The third stage of the 2027 Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift will be a “landmark” team time trial in central London, the race organisers unveiled on Monday.
The 18km stage will mark the first team time trial ever at the race, which held its first edition in 2022.
The course, which will be revealed in full in October, will pass by the Houses of Parliament, the London Eye and Tower Bridge, with a finish in front of Buckingham Palace on The Mall – the same road a stage of the men’s race finished on in 2014, when the Tour last visited the UK.
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Both the men’s and women’s races will start in the UK next summer as part of an unprecedented double Grand Départ, with both events taking place in the same country outside of France for the first time.
“We made this choice for a number of reasons,” Rousse said. “One is because it’s a huge honour for us to come to a capital city such as London, and it’s a huge moment in the history of the race. What we wanted to do was create something that would allow us to spend the whole day in the city, and allow us to visit and revisit the same landmarks.”
“The reason that we’re able to have the time trial here is that London has been on board and wanted to facilitate this with us. Actually, it’s easier to organise a team time trial on roads in a busy city than it is for the whole peloton to arrive in one go. It’s a huge opportunity.”
Team time trials are rare in cycling, and even rarer in women’s cycling, seen mostly in recent years at the UCI World Championships and Vuelta Femenina. The men’s Tour will begin with a team time trial in Barcelona this July.
“I didn’t make it off the start ramp because I got a puncture,” said Ferguson. “It’s really important, as women, that we get to do another team time trial. I don’t know how many there have been across the Grand Tours and races we’ve done, but not that many. To do it in the Tour de France is, of course, the best place to showcase that.”
Perkins, too, echoed the same sentiment. “I think it’s a really tangible way for the public to see this is a team sport,” she said. “Time trialing in the UK is really historic. We’ve always had time trials. I think people maybe don’t realise that time trialing is a really authentic way that grassroots cycling and racing has been.”
‘The hardest stage in a Grand Départ that we’ve ever seen’
Rousse and the Tour de France Femmes organisers ASO also provided more details about the first two stages of the UK Grand Départ, which were first unveiled in January.
Stage one will be a “very short and very dynamic” 85.7km from Leeds to Manchester, taking in the climbs of the Côte de Kirkheaton (1.7km at 7.5%), Côte de Meltham (3.2km at 8.2%) and Côte de Delph (2.1km at 6.3%) for 1,390m elevation.
Stage two from Manchester to Sheffield will be, in Rousse’s words, “the hardest stage in a Grand Départ we’ve ever seen” with 2,750m elevation over 154km. It will count seven climbs, including the iconic Snake Pass (5.4km at 4.6%) and Winnats Pass (1.4km at 12.3%).
“There won’t be a metre of flat,” Rousse said. “This will be a battle. This second stage will be hard fought with some spectacular climbs.”
The men’s race will start in Edinburgh on 2 July 2027, with stage finishes in Carlisle, Liverpool and Cardiff before transferring to France.
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