Interview: Pro-Cyclist Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio and Zwift's Kate Veronneau, on the Tour de France Femmes

In this episode, Jessica Luther talks Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio and Kate Veronneau about the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, which is the first time in over 30 years women have been allowed to compete under the Tour de France brand name.

Ashleigh is a pro-cyclist from South Africa with Team SD Worx. She won first place in the first ever eSports World Championships in 2020. Kate is the Director of Women's Strategy at Zwift, the sponsor of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift. The Tour De France Femmes Avec Zwift begins on July 24 in Paris and runs until July 31.

They discuss how Kate and Ash came to cycling, the challenges women's professional cycling has faced in getting consistent exposure in the media, and the ways virtual cycling has helped grow a fanbase for the women's circuit.

This episode was produced by Tressa Versteeg. Shelby Weldon is our social media and website specialist. Burn It All Down is part of the Blue Wire podcast network.

Transcript

Jessica: Welcome to Burn It All Down, the feminist sports podcast you need. Jessica here. On Sunday, July 24th, after more than 30 years, the women's Tour de France, the Tour de France Femmes, returns. It will begin in conjunction with the end of the men's tour in Paris and will run eight days, ending on July 31st. 24 teams will compete across 1029 kilometers – it’s about 640 miles. The eight stages include back to back mountain stages, stages with rolling hills, some gravel sectors, and flat stages where sprinters will flex their skills. Zwift, an indoor and online cycling app, is the title sponsor. There will be a total of €250,000 up for grabs over the course of the race, and €50,000 in prize money for the winner. To give us more insight into this exciting event, I'm thrilled to welcome two guests to Burn It All Down today. Ashleigh Moolman Pasio is a professional cyclist, former Olympian, an eSports world cycling champion, and an outspoken advocate for women's cycling. She'll be competing on the Tour for team SD Worx. Kate Veronneau is Zwift's director of women's strategy. She was a college basketball player and a pro cyclist. She was integral in getting attention for the Tour de France Femmes from the Tour’s governing body, ASO. Welcome to Burn It All Down, Ash and Kate.

Ashleigh: Thank you. Great to be here.

Kate: Hello. 

Jessica: Hello. So, I wanted to start by asking how you each got into cycling. Ash, how did you come to the sport?

Ashleigh: I always loved sport, but at school I played mainly sort of traditional school sports in South Africa, which were field hockey, at the time, tennis, athletics. Although I dreamed of going to the Olympic Games, I never really found the sport that suited me. And so when I went to university, I'd kind of put that dream to bed. And I met Carl, my husband, Carl. We started dating and, you know, he was a really good athlete, very good at many different sports, but at the time he was representing South Africa as a triathlete. He introduced me to the world of endurance sports. First I tried out triathlon, which I've realized I'm not a great swimmer at all. You know, I can swim, but I'm not very fast. Then I started getting running injuries. And so that's what kind of forced me to ride on the bike. And it's a decision that I will never regret, because the journey I've had as a pro cyclist, you know, I really only started when I was around 21. Now I'm 36. But yeah, I mean, I'm considered as, you know, one of the best and one of the most experienced cyclists in the world. So it was quite a short turnaround. And yeah, I mean, the journey I've experienced through empowerment through sport has being incredible. 

Jessica: How about you, Kate? 

Kate: Oh, man. I love that story, Ash. So yeah, I played basketball. I came from like an all basketball family, and I played DI at Brown University – go Bears. And of course, like a lot of college athletes, I had some knee injuries and I had to stop running. So shortly after college I ended up just riding my bike more and more. I'd always used it for recreation and getting around, and next thing you know, I'm going on longer and longer rides. And then I moved to outside of Philadelphia, and my friends were like, come watch this bike race. I'm like, wow, cool, bike race in Philly. This sounds really fun. Well, what I didn't know at the time was it was the biggest race in the country, and it was on the actual UCI calendar. So the Philly bike race, I'm at this race watching this giant pack of men go by. I'm like, wow, this is incredible. And then like 10 minutes later, a giant pack of women go by and I was like, hold the phone – women race bikes? Like, I really didn't even know it. I was probably about 26. I had never seen women's bike racing and I was just like awestruck.

So, next thing you know, I mean, my husband and I had been riding bikes a lot together. He was kind of sick of me trying to beat him up every climb and always pushing the pace. So he’s like, why don't you try this racing thing? And I started actually doing some track racing at a velodrome and alongside that just started to road race, and just loved it. And found, like Ash, like I was actually pretty good at it, and I never even knew it, you know? So I think this is a story of a lot of women's cyclists and a lot of endurance athletes, that they find this later in life, that they have quite a capacity for it. And I just enjoyed it. It's a sport that just keeps introducing me to new people, new places, new experiences. And now we're sitting here talking about the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift. So it's been a wild ride.

