WATCH every stage of the Tour de France Femmes from July 24-31 LIVE and FREE on SBS, SBS On Demand and the SBS SKODA Tour Tracker.
Three Australians are included in the squad, with Amanda Spratt, Alexandra Manly and Ruby Roseman-Gannon joining Spaniard Ane Santesteban, American Kristen Faulkner and Slovenian Urška Žigart to compete in the eight-stage event.
The race will be Spratt's return to the road since her Giro Donne campaign was cut short due to COVID, the two-time Tour Down Under Champion bringing a wealth of valuable experience and climbing expertise.
Faulkner will lead the team's general classification campaign and is coming off a stellar showing at the Giro Donne, where she won two stages en route to taking out the mountains classification and 11th place in the general classification.
Manly's preparation for the race saw her put on a dominant performance at the LOTTO Thüringen Ladies Tour in May, the 26-year-old winning four stages en route to claiming both the yellow and green jerseys.
Rounding out the team, versatile sprinter Roseman-Gannon gets the nod in the midst of an impressive debut season, seasoned climber Santesteban will form a dangerous tandem with Spratt and Žigart enters the race with two national time trial titles already under her belt.
With the Tour de France Femmes encompassing four flat, two hilly and two mountain stages the team looks balanced to have a rider suited for every parcours.
A landmark moment for women's cycling, the riders' excitement and anticipation is at an all-time high ahead of the Grand Depart from Paris on Sunday (AEST), stage 1 set to finish on the Champs-Elysees prior to the final stage of the men's race.
“There is so much excitement building before the start of Tour de France Femmes," Spratt said in a statement from the team.
"It really feels like an amazing moment is coming for our sport and it’s just going to be such a special day standing on the Champs Élysées and starting our Tour de France. In this moment so many of us will begin living out a childhood dream!
"Obviously, I had to stop the Giro because of Covid when I was in a really high GC place and the form was the best it’s been. Unfortunately, it knocked me out good so I had 11 days where I couldn’t train. I’ve just started again now.
"This of course has had a big impact on what my original goals were at the Tour de France, so I will just take it day by day and hope to ride into it and be the best support possible for my team.
"Nonetheless we have a really strong team. I’m looking forward to supporting Kristen and seeing what she can do as our GC leader. Alex has been stepping up in every race so I think she can surprise some people as well. I think we can look for opportunities in every stage and we will be ready to fight every day!”
Faulkner will take on more of a leadership role as Spratt recovers her health and form, the American excited for the race.
“I am beyond excited to be racing in this first edition of the Tour de France Femmes," Faulkner said.
"To be a part of this first edition is really special and meaningful to me. It definitely is a big day for not just me, but also women’s cycling and women’s sports around the world, and I think that it's going to catalyse a pretty big movement and bring a lot of new followers. It's not just a bike race, it's a historical moment.
"I think a lot of teams and a lot of riders are treating this as the most important race of the year and so they're coming in on peak form with high pressure and expectations, and that they're really going to put their best foot forward. We’ll see some of the best racing we've seen all year.
"We are bringing a really deep team and I'm really excited to see what we can do, because this year there's a lot of different types of racing. We have pure sprinter stages, we have a queen stage and then we also have some stages that are more like a classics style course, and I think with the versatile team we’re bringing it gives us opportunities to do well across a variety of different stages.”
WATCH the 2022 Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift LIVE and EXCLUSIVE on SBS, and the SBS ŠKODA Tour Tracker App from 9:30pm (AEST) on July 24. We will also broadcast the Teams Presentation from 7:20pm (AEST) on July 24 LIVE via SBS On Demand.
