{"id":851226,"date":"2026-08-09T00:46:13","date_gmt":"2026-08-09T00:46:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/851226\/"},"modified":"2026-08-09T00:46:13","modified_gmt":"2026-08-09T00:46:13","slug":"the-tech-cost-of-tiny-budgets-at-the-tdf-femmes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/851226\/","title":{"rendered":"The Tech Cost of Tiny Budgets at the TdF Femmes"},"content":{"rendered":"

The women’s peloton is seeing massive financial growth, but the wealth isn’t spread evenly. Here is a closer look at the technical corners small teams have to cut just to stay in the race.<\/p>\n

Published August 8, 2026 11:31AM<\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s fair to say that the women\u2019s side of professional sports has come a long way in a few short years. It wasn\u2019t long ago when the idea of a million-dollar women\u2019s team seemed slightly alien, let alone a single rider earning that, as Demi Vollering reportedly did this past winter.<\/p>\n

The increased professionalization of women\u2019s cycling is long overdue, but that shift is finally starting to take shape. We\u2019re now seeing teams with both male and female squads, in some cases offering equal pay to staff and riders. Admittedly, it\u2019s still not all sunshine and rainbows; the sport, unfortunately, like many women\u2019s sports, still lags considerably behind the men\u2019s side in recognition, funding, infrastructure, and coverage.<\/p>\n

\"\"Winspace are attending their second Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift with the French squad Mayenne Monbana My Pie.<\/p>\n

Women\u2019s WorldTour powerhouses like FDJ-Suez, Visma-Lease a Bike, and Lidl-Trek might look like massive operations, but their financial backing is still dwarfed by even second-tier men\u2019s UCI ProTeams. For context, FDJ-Suez operates on a reported budget of around \u20ac5 million, while men\u2019s WorldTour teams boast budgets in the \u20ac40 to \u20ac50 million range. So what does that mean for the smaller squads lining up at the TdFF, and what do their budgets actually look like?<\/p>\n

\"\"Ma Petite Enterprise are one of the smaller teams at this year\u2019s race, running on a budget of roughly \u20ac1.5 million. It\u2019s a quarter of what FDJ is believed to be running on.<\/p>\n

I wanted to find out how the smaller teams at the Tour de France Femmes, such as Ma Petite Entreprise<\/a> and Mayenne Monbana My Pie, plus mid-sized squads like Laboral Kutxa, can compete with the larger teams in the biggest race of the season. Funding for these teams can easily come in at a quarter of what FDJ-Suez runs on annually. So, what technical corners, if any, must be cut to make sure they can still line up at the Tour, and how much does this hinder the riders going up against the best in the world?<\/p>\n

\"\"Laboral Kutxa is part of the Euskadi Foundation; they have men\u2019s and U23 teams as well. So the foundation splits funding across all three teams, but they don\u2019t share sponsors. <\/p>\n

This is the last video from this year\u2019s Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift. I\u2019ve been on the ground at what has easily been my highlight race of the year, and it has quickly become the event I look forward to covering most each season. The access to riders and staff, the atmosphere, and the colleagues I get to work alongside are just a joy. From a technology geek\u2019s standpoint, I feel that it\u2019s far and away the most interesting race to cover. This year we\u2019ve seen the first sightings of LTWOO groupsets<\/a> being used in the pro peloton, and the custom bikes<\/a> look far less conservative than what we see in the men\u2019s peloton (hello, SpongeBob and Patrick<\/a>). Plus, with many of the race bikes sitting right at the UCI weight limit of 6.8kg<\/a>, weight weenies can actually get excited. The race is, without a doubt, a blast to attend, and I hope the five videos I\u2019ve published this year convey that.<\/p>\n

Cheers
Dave<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The women’s peloton is seeing massive financial growth, but the wealth isn’t spread evenly. Here is a closer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":851227,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,54263,82,296042,130296,296043,296044,54267],"class_list":["post-851226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-parent_category-road","tag-sports","tag-tag-fdj-suez","tag-tag-tour-de-france-femmes","tag-tag-video","tag-tag-winspace","tag-type-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=851226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/851227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=851226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=851226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=851226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}