The Santos Tour Down Under (January 12-14) is the first rendezvous in a 28-event series that will take the peloton all the way to the Tour of Guangxi, in October.
The sun rises in the east and the road cycling year starts Down Under. A week into 2024, Australia has already crowned its national champions - Ruby Roseman-Gannon (Liv-AlUla-Jayco) was especially successful with victories in both the criterium and the road race - and is getting ready to welcome some of the best in the world for the first events of the UCI Women’s WorldTour and the UCI WorldTour.
Following an exhilarating 2023 season that attracted higher attention than ever, the leading series of women’s professional road racing returns with a similar calendar: 28 events (14 one-day races and as many stage races) in 11 countries. The greatest riders from around the world will be put to varied tests, from Australia’s summer warmth to Scandinavian landscapes, passing by Chinese islands and the highest European summits.
There are slight adjustments to these rendezvous. In 2024, the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift moves to August, to accommodate the Paris Olympic Games. The Tour de Romandie Féminin is extended to four days, at the beginning of September. The Giro d’Italia Women, now backed by RCS Sport– the same organisation already operating in the men’s Giro d’Italia – will be held over eight days in July… grab your calendars, here’s the programme for another year in pursuit of glory.
Riding into a new season
The start of the 2023 season offered thrills with the return of the Santos Tour Down Under and the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race – Elite Women’s Race (after two years’ interruption due to the Covid-19 pandemic), as well as the first edition of the UAE Tour. These three events return to kick off the 2024 season. The first appointment is set from January 12 to 14, ahead of the one-day race named after Australia’s former Men Elite UCI World Champion Cadel Evans at the end of the month (January 27). The Emirati stage race (February 8-11) will precede the return to Europe for an intense spring Classics campaign.
The reigning UCI World Champion Lotte Kopecky (Team SD Worx) will be watched intently on Belgian ground, with the Omloop Nieuwsblad (February 24), the Classic Brugge-De Panne (March 21), Gent-Wevelgem in Flanders Fields (March 24) and, above all, the Ronde van Vlaanderen – Tour des Flandres (March 31), where she wants her rainbow jersey to carry her to a legendary third victory in a row. A week later, Paris-Roubaix Femmes avec Zwift awaits Kopecky and her rivals for more thrilling battles over the French cobbles.
The thrills of the spring will also take the riders to Italy and the Netherlands at the beginning of the Classics campaign with the Strade Bianche (March 2), Miron Ronde van Drenthe (March 9) and the Trofeo Alfredo Binda - Comune di Cittiglio (March 17). The peloton will return to the Netherlands and Belgium for punchy battles over the hills of the Amstel Gold Race Ladies Edition (April 14), La Flèche Wallonne Féminine (April 17) and Liège-Bastogne-Liège Femmes (April 21), where Demi Vollering (Team SD Worx) achieved a historic treble in 2023.
Summer battles ahead of the final rushes
The Dutch star then headed to Spain, for an intense sequence of stage races renewed in 2024 with the Vuelta España Femenina by Carrefour.es (April 29-May 5) followed by the Itzulia Women (May 10-12) and the Vuelta a Burgos Feminas (May 16-19).
More stage races in Great Britain - the Ford RideLondon Classique (May 24-26) and the Women’s Tour (June 4-9) - and Switzerland - the Tour de Suisse Women (June 15-18) - will then lead the peloton towards the Giro d’Italia Women (July 7-14) and the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift (August 12-18), with a foreign Grand Départ in the Netherlands and two half-stages to be raced on the 13th. The two Grand Tours will be disuputed either side of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
After the battles for the Maglia Rosa, Olympic medals and the Maillot Jaune, the intensity won’t drop with the Classic Lorient Agglomération - Trophée Ceratizit (August 24), the Tour of Scandinavia (August 27-September 1) and the Tour de Romandie Féminin (September 5-8) to follow rapidly.
Zurich (Switzerland) will host the races for the rainbow jerseys at the end of September, ahead of the last three opportunities to shine this season in the UCI Women’s WorldTour: the Simac Ladies Tour in the Netherlands (October 8-13), and two Chinese events, the Tour of Chongming Island (October 15-17) and the Tour of Guangxi (October 20).