The opening stages of the Virtual Tour de France might be over but Matt Rowe, Dani Rowe, and Greg Henderson have all the racing analysis to help you race like a pro. Looking back at stages 1 and 2, they reflect on what the riders said in their post-race interviews (see previous episode) and how to master the supertuck. But with stages 3 and 4 looming, the hosts can’t resist talking about the next two courses on the brand new France routes!Â
Catch post-race interviews every Monday and mid-week updates every Thursday until the end of the Virtual Tour de France.
This weekend continues the Virtual Tour de France along with the massively popular l’Etape du Tour series. You’ll want to participate in those events, but there are other standouts as well – here are our picks!
Special thanks to Jesper at ZwiftHacks with his Events app which provides powerful event filtering tools that help us create this list each week.
Watch the Virtual Tour de France, Stages 3 & 4
Tomorrow is our second weekend of Virtual Tour de France action, and you don’t want to miss it! World tour pros from 23 men’s and 16 women’s teams will meet up to battle it out in teams of four across the roads of Zwift’s new France map. Stage 3 will be on the R.G.V. route, and stage 4 is on Casse-Pattes.
Stage 3: Saturday at 2pm BST/9am EDT/6am PDT Stage 4: Sunday at 2pm BST/9am EDT/6am PDT
L’Etape du Tour, Stage 2
With over 50,000 riders riding last weekend’s stage 1, it’s clear the L’Etape du Tour series is massively popular. Come take on 2 laps of the Casse-Pattes route – the flattest L’Etape du Tour stage of the series. Race and see how you stack up against others, or just make it a personal challenge to finish.
This monthly century ride is one of the most popular of its kind on Zwift, and now it has expanded to include shorter B (60 miles) and C (20 miles) options.
The weekend is a wonderful time for a long run. There are several longer run events scheduled for this weekend – here’s one! Find an event that fits your schedule and get some endurance work put into those legs.
Ready for a long effort? The Sunday 100km KISS races are a long-standing, popular weekly community event. With two time slots to fit the schedules of EU and Americas-based riders, you should be able to find one that works! This week’s races are on Watopia flat Tick Tock route.
The latest Zwift update is now available on all platforms. The update is a very minor one, mostly consisting of minor tweaks to Zwift’s new France and Paris maps. Let’s dig into the details…
The update includes “Tweaks to the new France and Paris maps including distance markers for Mont Ventoux as well as adding running paddocks.”
Zwifters have been a bit spoiled by Alpe du Zwift’s segment tracking and custom minimap, and early feedback from riders has consistently said it would be nice to have some sort of progress meter on the way up Mont Ventoux, especially since it takes approximately 50% longer than the Alpe to conquer!
Zwift has added the iconic Mont Venoux distance markers in-game at every kilometer. Strangely, we couldn’t spot one at the summit, which is the marker most photographed by riders IRL! But the important thing is the progress markers on the way up.
There were certainly some visual updates to the routes, and although we haven’t had a chance to take a close look, we noticed some new text on the road up Mont Ventoux! Here’s one example, calling out the names of some top women racers:
L’Etape Jersey Fix
This update also “Fixed an issue with the Virtual L’Etape du Tour de France 2020 jersey not appearing correctly.” Last week’s L’Etape finishers noticed that the jersey they unlocked didn’t match the jersey shown in the event screenshots. This has now been fixed.
Old (incorrect) kit
New (correct) kit
Android Improvements
On Android, the update includes a few additional notes:
Enable high-quality graphics for newer Android GPUs:
Samsung S20 worldwide models (Adreno & Mali)
Google Pixel 5
LG Velvet
Huawei MediaPad M6
Stability improvements
The high-quality graphics note is good news for some Android users – we’ve already seen some comments from Zwifters on Android who have said the graphics look much nice after this update.
Other Updates
Update notes included these two minor notes as well:
Fixed a bug where other riders would swerve on the road or ride in circles in some situations.