Jessica: Before we actually talk about the race, I wanted to get a sense of the broader context for women cycling. Like, how popular is it around the world? Maybe like how many professional road cycling races are there? How do you put the world of women's cycling in context for probably a lot of our listeners who don't have a lot of knowledge about women's cycling?

Ashleigh: An important thing to mention around pro cycling as such is that it is very much Eurocentric. So, most of the really big competitions happen in Europe. And I see this as one of the big obstacles in pro cycling at this point in time, because, you know, I am South African, and in order to be a pro at the highest level, or to be one of the best in the world, I literally had to uproot myself from my home country, from my family, from everything that was familiar to me and make them move over to Europe, to a different continent, different country, different languages, different cultures. And you know, I really embraced that and I've grown so much as a person through that. But it is a big obstacle for a lot of young women from other parts of the world, other continents other than Europe. There's a lot of barriers to entry which make it a little bit difficult for them. But this is where, you know, the virtual world and Zwift is just so amazing and so fantastic, because I believe that the virtual world is one of the ways in which we can globalize cycling more easily. And so, yeah, I mean, long story short, a lot of competitions are happening in Europe. It's usually from February to sort of October time is the main season. But yes, there are also a lot of races happening in other parts of the world. 

Kate: That's a great segue real quick to just talk about how Zwift got into this. So, you know, we're a virtual platform. We literally say we're the fitness company born from gaming. So it's a video game where you're riding your bike in real life indoors, and you're looking at a screen and you're riding, you're powering your avatar through these worlds. So early on at Zwift six years ago, we actually hosted a global talent ID competition that we called Zwift Academy to create a new pathway to the pros. And we started this as a women's program. So we partnered with a pro team and literally held a competition in the game to win a pro contract. And that was sort of the beginning of us investing in the growth and development of women's cycling. It kind of paved the way for everything we've done since. And that first year we had a thousand women try out. And this past year we had 150,000 men and women, because we now have two programs for Zwift Academy for a men's contract and a women's contract. So, it's been incredible to see the growth of virtual cycling and the connection to real world opportunities. 

Jessica: Yeah, I go to a gym that's owned by two women, and they're both cyclists. And when I brought this up, they knew exactly what Zwift was. 

Kate: That's great. 

Jessica: Ash, I did wanna, before we go to the Tour though, my last question for you: e-cycling, how does that compare to real life cycling? 

Ashleigh: Yeah, it's an interesting question, because at the moment I think there's people that accept eSports and virtual cycling, and then there are people – and mostly actually the pros – are pretty much against it. And I think I'm the only pro who really gets the best of both worlds and has found a really great balance of using both the real world and the virtual world to be the best version of myself. And so, you know, that obviously started during the COVID pandemic where, you know, I was in Spain at the time, and there was a really hard lockdown. So I had no other option but to train indoors. And before that, I probably really avoided indoor training at all costs. And the big reason why is because firstly it was boring. And secondly, I found it really difficult to get the same power on the indoor trainer as what I could outdoors. But with the COVID pandemic, I was forced to really open my mind and to embrace it. And, you know, my first entry point was Zwift. So I was lucky enough to have a really great setup at my home, because Zwift had done a real life training camp at my business, Rocacorba Cycling, in December, 2018.

And then COVID pandemic 2020. I had this amazing setup that I hadn't really used much before. And so, you know, I just threw myself into it. And the first sort of big attraction was the social element of it. I mean, it was just absolutely incredible how, during this period of isolation around the world, it was actually the most social my cycling had ever been before. The world opened up to me, you know, in this this period of isolation. Because you know, my business, Rocacorba Cycling, we had to shut down because of the COVID pandemic. So, just quick context, Rocacorba Cycling is cycling tourism and a boutique hotel business, which I run just outside of Girona, Spain. And so we had to shut our doors to guests. So I thought, wow, you know, Zwift is a great place for us to meet up. So our guests can't come to stay with us in real life, but we can meet in the virtual world, and I could ride with people from different continents. I could ride with family members in South Africa, friends in South Africa, people all around the world.

And then, you know, as I started training more and more on Zwift, over time, my muscles adapted to the unnatural resistance, basically, because it's a different stimulus on your muscles. And that was the only reason why I couldn't get the same power before, but as I adjusted and I formed the aptitude to take on that resistance, I started seeing my numbers increase over time and eventually become the same. But then I also started to see improvements. So, then I started to realize that Zwift was actually helping me to become a better cyclist. And so funny enough, when the lockdown lifted and we could go outdoors, you know, after all this training I'd done on Zwift, the first day it opened up, I did a record attempt at Rocacorba climb, which is literally you know, on our doorstep. I set my fastest time. I was already the queen of the mountains before this, but I improved my time by four minutes, you know? And so this was really like a pin drop moment where, you know, Zwift had really helped me to become a better cyclist on the road as well. 

