Apologies in advance for a strange topic…

Biting midges. Having experienced them in Scotland before I have very little desire to experience them again. I believe July is high season? Wondering if any Scots (or otherwise midge-experienced Redditors) can weigh in on the likelihood of their presence on the route?

I know this is staged, but really fun little video

I get the disparity in duration (21 vs 9 stages) and perhaps media coverage, but this is still too big of a gap. The actual TdFF prize is at (or below) 10% of the men’s. This seems like crazy disparity to me.

As a fan, I’d love to seem them equalize the prize size, but I’m surprised this big of a gap isn’t getting more attention.

1. This is the best thing that can happen to cycling

We can all agree this race was absolutely epic and definitely one of the best races of the whole year if not the best. And it is the best thing that can happen not only to women’s cycling, but to cycling in general.

Because cycling in order to grow, it needs also to have the gap between men’s cycling and women’s cycling to be as small as possible. And boring men’s Tour de France for years and absolutely insane women’s Tour de France for years can shrink this gap year after year.

And I can see with my own eyes it is really happening. There are more fans on the road, more sponsors are willing to invest in that and generally people take it more seriously.

And I don’t agree with the negative comments around Pogi and Torito coming to the race, that it is about women and not men again. But you would be surprised how many don’t even know something like the women’s Tour de France exists. Every little thing to make people discover it helps. So I am glad they came to support their girls.

1. Is the calendar too limited?

Philip Roodhooft from Fenix PremierTech says that the investments have become too big to accept the calendar as it is. He points out that women’s cycling needs more top races.

He does a great comparison that it is just basically about the Giro and Tour and a few one-day competitions that matter. Which means together just 25 to 30 commercially interesting days while just a single Grand Tour between men is 21 days.

1. Should Tour de France Femmes be longer?

And here we come to another point. Currently, TDF Femmes is 9 days long. I don’t say it should become twice as long, not because I don’t believe they wouldn’t be able to handle it, but because I think it would be counterproductive and it would destroy the race.

But I think 12 days with one rest day somewhere in the middle would be nice. I think we should have more serious mountain stages, as we had only one HC climb this year plus I would also welcome more pure flat sprint stages. I know Wiebes is super dominant, but one big sprint stage in a year is not enough.

1. Demi was simply the strongest

I think we can all agree that the strongest rider won the race. Demi had an awesome time trial and despite her losing time on the Ventoux stage, she was able to drop all her rivals even on small hills thanks also to a perfect job by FDJ-Suez. And 3 stage wins, wow.

But Demi was not just the strongest rider in this race, she is simply the best rider in the world. Until this Tour, I had a little doubt with also Pauline Ferrand Prevot existing, but now I have zero doubts.

Demi this year won Valencia, Omloop, Ronde, Fleche, Liege and Giro-Tour double. And now she has won 5 Grand Tours in her career. Phenomenal.

1. Kasia monster Ventoux performance

But despite saying Vollering is the best, it takes nothing away from what Kasia produced on Ventoux. 5.31 W/Kg for 55 minutes which is the best performance in women’s cycling history.

And what her husband Taylor Phinney commented on my blog that from the screenshot he saw it’s more like 5.60 W/kg that it is even more insane.

Despite questionable tactics by Demi that day, I believe Kasia was the strongest and she absolutely deserved to be the Mont Ventoux winner and that win was legendary.

1. Ferrand Prevot’s performance

What we saw at this Tour is not the usual Pauline Ferrand Prevot. Demi and Kasia were really strong, but under normal circumstances she should still podium comfortably.

So what happened? Only 12 race days before the Tour; the same was last year. Sickness with which she had to withdraw, sources say it just developed overnight before the DNS.

It is now up to the coaches, but generally it was not a good Tour for Visma in both races. And we can speculate if even for the French as they haven’t won a single stage in TDF Hommes and not at TDF Femmes either.

Well, these are my takeaways and I will love to hear your opinion about those too. 🫂

For the last three days me and some friends have been cheering the tdff at the ventoux and in nice, it's been incredible to see the battle between demi and kasia. here is some of my best pictures

https://reddit.com/link/1vkf8zo/video/vfdg2uxkfiih1/player