Women’s Tour de France to feature stage through central London next year

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The third stage of the women’s race on August 2 will take riders past the Houses of Parliament, Tower of London and St Paul’s Cathedral, crossing Tower Bridge and going through both Trafalgar Square and Hyde Park before finishing in front of Buckingham Palace.

Details of the stage were part of today’s full route reveal for the men’s and women’s Tours, which will start in Britain, becoming the first country outside France to host the start of both races in the same year, with stages set to pass through Scotland and Wales.

The other routes were announced earlier this year as Britain prepares to welcome the men’s Tour for a fifth time and the women’s race for the first time.

The women’s Tour will start on July 30 with an 87km stage between Leeds and Manchester and a day later there will be echoes of 2014 with a 154km stage from Manchester to Sheffield.

Paul Bush, managing director of Grand Depart GB, said the decision to take the women’s race to several of the climbs used by the men’s Tour 13 years ago was deliberate on the part of the Tour organisers.

“They really wanted to showcase 2014 with the women to demonstrate that actually there’s absolute equality in terms of what we’re doing between men and women,” Bush said.

“Then a team time trial in London, 18 kilometres, closing two bridges, that’s never been done in the lifetime of the city of London simultaneously. I think that will be very special.”

After London the Tour heads across the channel and towards a showdown in the Massif Central, with a summit finish to stage seven on La Loge des Gardes, more than 3,000 metres of climbing on stage eight to Clermont-Ferrand and a final fight for yellow on the Puy de Dome on stage nine.

The men’s race will start on July 2 with a 184km largely flat stage from Edinburgh to Carlisle. A 223km stage two will take the peloton from Keswick to Liverpool via the Forest of Bowland and a challenging 223km stage three goes through the heart of Wales between Welshpool and Cardiff.

After crossing into France, the Tour will make its way from Normandy to the Alps via the Jura mountains and then across the Massif Central towards a final showdown in the Pyrenees, where the battle for yellow should be settled.

Six mountain stages will include three summit finishes on the Grand Colombier, Les Saisies and the Col du Portet.

Key to the overall battle will be a total of 71 kilometres of time trialling on stages seven and 16, the most since Sir Bradley Wiggins became the first British winner of the Tour in 2012.

The final stage on to the Champs-Elysees in Paris will once again include three ascents of the climb to Montmartre which has become so popular since the 2024 Olympics, reshaping the traditional sprint finish to the Tour as Mathieu van der Poel took a thrilling victory this summer.

Tadej Pogacar can target a record-breaking sixth Tour title next summer after joining Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain on five this summer, although the Slovenian missed today’s route announcement as he continues his recovery from a crash at the Vuelta a Espana.