Cagey start at TDF Femmes; the UCI's quest against motor doping; Claire Steels, the 36yo WorldTour debutant; educating the Tour's new fans

RadioCycling

that As the Tour de France Femmes reaches its halfway point, these are RadioCycling's headlines...
The first three stages of the TDF Femmes have seen plenty of weather, crashes and abandons, but the GC battle has been cagey, with Demi Vollering's Team SD Worx and Annemiek van Vleuten's sparring with each other, but not yet looking to delier knockout blows. We hear from defending champion Van Vleuten on why the GC contest has been a waiting game.
Amidst the conjecture and scepticism that was triggered during the final week of the Tour de France, there were rumours of technological fraud — or motor doping. There's only been one proven case of this occurring, back in 2016. Since then, the UCI has made the issue one of its priorities. We hear from Mick Rogers, the former pro who is now the UCI's head of road and innovation, who explains what the ruling body is up to with frame-scanning iPads and a state-of the-art X-ray machine.
Returning to the Tour de France Femmes, we speak to Claire Steels, the 36-year-old who's racing her debut WorldTour season and is the main GC hope for the Israel-PremierTech-Roland GC team. Having only taken up racing in 2020, Britain's Steels tells us that she believes she can be in the mix on the race's queen stage, to the summit of the Tourmalet.
Post-Covid, post-Netflix, the Tour is changing and is going to have to come to terms with a younger, more boisterous audience than in the past. But how will the race promoters ASO respond to these changes? As the Tour ended, we caught up with the man who designs, administers and manages the course, Thierry Gouvenou, who confesses that educating selfie-seeking fans is vital and explains how ropes rather than barriers may provide a solution to the mayhem witnesssed on several mountain stages earlier this month.
And finally, in Ground Beans,
– Sandra Alonso delights fan with teddy gift
– López suspended by the UCI
– And the last joke on "Beergate"

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