{"id":18056,"date":"2026-04-20T16:38:29","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T16:38:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/18056\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T16:38:29","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T16:38:29","slug":"cat-ferguson-leads-british-hopes-as-uk-start-to-2027-tour-de-france-femmes-set-to-be-toughest-in-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/18056\/","title":{"rendered":"Cat Ferguson leads British hopes as UK start to 2027 Tour de France Femmes set to be toughest in history"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Further details of the 2027 Tour de France<\/a> Femmes Grand D\u00e9part were revealed on Monday, with the UK hosting the first three stages of the race and London set to be the scene of its first-ever team time trial. <\/p>\n

2027 marks the first time the women\u2019s race \u2013 by then in its sixth year \u2013 will step foot on British soil, while the men\u2019s race will return for the third time this century, after starts in 2007 and 2014. It will mark the first time that both races will kick off in the same country, outside France.<\/p>\n

The race is expected to be the most-attended women\u2019s sporting event ever held in Britain, with British Cycling and ASO \u2013 the Tour\u2019s organisers \u2013 estimating some 10 million people will line the streets to cheer on the peloton. <\/p>\n

Stage one of the Tour de France Femmes will begin in Leeds and head to Manchester, before stage two moves from Manchester to Sheffield via the Peak District. Stage three will be a team time trial passing by many of London\u2019s iconic landmarks. <\/p>\n

From a British point of view the presence of 19-year-old Movistar rider Cat Ferguson, who could make her Tour debut in 2027, will mark a full circle moment from that 2014 edition. Then aged eight, the Yorkshire native was inspired by watching the men\u2019s peloton race past on her home roads, and hopes that the first edition of the Tour de France Femmes to visit the UK will have a monumental impact on women\u2019s cycling in years to come. <\/p>\n

She told press on Monday: \u201cArguably we\u2019re going to the two most iconic places in the UK, Yorkshire and London. I remember when the Tour came to Yorkshire in 2014, every time I go back home and train on those roads, I remember sitting on the side of the road with my parents.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll give it my all to be on the start line. I don\u2019t think I’ll ever get an opportunity [again] to race on my home roads, with local voices and accents cheering me on. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d like to think I could be an example [of the visible impact the Tour can have], and if we\u2019d had a women\u2019s race in 2014, how many more girls it could have inspired. That\u2019s what we\u2019re hoping to achieve next year. It worked for me, the men really inspired me, but the participation numbers for girls specifically could have increased [with a Tour de France Femmes]. I think next year is going to be crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"FormerFormer junior world champion Cat Ferguson is aiming to make her Tour debut next year (AFP\/Getty)<\/p>\n

Fellow Brit, Fenix-Premier Tech rider Flora Perkins, added: \u201cI think with things like the Olympics or the men’s Tour starting here, we’ve always seen that there’s been a peak in cycling interest after that, and that’s what we hope for this time round, that people who haven’t come in contact with cycling before see this bike race and see especially women at the top end of the sport competing and think, \u2018This is great, I love this, I want to do this more often\u2019 or \u2018I want to watch these women more often\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

Race director Marion Rousse described the British Grand Depart as a \u201chugely historic moment\u201d for the Tour de France Femmes and a \u201chuge step forward for women’s cycling\u201d. She said: \u201cThe three stages will be harder than they seem. [For] the young riders coming through, it\u2019s wonderful that they\u2019ll have the opportunity to be part of a race which is what women\u2019s cycling deserves.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember watching what was going on in Yorkshire [in 2014] and seeing just how many people lined the streets to watch the race, it was a standout event in the history of the race and we\u2019re really hoping to see similar support.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stage one, on Friday 30 July 2027, will begin in Headrow in the centre of Leeds, mimicking the path of the men\u2019s peloton in the 2014 Grand Depart. The 86km route, which crosses the Pennines and passes through Huddersfield and the Peak District National Park en route to a city centre finish in Deansgate, Manchester, will be \u201cshort, dynamic and tough,\u201d according to Rousse. <\/p>\n

\"StageStage two will retrace the men\u2019s route from 12 years ago, when Vincenzo Nibali won in Sheffield (Local Library)<\/p>\n

Stage two will similarly echo Tour de France history in the UK, with the finish in Sheffield re-using elements of the parcours from the 2014 Tour, when Vincenzo Nibali won and took yellow on stage two en route to his one and only overall victory. <\/p>\n

Rousse described stage two as \u201cprobably the hardest stage that we\u2019ve had in a Grand Depart\u201d. \u201cThere\u2019s not one single flat kilometre,\u201d she said. \u201cThe magic of the Tour is really going to come to life. This is going to be a Classic race and we can compare it to Liege-Bastogne-Liege next Sunday.\u201d<\/p>\n

The stage will incorporate 3,000m of climbing across 154.4km and tackle some of the north-west\u2019s biggest climbs, including the Winnats Pass (1.4km at 12.3%) and Snake Pass (5.4km at 4.6%). Two short, punishing ascents in Sheffield which the men\u2019s race summited in 2014, the C\u00f4te d\u2019Oughtibridge (1.5km at 9.1%) and the C\u00f4te de Jenkin Road (0.8km at 10.8%), will prove crucial.<\/p>\n

\"HugeHuge crowds gathered for the Yorkshire Grand Depart in 2014 and organisers ASO hope 10 million people will welcome the Tour de France Femmes next year (PA Wire)<\/p>\n

Ferguson has previously trained in the area alongside close friend and Visma-Lease a Bike rider Imogen Wolff, who is from south Yorkshire, and summed up the opening two stages as \u201csuper brutal\u201d. <\/p>\n

Stage three will start and finish in the capital, with the teams racing over a central London circuit for around 18km, passing by the Houses of Parliament, London Eye and Tower Bridge en route to a finish on The Mall \u2013 the start and finish location for the London 2012 Olympic Games road race, won by Britain\u2019s Lizzie Deignan (then Armitstead). <\/p>\n

Rousse said: \u201cThe Tour is seen from the sky with a [TV] helicopter but the city streets are our stadium, so we\u2019ll make the most of the environment to showcase the best of London.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18057,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[8314,8317,8319,6355,8315,8316,8318,8313,472,5,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-18056","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"tag-catholique","9":"tag-grand-duche-de-luxembourg","10":"tag-groothertogdom-luxemburg","11":"tag-horizontal","12":"tag-katholieke","13":"tag-pape-francois","14":"tag-papst-franziskus","15":"tag-paus-franciscus","16":"tag-religion","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116438021028195978","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}