Fixed an issue with Japanese text in the Drop Shop.
It’s a good day when you get an email from Zwift with the subject “A VIP invite to test our latest feature!” And that’s exactly what happened to me on June 23rd, as ZwiftHQ’s Wes Salmon sent out an email to myself and thousands of my closest friends with an invite to try FutureWorks Boost Mode in a race.
I had raced a Club Jarvis-only boost mode event back on May 5th, but Zwift was now expanding the testing to “long time members of our race community,” so the number of riders would be much greater. And the races this time around were longer than my previous 12-mile Boost Mode effort – this time we were doing 10 laps of Watopia’s Volcano Circuit. Over 27 miles!
Warmup
The race wasn’t until 11am, so I had a nice bowl of oatmeal for breakfast, got some work done, then chewed two pieces of caffeine gum and rubbed some PR lotion on the legs as race time drew near. I got in a solid 25-minute warmup on Tick Tock, ramping my heart rate up to 160bpm and putting in a few small efforts. Then it was time to head for the pens.
My warmup. Check out that nice heart rate ramp!
The Setup
Upon clicking to join the event I was greeted with the Boost Mode setup screen. This explained nicely how boost mode works. Simply put: you get to choose your boost type. You have to charge the boost with your own watts. Then you can use the boost to increase your watts for a set period of time. Simple enough!
On the next screen is where you make The Big Decision. Do you go for “Efficient” which only adds 11 pounds to your weight, but also only boosts you by 50 watts? Or go with “Power Burst” for a 500 watt boost, even if it adds 22 pounds? Then there’s “Balanced” which sits in between the two.
I really wanted to try Power Burst – it would be amazing in a final sprint, assuming I could reach the button to activate it! But I went Balanced instead. Blame the middle child in me. Or perhaps my terror at the thought of adding 22 pounds (that would return me close to my “pre-cyclist” weight.) But really, +50 watts just didn’t seem substantial enough, and only 5 seconds of 500 watts didn’t feel long enough. So Balanced it was.
The Start
Once I selected my boost and clicked “I’m Ready” I was taken to the start pens. My screen still included an option to change my boost, which is available until the event begins. And everyone was chatting about Boost Mode. “Which one did you pick?” (As if I would ever divulge such secrets!) I queued up my Zwift playlist, P.O.D. began playing “Set it off”, and the clock hit 0. Let’s race!
340 watts for 2-1/2 minutes got me onto the Volcano Circuit in the front pack. Our group of 91 was shrinking fast, but the pace wasn’t too wild. In fact, I felt good enough to charge booth of my boost “cells” before we even hit the Circuit, which meant I was fully charged and ready to blast off when the time was right:
Fully charged
I used my first boost just after the kicker which takes you back into the Volcano. The pack was stretching out (it always does!) so I figured a little boost would help me get back into position a little easier. And it did! Although the 200-watt boost only lasted 8.5 seconds, it sure was noticeable.
Boosting my way into position
Boosting Like a Boss
After traveling through the Volcano Circuit banner to complete our first lap, we hit the down ramp out of the Volcano. I hit the button to charge my boost there, because it makes sense to charge your boost on the easiest parts of the course. My “Balanced” boost required an extra 100 watts to charge, but that wasn’t a big deal on the descent where I normally almost soft-pedal to stay off the front of the pack.
One thing I noticed right away, though, was that my boosts took a long time to charge. I knew that each cell gave an 8.5-second boost, but my charge felt like it was taking 3x that long! While Wes at ZwiftHQ has told me there’s a slight “charging tax” for a boost, this was way beyond that. (I chatted with Wes after the race, and he discovered a bug in the event configuration which caused this.)
A few laps in, I used a boost to attack at a random flat point just to see how far I could get off the front. It worked like a charm! Unfortunately, nobody followed, so I was soon absorbed by the blob.
Attack!
I soon found a rhythm – recharge my boost on the descent out of the Volcano, use it on the kicker back into the Volcano. It made my overall effort on each circuit much more even, which meant it all felt easier.
