No rider has been counting down the days to this year’s Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift as closely as Shari Bossuyt. After serving a two-year suspension, the Belgian has now been allowed to return to the peloton, and is making a long-awaited “dream” debut.
Bossuyt’s career was upended in March 2023, when she returned a positive result for the banned hormone Letrozole in an anti-doping control. She has maintained her innocence ever since, and the French anti-doping agency concluded she had not intentionally taken the substance.
At the time of the result, then 22 years old, Bossuyt was made “non-active” by her team, Canyon-SRAM, and later left the squad. She chose not to appeal her suspension, for lack of “strength or money”.
“It was a really hard time, but it was the situation,” she tells Cycling Weekly, rolling through the media zone ahead of stage three of the Tour de France Femmes.
Now dressed in the colours of AG Insurance-Soudal, who she joined in mid-June, the Belgian is buoyed by her return to the scene. She was able to train “almost every day” over the last two years, she says, never losing motivation.
“I think I’m missing a little bit of race fitness, so I think only every day can be better,” she says.
How does it feel to be in the pack again? “Oh, really good,” she smiles. “I’m really happy to be back, to be actually riding the Tour de France. It’s incredible… I only dreamed of it.”
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Bossuyt (centre) with her AG Insurance-Soudal team-mates.
(Image credit: Getty Images)
There was a time, not so long ago, when the 24-year-old feared her career as a professional cyclist was over. "No one seems to realise what an impact this has on someone's mental health,” she said in a social media post last January, “having to walk around every day with the 'stamp' of a doper, it's almost unbearable.”
Casting her mind back to that period now, Bossuyt is short for words. “It was hard, eh,” she says, hesitant to linger on the past. “One year ago, I looked and I saw the Tour de France was exactly one month after my return, so that was a big dream to train for it.”
With the suspension now behind her, and having made it to the Tour, Bossuyt’s mentality is clear: “I’m looking forward, not back anymore.”
The Belgian went on to finish sixth on stage three – only her seventh race day in two years. She'd then repeat the feat on stage four, a result that left her "happy but also a bit disappointed", and confirmed her form is coming back.
She now has a new long-term goal: the LA Olympics in 2028. Bossuyt missed the Games in Paris last year, where she would have competed on the track with Lotte Kopecky, a world-title-winning Madison pairing. Again, though, there’s no dwelling on the past.
“We’re looking forward to [20]28,” Bossuyt says with a smile. Her difficult chapter is behind her.
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Tom joined Cycling Weekly as a news and features writer in the summer of 2022, having previously contributed as a freelancer. He is fluent in French and Spanish, and holds a master's degree in International Journalism. Since 2020, he has been the host of The TT Podcast, offering race analysis and rider interviews.
An enthusiastic cyclist himself, Tom likes it most when the road goes uphill, and actively seeks out double-figure gradients on his rides. His best result is 28th in a hill-climb competition, albeit out of 40 entrants.
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