We’re bringing Magdeleine Vallieres, Cédrine Kerbaol, Alison Jackson, Henrietta Christie, Letizia Borghesi, Noemi Rüegg, and Kristen Faulkner to race the Tour de France Femmes.

Our Tour goals are more ambitious than ever: we want to be on the GC podium with Cédrine. This squad has trained together, raced together, and lived together, and in doing so have built a deep commitment to one another and to our goals.

The race kicks off this Saturday with three stages in Brittany, including the start of stage 2 in Brest, Cédrine’s hometown. Over nine stages, the peloton will race across the heart of France, culminating in back-to-back mountain stages in the Alps. We’re racing for Cédrine all the way to the end. Our French rider claimed her first Tour stage in 2024. This year, she’s racing for the general classification.

“Our plan at the Tour is to go for the GC with Cédrine, so we’ve built our roster to give her as much support as possible,” said sport director Carmen Small. “We have riders who will help guide her in the peloton, pace her on the climbs, and keep her calm when the inevitable chaos ensues. This squad is physically strong, mentally resilient, and tactically savvy. They’ve really come together over the season, particularly with their most recent training camp. They believe in themselves and they believe in each other. Now we just need the race to get underway.”

We have 1,165 kilometers to achieve our dreams. Let’s do this.

Hear from our squad about their hopes and goals ahead of the fourth edition of the Tour de France Femmes.

We did a couple of weeks up at altitude together and I think that really helped mesh us together. This really is a good group of people that have fun together. When you can enjoy what you do, it alleviates pressure and also just builds trust that your teammates are strong, they’re committed to you, and they like you. We want to have a good Tour and find success. We’ve really built camaraderie and belief in each other as teammates.

I have been waiting – no, dying – to see my new Canadian national champ’s jersey and I’m so proud to get to wear it at the Tour de France. For any race that I get to wear the Maple Leaf, I just think it’s so special. It’s a hard jersey to win, there are a lot of really strong Canadians who will be at the Tour. It’s always an honor. I love the creative team that we have that makes up the jerseys so I know it’s something special.

Going into the Tour, I’m really confident. I’ve had a great season with really great results in the spring after coming back after breaking my hand: fifth in Paris-Roubaix, seventh in Amstel, winning a full stage race – haven’t done that before – winning Canadian nationals. I just want to take that fire and bring it to the Tour and try to capture another win. What a dream it would be to be in the national jersey and win a stage at the Tour. It would be unbelievable. I don’t feel any more pressure at this race than at racing Paris-Roubaix or at Flanders. Let’s do it.

Our goal is to ride as a team, like we’ve been doing well since the start of the year. Of course, we want to have fun, too. We’ll try to get some results for sure, and we’ll go for the GC and try to do as well as possible.

It’s super to have a stage starting in Brest. It’s where I was born and where I studied. It’s going to be really special with a lot of people I know on the side of the road. A lot of people at the start and the end of the stage. It’s extra motivation; it gives me extra mental power. I’m very excited.

We’re going in with a really big GC goal with Cédrine so that will mean supporting her like we did in the Vuelta. We’ve prepared for this by thinking about when she’ll need more support and that will be on the longer climbs so that’s something I’ve been working on. During our Andorra camp, I was doing longer efforts so I can stay with her for longer on the longer climbs and help keep her in good position before she’s in a select group. That’s what we’ve been training for, so that she can have more teammates around her. Even if we’re not able to do anything, someone being there and suffering to the max alongside her is great support for her and she can feel the excitement. She’s a real dog with a bone; if she sees something, she’s just going to go for it.

The team’s hopes and goals are to really go for GC with Cédrine. That’s something we’re really passionate about and I truly believe we can achieve something like that. We got fourth at the Vuelta so the podium is within touching distance and I know Cédrine’s going really well at the moment. That’s something we can be really excited about.

Personally, I want to take everything I’ve learned from this year and from the really solid training camps and put it all into action at the Tour and continue to grow. I’ll do everything I can for the team and for Cédrine and hopefully we’ll come away with some really nice results.

Camp was great team bonding, effective training, and mentally relaxing – the perfect trifecta going into a grand tour. I think it was a really great chance for us to prepare for the Tour together. We had a paint night, we watched the men’s Tour together, we went on walks, we went for coffee together. The training was a really good block of training. We got in some really hard work and we also practiced descending together, trying to follow Cédrine going for the QOMs on all the descents. I feel like I’m a better descender for having followed Cédrine for two weeks.

On this team, the riders all really get along off the bike and that is really important when you go into a really big race because there’s a lot of really stressful moments. There’s a lot of sacrificing for each other and I think being on a team where the culture is so strong going into the race will be a huge advantage for us. It’s been one of our strengths for the last two years since the team started. For a really difficult race and a really difficult Tour, that team culture element becomes extra important and I feel really good about where the team is and how we get along off the bike as well as on the bike, and how much we support each other in our efforts and push each other.

