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Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift gallery
Our squad's favorite pictures from the Tour de France
EF-Oatly-Cannondale's first-ever Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift was an unforgettable experience.
From the Grand Dèpart in Rotterdam to the grand finale at the summit of l'Alpe d'Huez, photographers Anouk Flesch and Jered and Ashley Gruber were there to capture the race for us. Kristen, Lotta, Noemi, Alison, Mags, Kim, and Clara will cherish their images of the peloton parting huge crowds in the mountains, their hugs after sprint finishes, and all the quiet moments and laughs they shared in the bus. These are some of our squad's favorites.
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Kristen Faulkner
From Harvard to venture capital to double Olympic Gold, Kristen Faulkner’s path has been anything but conventional. But one thing is a constant – her rigorous pursuit of excellence.
Before she became a cyclist, the double Olympic gold medalist and US road race champion worked in finance in Manhattan. Kristen earned her bachelor’s degree in computer science at Harvard, where she competed on the university rowing team. She finished second in the world junior rowing championships, before moving to New York City to pursue her career with a venture capital firm.
She missed team sports, so she went to a women’s introductory cycling clinic in Central Park. She enjoyed that enough to do a race and once she experienced how much strategy and tactical thinking cycling required, she knew it was the sport for her.
The 32-year-old has always dreamed big. Ever since she was a little girl, Kristen wanted to compete in the Olympic Games.
Her childhood in Homer, Alaska helped her develop a sense of resiliency. Kristen’s parents run a restaurant and hotel in her hometown and she has been always inspired by their work ethic. That work ethic, combined with her Olympic dream, inspired her to take up a new discipline for her, the team pursuit in track cycling in 2024, alongside road racing.
She sees bike racing as a game of chess, where strategy, patience, and anticipating a competitor’s move make the sport demanding and thrilling. On the streets of Paris, she rode a smart, tactical race, biding her time on the circuit up and around Montmartre, before making a big effort to close to the leaders with just over three kilometers to go. Knowing that her rivals at the front of the race might hesitate in the hope that the other would chase, Kristen attacked and rode solo to the finish under the Eiffel Tower to win her first Olympic gold medal.
With hard work and intelligence, she had made her childhood dream come true. She celebrated with her family and then turned her attention back to the track and her pursuit of excellence. A few days later, Kristen won her second Olympic gold medal with her teammates in the team pursuit.
Her 2024 season also included wins at Omloop van het Hageland, two stages at Trofeo Ponente in Rosa where she also claimed the points and mountains jerseys, a stage at the Vuelta España Femenina, and the US road race national championship.
At her European base in Girona, Spain, Kristen likes to grocery shop at the local farmers markets, letting fresh produce inspire her in the kitchen. She loves creating healthy, vegetable-based dishes. A lifelong learner, she always has a couple of books on the go.
Lotta Henttala
Lotta has been racing bikes on the world’s biggest stage for nearly a decade. She has 26 professional wins to her name, including Gent-Wevelgem and Dwars Door Vlaanderen. She has won Finland’s elite road and time trial national championships a combined dozen times in her career. It’s safe to say that Lotta is an experienced racer.
She is a sprinter who excels in one day races, like the cobbled classics. Her ability to both ride aggressively and read a race make her a formidable opponent. The expertise she has developed over the years is invaluable to her teammates.
Lotta stepped away from the professional peloton in 2022 when her son was born but she knew she wasn’t finished with the sport and eagerly returned to bike racing in 2023. In 2024, she won the first stage of the Vuelta a Burgos Feminas in a bunch kick. This year, Lotta will focus first on the spring classics and then will target the Tour de France Femmes.
Lotta’s love of cycling and sports in general runs deep. She imagines that if she had not become a professional racer, she would be a sports teacher in Finland. On top of racing and training, she is currently studying to be a physiotherapist.
Noemi Rüegg
Swiss road race champion Noemi Rüegg is still discovering her strength in the sport. Last year was a breakout season for her, as she won her first professional race, the Trofeo Felanitx-Colònia de Sant Jordi, on the squad’s first-ever day of racing. She then backed up that win with another at the Swiss national championships. She went to the Paris Olympics and finished seventh in the road race, before racing the Tour and mixing it up in the sprints.
Noemi is a punchy rider who can get over hard climbs. She is still trying to find out where her limits lie.
She came to bike racing through her family. At first, her goal was simply to keep up with her brother who is five years older than her. Their dad was involved with a local cycling club and Noemi slowly grew more and more curious. When she was 13, she finished her first cyclocross race and was hooked.
She turned professional on the road as a 19-year-old, leaving her full-time job caring for disabled people in a home. She is a two-time Under-23 Swiss time trial national champion but her heart belongs to the classics. Noemi loves a tough course, the more chaotic, the better. She is not afraid to be aggressive in the peloton and loves the excitement and energy of a hectic race.
