'Partial coverage is no longer enough' – TV broadcasts of Tour de France Femmes criticised after missing stage-winning attack

“Sad”, “strange”, and “a shame” are some of the words riders and sports directors used to describe the limited TV coverage of this year's Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift.

Just two of the nine stages – stage five from Mâcon to Belleville-en-Beaujolais and the closing stage around Nice – have been granted full, flag-to-flag broadcasts, with hours of coverage missing from the remaining seven stages.

On Monday, Uno-X Mobility rider Sigrid Haugset attacked before the TV cameras had begun rolling, with 88km to go, and pulled off the farthest solo victory at the race. Had she made her move 5km later, fans at home would have been able to see it happen. Instead, the TV feed, licensed by the race organiser, ASO, missed it by around seven minutes.

“There wasn’t so much to see,” Haugset, the race’s new yellow jersey wearer, played down after the finish. “It wasn’t so much of a punchy attack, either... It was more like slowly drifting.”

Other riders, however, were more critical of the missed action.

“The best way to get more public is to show it properly,” said Paula Blasi (UAE Team L’IMAD). “Today, I felt it was such an incredible race. [I have] all the love for men’s [cycling], but when Tadej [Pogačar] goes, it is so easy to predict. With women’s racing, sometimes you have much more interesting moves. It’s quite sad that we cannot really watch it.”

On the eve of this fifth edition of the Tour de France Femmes, The Cyclists’ Alliance (TCA), the independent body that represents the women’s peloton, warned that partial coverage would mean fans would miss “the attacks, the tactics, and the moments that could define the race”.

“For the biggest race in women’s cycling, partial coverage is no longer enough,” TCA wrote. “The demand is undeniable and we are asking for the coverage to catch up.”

TCA also criticised the broadcast of Paris-Roubaix earlier this year, describing it as a “massive affront to women’s cycling” that only the final hour and a half was shown live.

More than 26 hours of this year’s Tour de France Femmes will be broadcast live across the nine stages – an average of around two and a half hours a day. The men’s race, by comparison, was shown in full, every moment of every stage, for 21 days.

Carmen Small, sports director at EF Education-Oatly, believes the partial coverage of the women’s race is “a bit strange”.

“You would think they would do [full coverage] at least now. It’s only nine stages, it’s not that we’re having three weeks like the men,” she said.

TV coverage is particularly important for teams at the Tour as it gives them crucial airtime for their sponsors. “We race aggressively to show the jersey. We hope for results to show the jersey,” Small explained. “I mean, it’s all together, right? It’s a shame that they’re not doing the whole entire stage.”

Picnic PostNL’s Josie Nelson agreed. “I think for the biggest race of the year, they could probably pull it out the bag a bit better, to be honest,” she said. “On days like today, when everything kicks off at the start, it’s a shame that no one gets to see how the race pans out.”

Another key moment the TV broadcast missed on stage three was a crash involving one of the GC favourites, Demi Vollering (FDJ United-Suez), which happened with 143km to go – 55km before the broadcast went live. For those who weren't able to see it, the race organiser, ASO, shared a mobile phone video of the aftermath on social media.

Stephen Delcourt, Vollering’s FDJ United-Suez team manager, said he questioned ASO on the morning of the stage about broadcasting more of the race. “I don’t want to blame [ASO]. I know they’ve improved a lot of things this year, [by adding] a time trial and a ninth stage,” he said. “Before we had no Tour de France, we had nothing, we had no TV, and I think we’re improving every year.

“Yes, we dream about full coverage, especially for a race like this, because it was really beautiful at the beginning of the stage. You just need to be patient.”

The Tour de France Femmes continues on Tuesday with an individual time trial. Coverage is due to begin at 15:45 local time (CET), meaning the starts of at least 55 riders – 40% of the peloton – will not be broadcast.

“Women’s cycling has the audience and this race is the pinnacle of the sport,” TCA wrote on Instagram on Monday. “Now it needs full start-to-finish coverage.”