'I need to have a chat with ASO about getting up that early': Women gladly bid farewell to La Course as the Tour de France proper beckons

Demi Vollering bested Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig on the opening of the 2021 Tour de France

Lizzie Deignan
(Image credit: Getty)

"I was up at 5.45 am and I was eating rice at six, so it was very early," the final victor of La Course, SDWorx's Demi Vollering, said before the start of the race she would go on to win. 

Clearly, as inhumane as shovelling platefuls of Basmati down your gullet as the sun is coming up is, it did the trick, the early wake-up calls the women's peloton have become accustomed to at ASO races one fewer as next year, finally, as the women's race will actually be called the Tour de France and expanded to a seven-day affair rather than one.

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