Her ultimate goals are to podium in one of the classics and to develop as a stage racer. This year could be hers.
Alison Jackson
You’ve seen her dancing on social media, on the podium, and everywhere in between. Alison’s love of movement, whether it’s dancing, riding, or being outdoors, is infectious.
Alison earned the biggest win of her career to date in 2023 when she won Paris-Roubaix from a breakaway that she kept alive from the race’s early kilometers. She followed it up the next month by winning that year’s Canadian road race national championships in her native Alberta. Alison is a two-time Olympian and has raced ten times in the world championships, including a sixth place finish in 2021.
In 2024, she won a stage at the Vuelta, rode a strong Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift for her teammates, and competed for Canada in the Olympic Games. Just as important as her results was the leadership that she showed on the road.
For Alison, winning is important, but it doesn’t matter to her whether she’s atop the podium or if it’s one of her teammates. She’s more interested in making a difference in each race and contributing to the best result possible for the team.
Growing up on her family’s farm in Vermilion, Alberta, Alison had endless opportunities to exhaust her energy by helping with chores or playing with her siblings. But her mother noticed that Alison’s energy never seemed to dwindle, so she signed her daughter up for every sport available in her hometown of 4,000 people. Alison’s curiosity and innate athletic talent led her to take up swimming, compete provincially in gymnastics, go hiking in the Himalayas, and eventually to pick up an old bike that a former farmhand had left behind on her family’s farm. Fast forward to today and Alison is still driven by that same sense of curiosity, but this time she’s wondering just how far she can push her limits on the bike.
Magdeleine Vallieres
Magdeleine was about eight-years-old when she learned to ride a bike without training wheels. That Christmas, she got a new bike and the following summer her dad took her on a nine-day, 1,000 kilometer bikepacking trip. She credits her dad – and that trip – with creating her passion for cycling that has guided her life ever since.
It led her to her first pro win in 2024, when she won the Trofeo Palma Femina in Mallorca.
At just 23-years-old, Magdeleine has already raced big stage races like the Vuelta a España Femenina, the Giro d’Italia Women, and the Tour de France Femmes, and one-day races like Strade Biance and Amstel Gold. She is still learning where her strengths lie but it’s clear that her enthusiasm for cycling will help her go far.
Growing up in Sherbrooke, Quebec, Magdeleine rode with her local club. She raced mountain bikes, cyclocross, and road bikes as a teenager. She also learned how to track stand and to this day cannot resist the urge to track stand when she waits at red lights. As much as she loved racing in Quebec, Magdeleine soon realized that if she wanted to continue to compete and grow as a rider, she needed to go to Europe. She earned a spot with the UCI’s World Cycling Center program where she spent two seasons soaking up every opportunity she encountered and then turned pro.
Now racing her fourth professional season, Mags is just getting started.
Clara Emond
Clara returns to our squad for 2025, excited to build on the foundations she laid last year. In 2024, she went on the attack on stage four of the Giro d’Italia, racing solo for the next 60 kilometers through the Italian mountains to win her first grand tour stage.
Sports have always played a central role in her life. Clara made sure to take advantage of Quebec’s snowy winters and was an accomplished alpine skier growing up. She also ran, danced, and played tennis and soccer.
In addition to being a pro bike racer, Clara is also a lawyer. She had passed the bar exam and was just starting her career in law when she began to race bikes. This was during the pandemic and Clara quickly discovered that working remotely wasn’t for her. When a continental team based in Canada invited Clara to race with them for the 2022 season, she didn’t hesitate. She turned pro the following year.
But Clara isn’t finished with academia yet. She is working towards completing her master’s degree. For Clara, both school and cycling offer an outlet from each other and she finds it energizing to have different areas of focus in her life.
While she is a noted climber, Clara has just two professional seasons under her belt and is excited to continue discovering her strengths.
Kim Cadzow
Kim had a huge season in 2024. She started the year by winning the New Zealand time trial national championship before taking a stage and the general classification at the Trofeo Ponente in Rosa, her first stage race of the season. She put in an impressive performance at Liège-Bastogne-Liège, narrowly missing out on the win. Kim made her Olympic debut and finished seventh in the time trial.
The kiwi came to cycling after a short stint in triathlon, a sport she took up as a teenager. When she grew tired of constant running injuries, she made the switch to cycling and has loved every minute of it.
She excels both in time trialing and on long climbs and appreciates the straightforwardness of both disciplines. Racing a TT or a climb means she doesn’t have to worry too much about tactics and can focus on pedaling and pushing herself to her limits, something Kim loves to do.
2025 will be Kim’s third season as a pro. Given how quickly she’s learned the ins and outs of the peloton and how motivated she is, 2025 promises to be a great year.
Off the bike, she loves to relax with her husband by going for an easy ride or watching movies together.