ONE GIANT LEAP

After a highly successful inaugural edition of the Tour de France Femmes, race director Marion Rousse says the event has already become a reference point in the women's calendar

- Peter Cossins

Marion Rousse, director of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, confesses to having just one regret about the race for which she's the figurehead since its launch last year. "I would love to be riding it," admits the 2012 French national road champion, who quit the sport three years later aged just 24 to pursue a career in the media. "Whether you're male or female, the one race you want to take part in is, obviously, the Tour de France. I would have loved to be at the start, but it didn't happen and I missed out on something. That's a pity, but I'm not one to sulk in the corner. Ultimately, I'm happy that I'm in the official red Škoda that's right behind the peloton on the road."

The 31-year-old Rousse is speaking to Cycling Plus soon after coming down from the top of the Arc de Triomphe on Paris's Champs-Élysées, where she's just taken part in a publicity ceremony to mark 100 days to the start of the second edition of the Tour de France Femmes, which begins in Clermont-Ferrand on 23 July and concludes a week later in the Pyrenean city of Pau. It may be just a year old, but the event has already become one of the key reference points in the women's calendar, and arguably the biggest.

"It was a successful first edition and I'm very proud of it. Everything that makes the Tour de France so good has been applied to the Tour de France Femmes," she says. "From a sporting point of view, the champions gave us an incredible show, while there were also lots of fans on the roadside and many more people in front of their television sets. We had the race caravan, the landscapes that always make the Tour de France a unique race... All of the ingredients were there from the very first edition, and everyone responded to that."