Our B pack was moving along at a decent clip, but it wasn’t so bad that I was on the rivet. That’s a fun place to be in a race, because it lets you put in little attacks on the front or chase others who are doing the same.
I’m not sure if we just had a slightly weaker field for this race, or if everyone was just having fun testing out boost mode. But there definitely seemed to be a more casual “feel” to the peloton. By lap 8 only 26 riders remained in the front pack, and the joking began:
The Finish
I scored an aero powerup at the 8th lap banner and elected to keep it until the finish line. My goal was to have both boost cells charged going into the final stretch, so I could activate both while also using the aero powerup.
My one fear was that someone would put in a big attack on the final kicker up into the Volcano, and I would need to use a boost there to stay in contact. If that happened, it would mean recharging in the heated final minutes of the last lap, or going into the last sprint with only one boost. Neither option was a good one, so I made sure I moved to the front of the pack before the little kicker, then put in a good dig to maintain a good position. Whew! All good. Fully charged.
Now it was just a question of sitting in as much as possible, then jumping at the right time. But when was the right time? Just after we passed the turn to the glass bridge (0.7 miles to go), I noticed we had a couple of riders up the road who we would be catching in seconds. Confusion… and a bit of a draft slingshot. Other riders had the same idea, and before I could jump Moriyama, and Goodman had activated their boosts, and Hall and Vos had jumped as well!
I bumped up my watts to grab their wheels, then as we came back together I clicked to activate my first boost, bumping up my wattage as well in hopes of catching the front rider’s wheel. I got there, then clicked the second boost and activated my aero powerup just as we entered the Volcano. I was going too early, but I had a lot of momentum and was hoping to break the elastic and solo to glory with an epic sprint!
I shifted into high gear, got out of the saddle, and went all-in. Have I ever even raced the Circuit in this direction? How long is this sprint? It was long. Hall was on my tail and closing, and I was grunting and groaning, going all-in. Pain is temporary. Hall came around at the last second, and I thought he had pipped me at the line with a perfectly-timed sprint. But the results screen popped up, and here’s what I saw:
Hurray! A rare win… by just one hundredth of a second. Well done Bryan Hall! DIRT teammate Ryan Frey took a close third.
I recorded this race, so you could see boost mode in action. Enjoy!
Takeaways
This was my second boost mode race (read about my first here). A lot of my takeaway thoughts from this event experience mirror the first: I think boost mode will be really popular once it’s released, because it adds an interesting new dimension to the race, allowing you to be more strategic in how you dose your efforts. Boost mode basically lets you “exaggerate” the typical racer approach of “conserve all you can, so you’ve got legs when you need them.” Boost mode is just a very straightforward, visual way to save up watts so you can use them when you need them.
I do think the Companion interface could be improved – the buttons to charge and use a boost are small and right next to each other, which can lead to accidentally pushing the wrong one.
But overall, I’m bullish on the boost. Hope to see it soon out of FutureWorks and in the wild!
The first race of the first-ever Virtual Tour de France race saw 16 pro women’s teams taking on 4 laps of Watopia’s Hilly Reverse Route. This punchy 9.7km route doesn’t leave much time for resting with its rollers, sprint segment, and QOM climb. It becomes a race of attrition, with the front group slowly reducing in size all the way until the top of the final QOM effort.
Winning here requires you to be strong enough to hold on up the climb, with the power to sprint to the line against a small selection of riders. And it helps to have precise timing with a helpful powerup for the finish!
Here’s our complete race writeup for the women’s first stage. You may also watch the full broadcast on YouTube, or view the short highlight video below (includes women’s and men’s races):
The Start
With 16 women’s teams in the race each bringing 4 riders to the start pens, our starting field was 64 strong. But that group was quickly whittled down to ~30 riders before the pack hit the first QOM!
