UAE Team L’IMAD presented their star-studded team for the Tour de France Femmes in Vevey on the banks of Lake Geneva on Thursday, and the new-look squad figures to be among the strongest in this year’s race.
The squad, racing under a new name and joining the ranks of teams sporting a special edition kit for the Tour, will be led by two-time Giro d’Italia Women champion Elisa Longo Borghini and reigning Vuelta Femenina champion Paula Blasi.
The pair will start in Lausanne on Saturday among the top GC favourites, while last summer’s revelations, Maëva Squiban, who won two stages, and Dominika Włodarczyk, who finished fourth overall, offer further options that much of the peloton would envy.
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The team has a wealth of options to choose from, realistically more than almost any other in the race, and rivalled in strength perhaps only by Demi Vollering’s FDJ United-SUEZ.
How will the team, which also includes 2025 stage winner Mavi García, Brodie Chapman and Silvia Persico, tackle the nine days of racing between Lausanne and Nice? Chapman explained.
“The fact that we have a diverse team with lots of riders who can win is going to be our strong point,” she said in the team’s pre-race press conference.
“We know there are other teams with very, very clear leaders from the outside. I don’t think other teams know our strategy, and that’s going to be our advantage.
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“So there’s a reason that we came here with riders who are super good in climbing in really, really attritional races, and we will organise ourselves to make sure that we can have the numerical advantage.”
Chapman, who made her debut at the Tour last year, said that the team’s abundance of options is their “secret weapon”, even if their strength is hardly a secret. We’ll have to wait for the route’s most challenging days in the hills of the Ardéche and up Mont Ventoux to find out exactly what they’re planning, though.
“It’ll remain a secret until the race unfolds. I could lie to you, but I wouldn’t do that,” Chapman joked. “But my job is very clear. I already started with giving water to my teammates here.”
In terms of leadership, from the outside it seems that Longo Borghini and Blasi are at the top of the team’s hierarchy.
The 34-year-old Longo Borghini is the seasoned campaigner with 62 wins to her name, including those Giro titles – though she hasn’t made it to the finish of her two most recent Tour starts. At 23, Blasi, meanwhile, has really emerged as a top rider this season with wins at Amstel Gold Race, La Vuelta and the Volta a Catalunya.
The team headed to altitude in Italy to prepare for the Tour. However, Blasi took a different route following a crash at the Spanish National Championships, instead staying close to home in Andorra.
“I had to do some changes at home, so I had to stay there,” she said. “But I feel like I had a really good preparation as well. I could do half altitude, half at home, and I think I kind of follow the same structure for La Vuelta. I think it worked quite well. So yeah, I’m feeling very good.”
The climbing went well, then, but Blasi’s preparation for the Tour’s first long time trial since the 2023 closer in Pau was disrupted.
“I didn’t have maybe the best preparation because I crashed the day before the TT, so things got a bit harder,” she said.
“So, I could not really be on the TT bike for a couple of weeks because it was quite painful. We will go day-by-day on my side and then decide when we arrive how to approach the TT.”
Longo Borghini, meanwhile, has been preparing for the hot weather expected next week, with temperatures set to reach 30°C and higher.
“I think the best preparation I had was in the Tour de Suisse when I had heat stroke. I probably got adapted there,” she joked.
“Jokes apart, I did some passive heat training like the sauna and hot baths. I hope it’s working. I was also going out training when I was at all when it was a little bit warmer during the day. I hope for the best.
“It’s from 2023 that I’m trying to finish the Tour, and I haven’t succeeded. I believe that now it’s time to move forward and to make a little bit of friendship with this race.”
With two potential leaders set to do battle with past winners Vollering, Pauline Ferrand-Prévot, Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney, and the rest of the stacked GC field, it remains to be seen how much leeway Włodarczyk, Squiban, and García will be afforded to seek their own chances.
But the French racer said that competing as super-domestiques won’t be a problem.
“I think everyone would like to be free and to be in the front in a stage in the Tour de France. If I can, of course I would like to be in the front,” Squiban said.
“But if not, it’s not a problem. I will be here to help the team. It’s quite hard to compare my shape with last year, but I think if I’m here, it’s because I’m ready, like all my teammates.
“We are just ready to fight, and we will see what can happen.”
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