9 August, 2024
Women’s cycling burns brightly
It was the year 1984 when a small storm broke out in France. That day, a latent and seemingly harmless lightning bolt struck. Nobody noticed back then, but it would be the start of a fire that would burn wildly many years later.
That year, a women’s version of the Tour de France was held for the first time.
Just one year later, in the Basque Country, two pioneers proposed to five women to be part of the first women’s team in Euskadi. Orbea and Etxeondo sponsored this squad, starting a slow but unstoppable combustion.
At Orbea, we have never understood cycling with gender distinctions; cycling is one and it is big. Perhaps it has to do with the balanced presence of women and men in our cooperative, with women always occupying half of the road. However, the reality outside these walls was very different; outside, every inch of asphalt had to be fought for, and it still does.
That's why, at Orbea, we have always supported women in cycling, through different teams, clubs, schools, races and day-to-day activities.
That first edition of the Tour de France lasted only five years; other versions of the event have been held since, with greater or —rather— lesser fortune.
Therefore, now that the Grand Bouclé is being reborn with all honors and the third edition of this new era is being celebrated, we feel proud and responsible for having kept the fire alive for almost forty years.
Today, it is a living and very visible flame, and in this 2024 Tour de France Femmes, Orbea is present in three teams: Laboral Kutxa-Fundación Euskadi, Ceratizit-WNT and Lotto-Dstny.
Ceratizit-WNT has participated in the three editions and, for the French team, the home Tour is not unfamiliar. For Laboral Kutxa and Lotto-Dstny, it is a dream come true. They will experience their first Tour de France with intensity, and it will not be their last.
Each of the eight stages that make up this tour will be exciting and decisive. This edition starts in the Dutch never-ending flatlands, continues through the toughest profiles of the Belgian Spring Classics, and concludes in two days of pure mountain, with an apotheotic finale on the Alpe d’Huez. Ordu, Orca and Orca Aero are ready and at the service of the cyclists to overcome probably the most demanding challenges of the entire year.
There is still much to conquer. 111 years after that first Tour de France, just for men for so many years, only the first barriers are being broken.
But once the flame is lit, it is unstoppable. At Orbea, we will not stop fueling the fire so that women’s cycling burns wildly and strongly forever.
Achieving glory in the mountains
The last two mountain stages finish on none other than the Alpe d’Huez. Orca, with its lightness and climbing ability, will make its way.
Til the final sprint
From the neverending flats in the south of the Netherlands, to the steep ramps in the Spring Classics territory, Orca Aero will fly to the final sprint, transforming the power of our riders into speed.
No room for error
Six intensive kilometers will test Ordu’s precision in a fast time trial around Rotterdam.