We didn’t get to see the first 3-1/2 minutes of the race, but obviously some riders were pushing the pace hard. This is a Zwift race, after all, and experienced Zwifters know that pushing the pace for the first few minutes reduces the pack of contenders quickly.
The Points Begin
Reminder: the Virtual Tour de France is a team points race, so it is important to keep track of how teams were using their riders in order to take leaders jerseys.
Borghini taking another sprint
Elisa Longo Borghini (Trek-Segafredo) attacked long into the sprint section on the first lap, easily winning the first points of the first vTdF. (She would do the same on the second and third lap, and go on to win the “Most Combative” jersey for stage 1).
Then it was a bit of recovery over the cobbles of the Italian Villas before riders hit the reverse hilly QOM. Joscelin Lowden (Drops) took the first QOM, and would go on to take it on laps two and three as well.
Attrition and Position
The pack of riders was slowly being reduced as the laps wore on, but two teams (Canyon/SRAM and CCC-Liv) managed to keep four riders in the front pack until the final lap. This is a hugely important piece of the points strategy, as the top 25 riders crossing the finish line earned points (as well as the top 10 on sprints, and top 3 on the Hilly QOM). And while both of these teams kept 4 riders in the front pack, it was Canyon/SRAM who got more of their riders over the line in front, winning significantly more points than CCC-Liv.
With one lap go, ~24 riders were still in contention in the front pack. Borghini didn’t go long on the final sprint, leaving it open for Chantal Blaak (Boels Dolmans) to take the fourth sprint. Blaak followed her sprint win with a nice attack with the cloaking powerup near the end of the final QOM. She managed to create a small gap, but was soon reeled in by Erica Magnaldi (Ceratizit-WNT), who had been chasing the QOM win all race.
Magdalin was then leapfrogged by Lowden, and it looked like Lowden had the QOM in bag once again! But Magnaldi put in a massive final dig, beating Lowden over the line and taking her first QOM on the day.
Supertucking into downtown Watopia
The Finish
Riders attempted to supertuck on the QOM descent, but this is a touchy proposition with such a short descent and a flat section in the middle. A small selection of 8 riders was together at the front as they descended through the flamme rouge (1km to go) banner, but they played a bit of cat and mouse heading into the finish. This allowed a group of 5 to catch just as the final sprint began, but none of those 5 had the legs to contest it to the line.
The finishing sprint was a lesson in powerup timing. Reigning TT World Champ Chloe Dygert (Twenty20) went first, popping an aero powerup and powering off the front. April Tacey activated her powerup just a few seconds later, and flew past Dygert as her powerup ran out. Chantal Blaak popped her aero powerup too late, missing out on the chance for a bit more boost.
Kristen Faulkner (Tibco-Silicon Valley Bank), meanwhile, didn’t have a powerup to use. All she had were her legs – and that’s the most important part! April Tacey was first to the line, taking a well-timed win in this first stage of the women’s Virtual Tour de France.
Was Tacey’s powerup timing luck, or skill? She said, “My plan was that if I got an aero boost with a few laps to go to keep it and use it for the final. I had it with two laps to go and my brother clicked the aero boost with 300 meters to go and then I just gave it my all.”
Nice work, bro.
The finish
Stage 1 Women’s Podium
1 April Tacey (Drops Cycling) 2 Kristen Faulkner (Tibco-Silicon Valley Bank) 3 Chantal Van Den Broek-Blaak (Boels-Dolmans Cycling Team)
Jersey Classifications
Yellow Jersey – Drops Cycling Sprint green jersey – Canyon / SRAM Racing QOM polkadot jersey – Drops Cycling Young rider white jersey – Canyon / SRAM Racing
Overall Team Classification
1 Canyon/SRAM Racing 2 Tibco-Silicon Valley Bank 3 Boels-Dolmans
This weekend saw history made as the first two stages of the 6-stage Virtual Tour de France were raced in Watopia. The men and women took on the Hilly Reverse Route for stage one, then the Mountain Route for stage two. As a huge TdF fan who has watched and ridden in hundreds of Zwift races since I first hooked up my smart trainer in November of 2015, I couldn’t wait for the vTdF to begin.