Kate: And I should add that that Rocacorba climb is a pretty famous climb among cyclists because it's just outside of Girona, which is like a Mecca for cycling in Spain. So that is like massive, massive.

Jessica: Wow. That is incredible. I do wanna turn to the Tour, obviously. And Kate, I was wondering if you could give us maybe the story, how did anyone…Who convinced ASO to finally do this again? Like, why is the Tour back?

Kate: I'll tell you. We definitely helped with the convincing, but the women's world tour convinced them, because in 2020 with COVID, nobody knew what was gonna happen with the Tour de France that year, the men's tour. And we got together with ASO, the organizers of the race, and decided to host a virtual event in Zwift. And a lot of the pros were still kind of locked down or just, you know, a lot of the races were shut down. So we decided to host like a five day event in Zwift and broadcast it internationally, because all the cycling media was desperate for some news and some entertainment and some races. We did this event where everything…When we race and Zwift, we are complete parity: equal prize purse, equal distance, equal broadcast for men and women, always. And that's just how we started on the platform. And so we brought that to this event in 2020. And for the event, we actually even switched up the broadcast each day, where the first day maybe the women started first, and then the men, and then the next day the men started, and then the women started. Which was a really fun test.

Well, the viewership was super high for both. You didn't see any dip. And the women's racing was better. The women had invested more in Zwift because we invested in the women, and I think that more of them had been training on  Zwift. They recognized also an opportunity for the global audience. And they're like, all right, you know, this is a chance to be seen and to get our sponsors excited, to get fans excited. And they brought the energy, and it was incredibly exciting racing. It was actually better than the men's racing. And that paved the way for the conversation with ASO to like…It's time. It is time for a Tour de France Femmes stage race that brings all the iconic elements to the women's world tour. This is the biggest race in the world. You can talk to anybody about the Tour de France and they know what it is, and women deserved a place at the table. So that's what kicked off the conversation. And then shortly after, we signed a four year deal to be the title sponsor. 

Jessica: This is such a normal women's sports story. 

Kate: Yeah, right? 

Jessica: Like, as soon as you can get people to watch women compete– 

Kate: People saw it, and it was great.

Jessica: Yeah. [laughs] They’re like, oh wait, this is awesome.

Kate: It's just good sport. It's just good entertainment, you know?

Ashleigh: For me, it was really incredible because in the most challenging year for the world, you know, for the first time, Zwift, in partnership obviously with ASO, but it was the first opportunity that we as women really experienced an association with the Tour de France brand. And it was pretty big because, you know, although we'd had some stuff happening with the La Course race and, you know, all the stuff that the woman's peloton had been lobbying for, you know, La Course always felt like it was a consolation prize. You know, it was a one day race, just to kind of keep us happy. But it was never associated with the Tour de France name. And it was pretty huge because, you know, for example, I won the queen stage during this virtual Tour de France. And you know, now it was actually open to ride outdoors.

So the next day I went out for a real life ride and I rode through Girona and I stopped at a coffee shop, and my husband actually pointed out to me. He said, Ashleigh, do you notice that the people are looking and pointing? And I said, uh, suppose so, but it's not something that I'd really been so accustomed to, you know, because in women cycling, we hadn't really had, you know, this mainstream exposure through a big race like the Tour de France before. And then as we were leaving Girona, a car sort of pulled up next to us and sort of slowed down and was a bit weird. And then next moment I saw someone sticking their camera out of the car window taking a film of me riding, and that's when it really hit home how important this mainstream exposure was and how important the Tour de France was to kind of bring the exposure to women cycling that we need to push the sport forward.

Kate: Yeah. Jessica, I'm gonna give you a little stat here: 70% of annual cycling viewership in a year is focused on the Tour de France. 

Jessica: Wow.

Kate: And the women haven't really had that stage. So, you can imagine what this year is gonna dofor the notoriety, the prestige, and just…We wanna make Ashleigh Moolman Pasio a household name. You know what I mean? We wanna introduce the world to these incredible personalities, to the incredible action. And this is the way to do it. It's Tour de France. [laughs]

Jessica: Yeah. I totally agree. I mean, when I got the email about this, I had to read it three times. I was like, there hasn't been a women's Tour de France? But also like, there's gonna be!? Like, I got so excited. [laughs]

Kate: That's always what we hear.

