Mentalities are changing, says women's Tour de France director

PARIS : The first edition of the women's Paris-Roubaix race last year silenced most of the sceptics and attitudes to women's cycling are changing, the race director of the Tour de France Femmes said on Friday.

On a rainy, muddy day in October 2021, Lizzie Deignan emerged as the first winner of the women's Paris-Roubaix after mastering the slippery cobbled roads in northern France that men have raced on for more than one hundred years.

The second edition will be held on Saturday while the Tour de France Femmes will take place from July 24-31, 33 years after its last edition.

"There's nothing to actually do to change mentalities," Marion Rousse told reporters after a presentation of the Tour de France Femmes at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

"All we have to do is show (that women can do it). The last sceptics who think women have nothing to do on a bike will change their mind after seeing the race from the road side or after turning on their TV. That's all there's to do.

"There were a lot of sceptics before the women's Paris-Roubaix last year. They were saying 'oh la la, women on cobbled roads how are they going to handle that?'. And it was raining that day and I can tell you that after the race a lot of people said 'chapeau'."

Rousse explained that Paris-Roubaix was a turning point.

"Things have changed since then," she said. "When you see the races today you can't say women have nothing to do on a bike."

Men's cycling, however, remains a masculine environment.

"With the Tour de France Femmes we want to show that women can have key roles, responsibilities," Rousse said.

"It should not just be women handling women's cycling and men only being involved in men's cycling."

Rousse, a former French champion, is the partner of world