What would it look like for the world’s top pros to take on routes I’ve ridden hundreds of times, virtual roads I know like the back of my hand? And how would Zwift up their broadcast game now that they were visible on the world stage?
Needless to say, the first two stages didn’t disappoint! Here are my thoughts on stage 1 and 2 of the Virtual Tour de France.
Slow Starts?
All the commentators I heard made a point of saying something along the lines of “Zwift starts are always really hard and fast, but the pros today won’t be starting as hard as a typical Zwift race, because they’re used to the easier starts of outdoor racing.”
This makes sense – and if you watched any of the Team INEOS races in past months, you may have noted that they started in a more sedate fashion and unfolded very much like an outdoor race, with a breakaway getting away up the road, the chase group working together to keep the breakaway within striking distance, etc.
But here’s the thing: this weekend’s stages didn’t start easily. While it makes sense that they would have, that’s not what happened! My guess? There were enough experienced Zwifters in the race pushing the pace that anyone looking for an easy start got dropped… hard.
Here is stage 1 winner Ryan Gibbons’ Zwift activity. Let’s look at the first few minutes of the race: from the start to the top of the kicker before the descent to the sprint. He made it to the top of this kicker in 2:54.
Now let’s look at a few recent community races on the same route. Here’s the data from the winner of a 3-lapper. He made it to that same point in 3:08. 14 seconds slower, across just three minutes! And that’s the fastest start I could find in a community race (although admittedly, I didn’t spend hours looking, and the tools to search are pretty rudimentary). Most races took more like ~3:20 to get to that same point. My best time ever was 3:13 to that point. Humbling.
So the pros started hard. And they kept going hard to the end! (See “Lap Times” below for more on that.)
Hopefully Zwift will televise the starts of races moving forward – and hopefully the commentators can communicate the crucial moves going on in those first few minutes, when a good portion of the field gets whittled down as stronger riders push it at the front.
Zwift Raceview
Have you seen Zwift’s web-based “Raceview” tool? I just happened to come across a link to it, but it hasn’t been publicized much as far as I can tell. This is the start of something really cool! It shows the riders’ positions on course, and lets you click to select a rider to view their particular position. Here’s a quick video of me poking around in Zwift Raceview during the men’s stage 1:
Of course, I see a tool like this and think of 10 things I would add. I would love to see additional stats for riders: some power numbers, heart rate, etc. I want to be able to click on a circle and see who it is. And a live points view would be really useful, so we can see where each team stands as they hit point segments.
But still, in its current state, this is a useful tool with tons of potential! See it at zwift.com/raceview.
Lap Times
Curious whether these riders were really giving it their all? Wondering just what kind of performance a top-level pro can put out?
Check out the Strava leaderboard for the “Hilly Route Reverse from Start Gate” segment, and you’ll see that only 6 entries in the top 25 are from events outside of Saturday’s vTdF race. This was a pack of top-level pros pinning it. In fact, 37 of the top 50 slots are now taken by vTdF riders.
And the same happened on stage 2! The leaderboard for “Mountain Route Forward 1 Lap from Start Pier” shows 10 of the top 11 spots taken by the riders who attacked hard up the climb and got away in stage 2. Not bad, considering 51,800 riders have their times ranked on this segment.
The Pros are Learning
In past high-level races which included veteran Zwift community teams as well as pro riders it was clear that the pros lacked Zwift experience. We’d see them hammering on the front then blowing up, using powerups at the wrong time, or getting caught out on small climbs on routes they clearly didn’t know well.
But the pros are learning. I suppose that’s what a couple months of forced indoor training will do to a rider! Watching the broadcasts it was clear that many of the riders knew their way around powerups, the supertuck, and other details that newbies struggle to grasp.
