In 2026, the Tour de France Femmes seemed to get everything right. After four years of experimentation, the route felt like ASO had pulled together everything they'd learnt into a beautifully balanced course, featuring a bit of everything: a foreign Grand Départ, an iconic mountain stage, a time trial, and a big-city finale.
The result was a truly thrilling race, delivering six different stage winners, five different riders in the yellow jersey, and a GC battle that went down to the wire on the very last day.
There were limitations, of course, for example the geographical footprint of the race was small, with much of France not getting a chance to Watch The Femmes by the roadside. But with what ASO and race director Marion Rousse can do with nine days of racing, they seemed to get it pretty spot on.
Fast forward to this year, then, and the expectation around the route reveal was high. How could they build upon perhaps the best edition of the Tour de France Femmes yet? How would they raise the bar again this time, as they have in every other edition? We were surely in for another cracking route.
But when Marion Rousse was done presenting the nine stages that will make up next year's Tour to the Palais de Congrès audience and fans around the world, I was left feeling a bit flat.
My initial reaction to the stage featuring the iconic Puy de Dôme climb was excitement – 'Wow, they're really doing it' – but as the screen faded to black to confirm that was the final stage, my feeling shifted more to 'Oh, is that it?'.
Though not an icon of the 21st century – it was only reintroduced in full to the Tour in 2023 after a 35-year absence – the Puy de Dôme occupies an important place in Tour history, the site of some truly memorable battles, not least when Jacques Anquetil and Raymond Poulidor went literally shoulder to shoulder on the ascent in 1964. Its iconic shape, rising up above Clermont-Ferrand, and the railway following the riders up its slopes gives it a clear and looming identity.
But it's also only 11.3km, only climbs up to 1,415m, and isn't on the level of fame nor difficulty of some of the iconic Pyrenean or Alpine passes. In fact, no climb on the whole 2027 Tour de France Femmes route surpassed 1,500m elevation, let alone the benchmark 2,000m, something you can only get in the Alps and Pyrenees.
It's not that the final three stages aren't packed full of climbing – they are – but there's only so much you can do in France's third biggest mountain range.
Of course, there is a reason to skip the Pyrenees and Alps: the organisers like to change things up each year, and they are also slightly hamstrung by the UK Grand Départ, making the Massif Central much more reasonable to journey to in only a week, compared to going all the way south to either bigger mountain range.
But having seen the true mountain battles we've been treated to for the last few years, the Massif Central – literally and figuratively – just doesn't reach those heights.
In this day and age, 1,400m cannot be the ceiling of how high the Tour de France Femmes can climb. We've known since this race was launched that big, iconic mountains are what make it special, and what deliver the truly showpiece days, like Mont Ventoux earlier this summer.
I have no doubt that this Massif Central-focused course will be challenging, engaging and thrilling, and we'll see another brilliant battle for the yellow jersey – I just wish we were doing it on some bigger, better climbs, more akin to what we've seen before.
No time trial – again
It's also an undeniable shame that this race is missing an individual time trial, opting for a team time trial in London as part of the Grand Départ instead. As I wrote in my route explainer, the Tour is limited in time and they can't do everything – at least not in the sense that the men's race can, with a whole 21 stages to play with – so something always has to be dropped.
But is a team time trial really preferable to an individual time trial? It's novel, sure, having never been done in the Tour de France Femmes before, and it's perhaps slightly more fun for casual fans for watch. It also shortens the amount of time that the race will have to close roads in central London for. But is it good for the race?
The results of a TTT will naturally be very different from an ITT, arguably levelling out the playing field between the top riders – they are all both supported and limited by their teammates, so we're unlikely to see a Reusser for example take a bit chunk of time here – but at the same time disproportionately disadvantaging those on smaller teams.
We haven't often seen underdogs come to the fore in the Tour, and including a TTT – which the better-resourced teams always do better in – basically ensures we definitely won't in 2027.
But really, the main issue is that I just think the Tour should have a TT, always. The concept of a men's Tour de France without a time trial is basically unconscionable, and whilst the women's race in only nine stages, it purports to be a Grand Tour, and that should mean the winner has to face a bit of everything: time trialing, sprints, hills and mountains – that's what makes a Grand Tour and a Grand Tour winner.
Riders and teams have long been in agreement on that fact, and have complained when other women's Grand Tours have missed a TT, so for the Tour to go back to a TT-less form feels like a downgrade on last year. A team time trial just isn't the same.
No fans?
The other really concerning element of the Femmes route reveal is the question over whether fans will be allowed on the Puy de Dôme summit finish.
When the men's race last visited, in 2023, fans were not allowed on the final 4km due to ecological protections, and also the difficulty in getting up the climb that only has one road up, which is flanked on one side by an in-use railway line. That meant the finale of the climb was raced in an eerie absence of spectators, with even very few media at the top to capture the moment, something that perhaps doesn't feel befitting of the biggest race on earth.
Of course, these ecological concerns need to be taken into account, and Marion Rousse said on Thursday that nothing has been decided – the local authorities will make a call on whether spectators will be permitted closer to the time.
But even the risk of having no fans on the final, decisive climb of the race feels fundamentally antithetical to everything the Tour de France Femmes has been building for the last five years. The whole project has been based around Watch The Femmes, bringing fans out, making the event as big and as accessible as possible to show just how much appetite there is for women's racing.
Mont Ventoux this year was a spectacular example of that, with fans lining every kilometre of the Bald Mountain, making the long journey up to its moon-like peak. The fans are what have made this race so special and successful, and has always been at the heart of the event.
So to not have fans present to cheer on the sport's best athletes on the decisive, climactic climb of next year's race would not just be disappointing, it would be a failure in organisation. We'll all be keeping our fingers crossed that ASO and the local authorities find a solution, but if they don't, and we have a fan-free finale to the biggest race on earth next summer, serious questions will have to be asked over the decisionmaking around going to this particular climb.
I thought that ASO finally cracked the formula on how to do it all within nine days in 2026, but 2027's route has shown us that truly doing a little bit of everything, including a TT, and going to one of the big two mountain ranges, is still a stretch for this race. Which is understandable, but when we've seen how good it can be, it's hard to not feel a little shortchanged.
I know the race will deliver, it always does, but on paper, it's left a lot to be desired.
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