Following the path of the women’s Tour, reborn last summer, and the Giro Donne, with a continuous presence on the calendar, next May the first women’s Tour is born in Spain. It will be a seven-day race organized by Unipublic, which is also in charge of the men’s race, and which will replace the timid challenges women’s races that, coinciding with the men’s Tour, were organized for a duration of one day, then two, then three and the eighth year, last year, five. “It will start on May 1, end on May 7, it will have television and it will be the first time that the race is officially called the Women’s Tour,” announced Javier Guillén, general director of the Tour, at the Europa Press Breakfasts. “We are one of the three great races on the men’s calendar, along with the Giro and the Tour, and thus, with the women’s Tour, we are equal to France and Italy.”
The equalization was already achieved in her person by the Dutch cyclist Annemiek van Vleuten, who prevailed in 2022 in the Women’s Tour and Giro and in the challenge five-day Spanish tour between Santander and Madrid.
Guillén admitted that the organization of the women’s Tour would not have been possible without the support and “push” he received from the Higher Sports Council, whose president, José Manuel Franco, specified that the search for gender equality is one of the axes of the Government’s sports policy and recalled that it will be the Fundación Deporte Joven that manages the aid for the women’s Tour, part of the Universo Mujer program, thanks to which companies that sponsor women’s sports obtain large “tax incentives”, such as the deduction of 90% of the total invested. The main beneficiary company, as well as the main sponsor of the two Vueltas, will be Carrefour, which will sponsor the red jersey of both and will give its name to the women’s race, officially called the Women’s Vuelta a España by Carrefour. “At Carrefour we have 57,000 workers. 70% are women, as are 80% of our customers”, indicated Alexandre de Palmas, director of Carrefour Spain.
The same day that the Tour, organized by ASO, the company that owns the majority of Unipublic, announced that, to avoid conflicts with the Paris Olympic Games, which will begin on July 25, the 2024 edition will end on July 21 with a time trial in Nice, for the first time in 110 years in a city other than the French capital, Guillén made a minimal sketch of the route of the 2023 men’s Tour, which will be fully announced on January 10 in Barcelona. “It will leave Barcelona on August 26, 61 years after the previous departure in the Catalan capital, and it will finish in Madrid on September 17,” Guillén said. “It will be very mountainous, with at least seven mountain finishes, visits to two countries, Andorra and France [una etapa acabará en la cima del Tourmalet]and the last week will be the most intense”.
The women’s Tour, whose layout is less advanced, will probably start in the Valencian Community.
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