Wheels and Frames
Zwifters know that in-game frames and wheels perform differently, since they’re given particular characteristics which change their aerodynamics and weight. Race commentators (and ZwiftHQ, in the stream chats) mentioned that all of the riders’ bikes were set up with the same performance characteristics.
I found this interesting, since it hadn’t been common practice in past Zwift eSports events. I was also curious how this worked, since it was clear that different teams were riding different frames and wheelsets in the vTdF competition. (They weren’t just “skinned” differently – they were actually different frame designs. And wheels clearly varied between riders.) Here’s a screenshot of the men’s stage 1 race where you can clearly see different frames and wheelsets being used:
Here’s what ZwiftHQ said in response to my query:
For the Tour de France we have neutralised all in-game equipment to ensure all the teams are on equal standing. Bikes and wheels share the same characteristics. We actually did the same for the Tour for All. Due to time restrictions, we weren’t able to build all the team bikes, so some of the teams are riding Zwift bikes with skins.
While neutralizing equipment for all Zwift races doesn’t seem like a good idea (it adds a fun element of strategy to the game, and Zwifters need incentives to keep unlocking new stuff!), it makes good sense in the vTdF. It would leave a bad taste in many mouths to learn that riders with more Zwift XP were given a speed advantage.
Drafting Tweaks
It’s also been mentioned that the draft was somehow modified for these races. This is big news, since the draft is a cornerstone feature of Zwift racing.
Here’s what ZwiftHQ said about it:
For the drag question, we often experiment with the algorithms relating to in-game physics. Ahead of the Tour de France, we ran a number of community test events with new drafting algorithm. The new draft makes it easier in the wheels and help to encourage a more aggressive style of racing.
I’d love to get more details – but that’s all I’ve got! It would be really interesting to know what specifically was tweaked. It sounds like the draft effect was increased (“easier to sit in the wheels”) but is that all? Is it just the double draft?
Surely it’s more than that, because Zwift would have learned by now that simply the increasing the draft effect (e.g., Double Draft) doesn’t encourage a more aggressive style of racing, since it increases overall pack speeds and makes it harder to get away and stay away. Perhaps they changed the level of draft stickiness so there’s less churn on the front, reducing the overall pack speeds?
Camera Angles and Views
Clearly Zwift made a pile of improvements to its broadcasting tools for the vTdF. New camera angles made watching the race action more engaging – there were at least a couple of new sort of “elevated moto” angles that worked really well.
I especially liked the “single rider camera” mode where all other riders were ghosted out. It really let you see what that particular rider was doing, and was especially powerful when coupled with live view like they did with Erica Magnaldi in stage 1 (see below).
Lower Numbers, Higher Excitement
One sentiment I’ve seen echoed in the Zwift community (and one I agree with) is that these races are much more fun to watch when the number of riders is low. Watching a mass of even 20 riders just isn’t interesting – there’s so much churn happening in the pack that you can’t pick out who is who, which riders are putting in good work on the front, etc.
But whittle that down to a group of 5-10, and you’ve got a race on your hands. Now you can see which riders are doing what, and things become much more engaging.
Zwift made a good decision in limiting teams to just 4 riders, which keeps the overall pack size down. And the sprint and KOM points help encourage attacks, which helps to string out and break up the group somewhat. But nothing breaks up a group like a 10-15 minute climb! The race got really interesting once riders neared the top of the epic KOM and made their way onto the radio tower in stage 2.
More Live Video
Showing a live rider on screen while we see their avatar in-game is significantly more engaging than the game view on its own. I hope Zwift works to increase their usage of quality live feeds, because it really takes the broadcast to the next level!
My favorite live stream moment was when we get to watch Ludwig and Magnaldi as they battled their way up the radio tower climb in the women’s stage 2. Ludwig in her sunglasses, Magnaldi and her incredible strength – with wattage and heartrate shown along with the live video, we could see the riders in (arguably) a more intimate way than we ever would in an outdoor race. And that’s a big deal.
