Marianne Vos to tackle both the Giro d'Italia Donne and the Tour de France Femmes

Marianne Vos is to ride the Giro d'Italia Donne and then the Tour de France Femmes this July, at the first opportunity to race the double.

The Jumbo-Visma rider holds the record for stages at the Giro, with 30 victories from 2007 to last year, and will return to the Italian Grand Tour looking to add to that number. Weeks later, Vos will lineup at the Tour a fortnight later.

2022 will see the first edition of the Tour de France Femmes, a new race, the first time a women's Tour has been held, in association with the men's race, since 1989.

Vos won a stage at the unofficial Tour de France for women, the Grande Boucle Féminine Internationale, in 2009, and also won two editions of La Course by Tour de France in 2014 and 2019, but will hope to put her name in history in Paris at the Tour proper.

The 35-year-old was already known to be riding the Tour this year, but the Giro is a new addition to the Dutchwoman's schedule. Jumbo-Visma confirmed the news to Cycling Weekly on Friday.

She is not alone in tackling both, with Annemiek van Vleuten (Movistar) the most high-profile rider to be riding both Grand Tours. She in fact is aiming for general classification at both races, which could result in a historic double. Elisa Longo Borghini (Trek-Segafredo) and Marta Cavalli (FDJ Nouvelle-Aquitaine Futuroscope) are also thought to be doing both.

Vos has had a stop-start 2022. She claimed her eighth cyclocross world title in January, and then began her road season with seventh at Strade Bianche and second at Gent-Wevelgem. However, a positive Covid test after the Tour of Flanders denied her from riding a second Paris-Roubaix, which was her big target for the early part of the season.

She returned to racing at Veenendaal-Veenendaal in the Netherlands last month, finishing fifth. 

“I didn't get very sick so I thought I would get rid of it quickly, but [getting Covid] did have more impact than I had hoped,” the three-time road world champion told Cycling Weekly last month. 

“At the time when I had to withdraw from Roubaix, I had no symptoms yet. I then did develop some symptoms but I wasn’t that sick — throat soreness and a persistent cold mostly. But it lingered. The moment I picked up the bike again, I noticed that when it came to endurance especially, it really had an impact. So I’ve had to patiently start training everything back up again, which we as athletes aren’t always very good at.”