I also think that the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift has a lot of media and a lot of busyness around the race so just being able to decompress in the mountains away from all of the noise for two weeks going in really allowed us to have a good mental reset. I think that mental break will pay dividends once the hecticness and busyness of the race starts. We will be able to go in physically fit and mentally fresh. That’s a really hard balance to find because oftentimes with a big training block you’re often mentally fatigued and I think the team did a really good job of helping us balance a physically hard training block while staying mentally really fresh and relaxed.

We have a really good opportunity to get on the podium for GC with Cédrine because training with her, she was super strong. She’s just getting better and better at all the races this year. We saw last year with her winning the stage that she can play a lot of different cards. She’s a great climber, she’s also a great descender, and she’s a smart racer who can excel in different scenarios. She has the full backing of the team to pursue that goal. I’m quite confident and quite excited to see what we can do. I think we have a lot of good support riders, both on the flats and in the mountains, who can really help support and make that goal happen.

I had a strong start to the season. This season, the spring was a really nice spring for me. I had some really good results that I had been chasing for a long time. To finish sixth at Flanders and second at Roubaix was something really special because these are the races that are in my heart. I worked hard all winter to get those results. It’s not easy to make all the parts click and finally this year it happened. That means I reached a really high level both physically and mentally so I am really happy with my first part of the season. After the Vuelta where I had a good third place on stage 2, I got really sick. I had a month where I was really struggling mentally and physically. It was a really hard time for me but luckily before the Italian championships, I found good feelings again in my legs. I worked really well at the altitude training camp with the girls. We did a really big block of training with a lot of hours and a lot of intensity in the legs. We were at 2,400 meters of elevation so I’m sure this will give us good legs for the Tour. I’m really confident that our team will get some really good results because we have a really strong team. We are hungry for good results in the Tour. We are arriving with the best condition possible.

Of course, the Tour de France is the most important stage race on our calendar so for sure being at the start of this race is already a big motivation. When things get tough, it’s always an extra motivation to perform. It’s really nice to know that you are racing in front of so many people and cheering along the road and also millions of people watching on TV from a lot of different countries. All of this gives some extra energy and extra motivation to show some good performances and to put on a good show on the road. This will be my third Tour de France. I’m really excited. The stages will be beautiful because we have a lot of different kinds of stages, starting from Brittany. I love this area of France. In the races in the past in Brittany, I’ve always performed well. The roads in Brittany really suit me with their constant up and down, turns, and narrow parts. They’re a bit similar to the classics so I cannot wait for them. And then we’ll have some really tough mountain days toward the end of the Tour where we will work for our leader to take the best position possible in the general classification. The excitement is a lot. Now the wait is almost finished. Let’s see what we bring home.

Having raced all of the modern editions of the Tour de France Femmes, I’ve learned that the Tour is like no other race. It’s the biggest on the calendar because of the attention that it gets and also how everyone is so focused on it and there are so many people who come to watch so it’s more about balancing not only the racing but also what’s around it. That’s what I’ve learned about it. And that women’s cycling is actually big when it comes to the Tour because there’s just so many people cheering and it’s good to see the little girls and inspiring the next generation.

We’ve been at training camp in Andorra with the team. All the girls doing the Tour are here. We have a really good group and we’ve had a really good vibe this whole camp and some good training. That’s the main preparation for it but of course all season all races. We had a few races where it was the Tour squad so we could fine tune some things. I think we’re coming into the Tour very prepared and very motivated and it should be a good one.

I am super, super excited about doing the Tour de France and about our Tour de France squad because I think this year’s Tour is very diverse. It has a lot of different stages and I think that suits our team. We have a really diverse squad, a really, really strong squad. We are really strong individuals and every rider has their own qualities and their own strengths and that’s what makes us a unit, what makes us really strong as a team. We have everything to cover all of the stages. The first few stages are quite classics-style, punchy, and I think we’ve proven in the classics races earlier this year that we have a strong classics squad. The climbing stages at the end will be all in for Cédrine and she’s proven how strong she is on the climbs. Together, we can really support each other. I think every day we can go for a result. That’s super exciting.

This squad also has gotten to really bond together over two weeks at camp in Andorra at altitude. I think that was a really good preparation, just to spend time together, to train together, just to have fun together and to get to know each other a bit better off the bike. I think this is also really important coming into the Tour. In such an important race, to really have the trust in each other, just have a good bond. This is what we’ve been building over the whole year but especially over those two weeks, there was even more bonding and I think that will make us even stronger as a team for the Tour. That’s why I’m excited about our squad.

I am particularly excited about basically all of the first five stages because I think they suit me very well, especially stages 1, 2, and 5. They’re really good stages for me because they’re quite punchy, always up and down, and they finish with a slight uphill. In fact the first stage isn’t a slight uphill, it’s a real uphill. I’m really looking forward to these stages because it’s going to be a hard race and I expect there’s going to be a smaller, very tired group of riders coming in to the finish and that’s normally the best scenario for me. I’m just looking forward to supporting Cédrine on the climbs as well as possible after those five stages. I’ll stay with her as long as possible, support her as long as I can, and then I’ll probably join the gruppetto life!