Conclusions
Zwift has upped their broadcast game heading into the vTdF, and it shows. Pro riders, as well, are clearly much better Zwift racers than they’ve been in the past. With everyone striving for Tour-level excellence, the experience for spectators will continue to improve. So I’m looking forward to next weekend!
Your Thoughts
I’d love to hear what you thought of stages 1 and 2. Share below!
As the opening weekend of racing comes to a close, Matt Rowe and Dani Rowe sit down with the winners of each race. The adrenaline is still pumping and most of them are still on their trainers, so we get the freshest insight possible into just how hard the first two stages of the Virtual Tour de France were.
April Tacey (DROPS), Ryan Gibbons (NTT PRO CYCLING TEAM), Lauren Stephens (TEAM TIBCO – SILICON VALLEY BANK), and Julian Bernard (TREK-SEGAFREDO) share all as Greg Henderson analyses the small details of the weekend’s racing.
Catch post-race interviews every Monday and mid-week updates every Thursday until the end of the Virtual Tour de France.
Matt sits down for a quick catch up with none other than “The Grip”, Mark Allen. They have a casual conversation about what’s been going on in Mark’s world, how to stay motivated in training these days, the value of a good old fashioned walk, and why Mark’s sporting a new head scar!
About the Podcast:
The Zwift PowerUp Tri Podcast is hosted by former pro triathletes Matt Lieto and Jordan Rapp, lending their in-depth knowledge of the multisport to the Zwift Tri audience.
Between live streams of the Virtual Tour de France and the massively popular l’Etape du Tour series, this was already going to be Zwift’s biggest weekend yet in terms of event participation. But on top of all the TdF action we’ve got our regular slate of special partner events and ongoing community group rides and races. So it’s going to be an unprecedented weekend, for sure!
Here are 5 events you may want to check out this weekend.
Special thanks to Jesper at ZwiftHacks with his Events app which provides powerful event filtering tools that help us create this list each week.
Watch the Virtual Tour de France, Stages 1 & 2
The first Virtual Tour de France in history kicks off tomorrow, and you don’t want to miss it! World tour pros from 23 men’s and 16 women’s teams will meet up to battle it out in teams of four across the roads of Watopia. This is the first of three weekends of points-based team racing.
Stage 1: Saturday at 2pm BST/9am EDT/6am PDT Stage 2: Sunday at 2:02pm BST/9:02am EDT/6:02am PDT
L’Etape du Tour, Stage 1
This year, for the first time ever, Zwift is hosting the Virtual l’Etape du Tour de France as part of the virtual TdF. (Zwift hosted a single l’Etape du Tour event in 2019, but there was no corresponding virtual pro race.) This year’s Zwift event series will allow participants to test themselves on the same (virtual) roads as the professionals, like the outdoor event, but across three stages instead of just one.
With over 30,000 riders signed up for stage 1 at the time of this post, Zwift’s L’Etape 2020 series looks like it will be the most popular event series in Zwiftstory! Come take on the Mountain Route as a race and see how you stack up against others, or just make it a personal challenge to finish.
The culmination of the Cervelo Rise to the Challenge series, this race requires a TT bikes, which means no drafting. Do you have what it takes to complete the Zwift Gran Fondo route?
The second event in a 3-month Fondo series targeting the Southern Hemisphere, these events have plenty of time slots that work for Northerns also. If you’re looking to put in a long ride, check these out!
Ribble Ride to Raise Funds – in association with Cure Leukaemia
Saturday 4th July is GT Day – created by Cure Leukaemia and Patron Geoff Thomas, the former England International footballer, to mark 17 years since his leukaemia diagnosis. GT Day is part of GT15 – where Geoff and a team of amateur cyclists ride the complete Tour de France a day ahead of the pros.
Ride to Raise Funds x GT Day by Ribble has two different course options, and a collection of famous riders will be riding with Geoff and the rest of us. Choose from the shorter 25.5km Tour of Fire and Ice route or for the more complete TdF stage experience, the 89.3km Four Horsemen route.
