, between 2000 and 2003, passing through the Tourmalet was common.

In the year 2000, precisely, the Biscayan dressed as a leader at the top of the venerable Pyrenean port, the father of the Tour.

The Tourmalet is enough material for the winner of the first Tour of the new era, and also of the Giro and the Vuelta of 22, the Dutch rider from Movistar Annemiek van Vleuten to rub her hands.

The Tourmalet, which the men assaulted for the first time, full of fear, there are bears, they shouted, you are a murderer, they told the organizers, in 1910, will be the first strong point of the women's Tour of 23. And only on three occasions, in 1974, 2010 and 2019, it has finished a stage of the Men's Tour on its summit.

The second key moment, the following day, a 22-kilometre time trial (the same length as the only men's Tour time trial) in Pau, along the hilly course that Julian Alaphilippe won in 2019, and passing through the same corner where Wout van Aert got caught on a banner hook and nearly bled to death.

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