With less than 24 hours to go until the first foreign Tour de France Femme Grand Depart, Lorena Wiebes, Mariana Vos, and Charlotte Kuhl are all looking to win the first stage of the 2024 Tour de France Femme and take the yellow jersey for the Netherlands for the first time, They will race as the leading local riders.

Vives powered up the cobblestones of the Champs-Elysées in 2022 to win in Paris ahead of Vos, but when she spoke to Cycling News before the race, she could not hide her excitement about winning in her home country.

She was scouting the finish of the second stage to Rotterdam, and a Veloviewer view of the Hague finish of the first stage shows a slight bend in the last 3000m before the yellow jersey wearer was decided. For Wiebes, who is pleased that "the last 120-200 meters are slightly uphill," there is no problem with the arrival of the opportunity. [The two flat days from Rotterdam to The Hague and Dordrecht to Rotterdam are the perfect opportunity for her to wear yellow again and run longer. But winning is not the only goal for Wiebes.

"I just want to say, the Champs Elysées was a really special place," she said.

"I also hope a little bit to inspire the younger generation of Dutch cyclists.

You would hope that Vives will be celebrating with his hands in the air at about 15:45 tomorrow, but with the great Marianne Vos and former lead-out rider Charlotte Cool also in the hunt for the maillot jaune, it will be tough to be an important source of inspiration for the Netherlands in the opening sprint race might feel.

"Definitely the first one, because I can't wait for the yellow jersey," Kool replied pleasantly when asked which stage she has her sights set on. But she knows better than anyone the real beauty of Weaves' fierce turns and knack for finding the white line first.

"Of course, she's been at this level for a long time already and knows what to do.

But Kuhl insists she has a plan, which is necessary given that Weaves has 18 wins to her one in 2024 going into the Tour de France femme, and Weaves has a third of that over Kuhl, who is in second place.

"It's simple. Whoever is the fastest wins. I'm in much better shape than I've been in weeks. I'm finally finding the legs I want."

For Kool, 2024 was the season before, when he defeated Wiebes in the UAE Tour and the Simac Ladies Tour, and challenged Wiebes in the flat sprint, something only Elisa Balsamo (Lidl-Trek) and Vos, the current peloton, had done in recent years. Vos.

Illness and bad luck have kept her below peak levels, but she believes she has found the right moment to set Rotterdam's modern streets on fire.

"This big goal has always kept me going, kept me fighting, and kept me believing that the only thing I need my best legs for is racing," Kool said of her current form. For me personally, last year I won every race except the Tour, so maybe this year it's the other way around." Charlotte professes that she was sick at the beginning of the year and couldn't do the legs she wanted. 'We have always focused on ourselves and trusted her.'

Unlike Vives and SD Walks Pro Time, Georgi was focused on the finale of the first stage, and DSM-Filmenig Post NL believes Kool can earn the team a historic victory.

"We scouted tomorrow's stage, the last 60-70 km. It's typical Dutch roads, twisty all day, lots of road furniture and possibly windy. For us, we love echelon and exciting stages," Georgi told Cycling News. [The sprint itself is not that technical, and the last few kilometers are pretty wide open, but the positioning throughout the day is really important and you have to time your finish."

The final piece of the puzzle for the Dutch is Vos, the great serial winner and master of tactics. Vos, a two-time winner of the femme stage in the Tour de France and a two-time winner of the green jersey, knows how to beat Vives.

"The first two days will be very tense. The nervousness is in the group, the women who want to be in the top 10. It's flat, so [the group] won't be stretched, and every DS will tell all the riders to go to the front," she told Cycling News and Cycling Weekly.

"In the end, it all comes down to nerves. We have good riders, good bike handlers. It's also cool that a group sprint is expected."

Vos is not panicking as he has had similar experiences before, but he is also aware of the threat of Vives, a major contender, and the absence of world champion Lotte Kopecky and a strong leadout led by Barabara Guariski. The Visma-Ries A bike riders will be looking for a flat sprint, aided by Anna Henderson and cyclo-cross world champion Femme van Empel, but the punchy day to Amneville on stage 5 may be Vos' time to shine.

Tomorrow evening in The Hague should be a Dutch delight, albeit with Italy's Balsamo waiting in the wings.

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