{"id":722456,"date":"2026-08-01T08:36:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-01T08:36:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/722456\/"},"modified":"2026-08-01T08:36:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-01T08:36:15","slug":"tour-de-france-femmes-2026-mont-ventoux-awaits-for-first-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/722456\/","title":{"rendered":"Tour de France Femmes 2026: Mont Ventoux awaits for first time"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Riding under Niewiadoma-Phinney on the Canyon-SRAM team is Britain&#8217;s Zoe Backstedt, who is making her <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sport\/cycling\/articles\/cwylnnr4922o\" class=\"ssrcss-1fqyhkk-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Tour debut.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The 21-year-old Welsh rider has an impressive roster of achievements already, with seven wins to her name this season, and a rich family history routed in the Tour.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Her father Magnus won the 19th stage of the 1998 Tour de France.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Backstedt will be aiming for the Tour&#8217;s stage-four time trial in Dijon, after winning British road race and time-trial titles this year, although her main priority will be supporting the general classification aspirations of her team-mate.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Her sister Elynor (UAE Team L&#8217;imad) will also be riding. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Five other Britons start the race.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Picnic-PostNL have three-time British national road race champion Pfeiffer Georgi on their roster giving her team options on the harder transitional stages.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Team-mate Josie Nelson is another British rider capable of turning a hard stage into a result with enough finishing speed to become dangerous when a smaller group reaches the line.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Alice Towers (EF Education-Oatly) was British road champion in 2022, and has strength in the climbs. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Millie Couzens (Fenix-Premier Tech) and Robyn Clay (Picnic-PostNL) complete the starting British riders, mainly on supportive duties. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">One notable absentee is 20-year-old Cat Ferguson of Movistar, who misses out on her Tour debut after medical checks revealed two fractures in her ankle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Riding under Niewiadoma-Phinney on the Canyon-SRAM team is Britain&#8217;s Zoe Backstedt, who is making her Tour debut. The&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":722457,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-722456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=722456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722456\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/722457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=722456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=722456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=722456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}