The day’s racing is split into two parts. Stage 2 is a 67-kilometer road race around the fields of South Holland, starting in Dordrecht and finishing in Rotterdam. Stage 3 is a flat, fast 6.7-km time-trial through the city streets of downtown Rotterdam.

Double days like this are rare in modern bike racing, but have a long pedigree at the Tour de France.

The format was first introduced in 1934. Stage 21a of that year’s race took the peloton from La Rochelle across the Vendee to the velodrome in La Roche-sur-Yon, where the peloton had five minutes to wash up, eat, and catch their breath before the first rider set off for the first-ever time trial at the Tour de France: a 90-kilometer race against the clock to Nantes. Antonin Magne won the TT by over a minute and secured his final yellow jersey victory. The format was so popular with fans that the next year’s edition included six split stages. Apparently, that wasn’t enough; by 1936 the Tour was hosting triple stages.

Over the years, a number of iconic moments in Tour history occurred on split days. In 1938, Eloi Meulenberg became the first rider in race history to win twice on one day when he took victories on stages 4a and 4b of the Tour. In 1957, Jacques Anquetil won his first Tour de France stage, a TTT with the French national team and followed it up later that afternoon with a victory in the road race from Rouen to Caen. He went on to win two more stages and his first yellow jersey.

The first time a North American wore the yellow jersey also occurred on a double day. In 1986, Canadian Alex Stieda broke away early in the Tour’s first road stage. He had placed well during the opening prologue, a 4.6-km race against the clock in Boulogne-Billancourt. With a 56-km TTT coming up later that afternoon, he thought he could steal a march on the rest of the peloton. While they saved their legs, he pushed into the wind and soon gained over five minutes as well as a bunch of time bonuses. Although he was caught before the end by a small group of riders on the run in to Sceaux, he managed to hang on for fifth place and cross the line just ahead of the peloton. It was enough. Stieda had earned the right to wear the Tour’s iconic leader’s shirt – at least for an afternoon. During the TTT, he paid for his efforts, got dropped by his team, and lost the maillot jaune by over five minutes.

In recent decades, double days have become rare.

For riders, managing your effort when you have to race twice in a day is especially challenging. Go too deep in the first race and you will pay for it in the second. You have to decide where to best spend your energy. That requires strategic thinking.

Although this will be the first double stage in the young history of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, they are more common in women’s racing than they are now in men’s.

Our riders have a plan.

After finishing fourth in the sprint on stage one, Lotta Henttala will go all in for stage two. The bunch kick is her shot at glory. Kristen Faulkner, meanwhile, will focus on the evening time trial. The American champion came to the Tour straight from the Olympics where she won two gold medals. She is a strong time trialist and the short TT in Rotterdam will be a similar effort to her gold-medal winning attack in the road-race. It is also similar to the flat out effort that won her a gold medal in the team pursuit on the track. Kristen would love to follow those wins up with a stage win in the time trial at the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift.