Sofa cushions plumped at the ready, cupboards stockpiled with tea bags and biscuits: it’s been a busy weekend of preparations for  women’s cycling enthusiasts  eager to settle in for the epic marathon of May racing that awaits. Two Grand Tours in one month? Yes please. 

The next five weeks are a goldmine for fans of the sport, who will no doubt be raring to gobble up the delicious spectacle of the La Vuelta Femenina, which began yesterday and precedes the rescheduled Giro d’Italia Women at the end of the month. 

But while we can rejoice in giddy glee at the jam-packed racing schedule of the coming weeks, it also raises the question of how much racing can, and should be, packed into such a short window. Today, as cycling’s finest lined up on the startline in Lobios for the second stage of the Vuelta Femenina, The Cyclists’ Alliance published their submission to the UCI, cycling’s governing body, emboldening a number of threats to the future of women’s professional cycling. Included in the lengthy document is a clear outline of race distributions across the season. 

What appears to be an extravaganza of racing is in reality a spike in an unduly lopsided race calendar which sees the women’s peloton draw the short straw: there are 23 days of racing in approximately one month, from 3rd May to 7th June. There are then only 22 days in the four months from July to October.

“At the moment, the calendar is really problematic,” says Deena Blacking, managing director of The Cyclists’ Alliance, speaking to Rouleur on the eve of the busiest month women’s WorldTour cycling has ever seen. Ironically, it’s a period which happens to coincide with the April 30 deadline set by the UCI when they called for stakeholder consultations on major issues in the sport – including the race calendar – back in February. 

“Unless there’s a conscious effort made to design a calendar that allows the sport to be showcased, and then to organise broadcasting of the sport in a way that allows the story to be told across the whole season, we’re limiting the sport in its own growth.

“A third of the women’s WorldTour race days are in one month. It’s evident that the UCI could have thought about it more, because it comes back to the fact that if you want to showcase the sport, it can’t be congested,” Blacking continues.

(Image credit: Getty) 

One of the reasons behind this upcoming congestion is the major schedule shift of the Giro d’Italia Women from its traditional July slot during the Tour de France to immediately after the men’s Giro. There are of course lots of positive things to say about this change for a race usually drowned out by the brouhaha of the men’s Tour finally getting the spotlight it deserves. 

But it also brings other challenges to do with visibility and media coverage. For one, there remains a clash between the final two stages of the men’s race, and the beginning of the women’s edition in Cesenatico, occurring over the final weekend of May. How those broadcast timings are going to be mapped out is yet to be confirmed, but one only has to look to this year’s Paris-Roubaix to see how frighteningly easy it is to give races unequal visibility under minimum broadcast requirements for Women’s WorldTour races. Under current requirements, only the last 45 minutes of a race must be shown. 

Being pulled away from the first two stages of a nine day race (which accounts for approximately 25% of the total distance due to be raced) is like missing the opening scenes of your favourite movie. You miss narrative context, key developments, breakaways, rivalries. Stage 1 and 2 this year are flat stages for the fast women: a back-to-back victory is likely, and with bonus points on the line, the Maglia Rosa will probably not change hands. It’s a key period for the sprinter who will wear pink for that window of time in terms of sponsorship and publicity. But as audiences eyes’ will no doubt be averted to the double ascent of the Stage 20 Piancavallo climb in the men’s race, that exposure will be compromised. 

The situation is set to be similar this weekend. On Saturday afternoon, the women’s peloton will tackle the Alto de L’Angliru for the first time in history, 27 years after it first featured in the men’s race. The inclusion of the hardest climb in professional cycling (12.4 kilometres at 9.7% average, with slopes as steep as 23%) in the women’s edition is a watershed moment for the sport. The race feature has been flouted across press releases and social media by race organisers, teams, and athletes, and rightly so – the summit will be the race’s great decider, a hallmark achievement for those who scale it, and a tangible sign of just how far the sport has come. 

It’s a spectacle that should – and will – be broadcast for all to see. But it also clashes with Stage 2 of the men’s Giro in a schedule which forces fans to make a choice between the two, and in doing so detracts from each race’s achievements. The situation is frustrating because it is avoidable: 

“One of the big things that we talk about in our submission is the importance of the calendar being better coordinated for the good of everyone,” explains Blacking. “For example, let’s say there’s a million people who want to watch cycling on Saturday 9th May. Let’s say 75 percent watch the Giro and 25 percent watch the Vuelta Femenina. But if you put them on the Saturday and the Sunday, or the Friday and the Saturday, then you get one million on one day and one million on another day. It’s not rocket science, but it does require a lot of coordination with race organisers. It’s a whole ecosystem that constantly needs a really good caretaker.” 

We understand that getting the security for roads is really expensive,” she continues, “but if geographically they’re totally far away and not using the same people, then it makes less sense.”

Shari Bossuyt took her first WorldTour win in a Stage 2 sprint finish at this year's Vuelta Femenina (Image credit: Getty) 

One of the proposals put forward by The Cyclists’ Alliance’s submission to the UCI is to move the Vuelta Femenina to follow the men’s Vuelta in September. This is not because women’s sport needs to lean on men’s sport to generate fans – the record audiences of last year’s Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift are proof enough of that – but because of the urgent need for a more even distribution of races.  

“Obviously it would be too simplistic to say it always has to be one way, or always has to be on different races on different days. But ultimately, I think the outcome is you want to have a standalone race experience that is complete for a women’s race, whether that means the broadcasting starts at a moment where a spectator can understand the race, or whether it means that the race is put on without something that might draw people away from it,” says Blacking. 

And what of the athletes caught up in all of this? Sure, those watching at home will be smacking their lips at the prospect of five weeks of back-to-back bike racing, but for those actually racing, or having to choose which races to partake in, it’s a more nuanced story. Riders who have just conquered the cobbled Classics and the Ardennes have just a week to turn around before another full month of racing. 

Blacking explains: “There are riders who I have seen and met in person, and have joked with them like ‘oh, you survived the Classics. How are you feeling about May?’ and they just kind of roll their eyes. I have friends who are mechanics and they’re cracked, they’re struggling.”  

Speaking to riders puts into perspective the reality of May’s racing demands. AG Insurance-Soudal’s Mireia Benito, who is riding the Vuelta a Burgos Feminas and the Vuelta Femenina this month, explained the physical and psychological toll of this period: 

“On the performance side, it’s tricky because you’re often trying to hold peak condition for several weeks in a row. Normally you build towards one or two key goals, but here you’re asked to be at a very high level repeatedly, with limited recovery,” says the 29-year-old.

“There’s also a big psychological component, especially coming from the Classics. The peloton is always much more tense in those races, and that constant stress also requires a lot of energy, sometimes as much as the physical effort itself. It’s not uncommon that after a tough Classics block, some teams arrive at races like La Vuelta a España already quite short on riders because of illness or accumulated fatigue. And adapting the body from short explosive efforts to the sustained efforts of stage races is not always straightforward.” 

Benito riding at Amstel Gold 2026 (Image credit: Getty) 

Benito also suggested how such a busy schedule can make balancing team priorities with longer term individual development a difficult task. And when so many important races overlap, it can dilute the level of competition across events, making it harder for teams to show up with their strongest line-ups at each race. 

“Sometimes you have to skip races that would suit you, or race when you’re not fully fresh because of team needs or calendar structure. As riders, we don’t always have full control over the calendar we race, but internally there’s always this balance between supporting the team, targeting specific results, and your own fulfillment.

“Having such a dense calendar does create a lot of opportunities, more chances to race, to learn, and to find your moment. I really enjoy having a full calendar,” the Spanish time-trial champion concludes. “If anything, I wouldn’t reduce the number of races, but rather distribute them more evenly across the season. Especially later in the year, spreading some of those opportunities into summer and autumn could create a better overall balance.”

The storylines of women’s racing over the last month are a pageantry promise of the action to come this summer: the reign of Demi Vollering; the rise of Paula Blasi; the return of Kasia Niewiadoma. La Vuelta Femenina has so far been no different.  EF-Education Oatly’s Noemi Rüegg flew to the maillot rojo yesterday  ahead of Milan-Sanremo victor Lotte Kopecky and Roubaix champion Franziska Koch at the uphill sprint finish in Salvaterra de Miño, while Marianne Vos arrived in seventh place despite sporting a broken collarbone. Today, Shari Boyssut stunned the field with her first WorldTour win. These performances are a testimony to the progress of the sport over the last decade, which now deserves a schedule – and a system –  that honours it. The urgency of that situation is made crystal clear in the statement made by Italian champion Elisa Longo Borghini, included in the opening lines of the Cyclists Alliance’s letter: “I’m afraid that the [Women’s] WorldTour could implode at some point.”

Stock-up on movie snacks. Plump up your sofa cushions. Feast your eyes on the plethora of bike racing this month. But do so in the knowledge that things could – and should – be better.