Tour de Romandie Féminin preview: Stars gather for the inaugural edition
The inaugural Tour de Romandie Féminin will be held from October 7 to 9. It is the last big hurrah of this season for most riders and teams. Annemiek van Vleuten, Kasia Niewiadoma, Elisa Longo Borghini, Marta Cavalli, Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig, Demi Vollering and SD Worx are all set to ride. GCN confirms it will show it live in all of its territories.
The Tour de Romandie is a three-day race. Stage 1 takes riders out and back from Lausanne along the shores of Lake Geneva. Day 2 is the toughest with a testing summit finish. The longest day of the race is 147.6km. The winner of this stage is likely to take the overall title. It's the first edition of Tour. Tour is taking place in France. There are no roads on the route. All the climbs are categorized. They are between 6 and 9% grade. Some of them are very steep. A few of these climbs have gradients of up to 12%.
Van Vleuten won Liège-Bastogne-Lièke, the Giro d'Italia Donne, Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift and the Ceratizit Challenge by La Vuelta. She won her second road race world title in Australia while nursing a broken elbow. Vollering had a concussion at the Tour of Scandinavia and had to pull out of the worlds road races. Longo Borghini has been racing in between the world championships and Romandie. Cavalli is making her comeback after a crash at Tour in July.