Jessica: Yeah, yeah. Ash, so, you will be racing as part of the SD Worx team. And I have a couple questions related to the actual race. First, I wanna know what is your best skill or terrain for cycling. 

Ashleigh: Yeah. So, interestingly enough, I'm actually an all rounder. Although most people would, you know, on first impression, put me as a climber, you know, so I'm small, petite. My power to weight ratio is really good. So that obviously means climbing is my biggest strength. But I perform pretty well over all the different types of races. I can sprint pretty well. I'm super punchy on, you know, the classic style races. And I have a good sort of capacity to be able to race well over a multi-stage race. So, the tours are really something that I specialize in and focus on. You know, I'm really gonna be going out there and giving it my best to win that yellow jersey. And I have a lot of motivation.

You know, obviously the fact that I was the first eSports world champion, I have my own virtual cycling community using Zwift as the platform called Rocacorba Collective, which focuses on bringing women together and creating a fun, safe, and inspiring space for them to become the best version of themselves. You know, I have this community behind me, and so I'm feeling super motivated to give it absolutely everything to go for that yellow jersey. And yeah, the course is super cool. Over the course of the eight stages there's a flat stage, there's punchy climbing days. There's even gravel. We have mountain stages. And then, you know, the grand finale of the Super Planche des Belles Filles, which is a really steep climb. It's featured many times in the men's Tour de France. So yeah, it's a perfect route for me, and I can't wait. 

Kate: I also just love how Ash has made herself so available to the community in Zwift. Imagine like, you know, just showing up to a basketball court and jumping in a pickup game with LeBron, you know? That's what like we can do on our platform. You know, the pros can ride with everyone, and we can set up rides to just build fans. And that to me makes it really exciting, as we head into the Tour, to be able to use the platform to shine a light on the riders and to be able to interact with them directly is pretty incredible.

Jessica: Okay. So, for us novices out here, Ash, explain to me how many people are on your team and how you all handle strategy. Like, how do you figure out every day what the team as a team is going to do?

Ashleigh: As the whole SD Worx team, we are 13 riders, but you know, the team that will be starting the Tour de Femmes avec Zwift will be six riders. And within SD Worx, we kind of have two sort of teams within the SD Worx team. So we have part of the team which is more focused on flat races and sprinting, and then we have the other part of the team which is more focused on climbing. And then there is some overlap because, you know, we have races which are the classics, which are a combination of the two, you know, they've got short, punchy climbs, but could have some sprint elements. But yeah, I mean, the Tour de Femmes avec Zwift team is selected based on the best possible team to meet the course over the eight stages. And as I said, there is a little bit of everything in the eight stages. So, we actually have brought together, you know, our best climbers, but also our best sprinters and sort of domestique riders as well, because in order to win a race, we also have to have riders who are willing to work, you know, willing to set up the winning move or help control to make sure that no sort of sneaky breakaways get up the road.

And, you know, we'll have sort of two goals within the team. There will obviously be you know, stage win goal, which will probably be, you know, more talking to our sprinter/classic specialist, which is Lotte Kopecky. But then, you know, as the race gets harder and more into the mountains, then we'll have Demi Vollering and myself who will both be sort of seen as leaders. And that's kind of an interesting thing about SD Worx as a team, is that we are somewhat of a super team, which means that, you know, we have some of the best riders in the world. And it means that when we start a race, there isn't necessarily just one member of the team who could win. There are multiple members of the team.

And that's kind of our strength at the moment, because we keep people on their toes, right? You know, they can't just mark one rider. They have to mark more than one rider. And then, you know, on a day to day basis, you'd usually have a team meeting at the start before a stage race. And then the directeur sportif – so, he leads the team as a whole. So we have Danny Stam and Anna van der Breggen. And Anna was pro last year, so she's fresh off the pro scene. So she's a really great directeur sportif because she still really knows what it feels like to push your body to the limit. So, between the two of them, you know, they'll kind of come up with a strategy, and then they'll propose it to us on a day to day basis. And it will evolve, especially as a stage race, it will evolve over time, you know, as the race unfolds.

Jessica: Okay. Wow. Kate, are you going to France? 

Kate: Oh yeah. I'll be there for the whole thing. I cannot wait. Representing Zwift as the title sponsor, we get to give out like daily medals, which, I am thrilled that I'll actually make it to the podium of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift. [laughs] So, it's gonna be pretty thrilling. And like, the beauty of this race, the thing that really sets the Tour de France apart, is it's a race within a race. It's eight stages, but each day is a race, right? And there's also four different jerseys. So you have like a daily winner, an overall winner, and then you have competitions within the race for the best young rider, which is the white jersey. The best climber, which is the polka dot jersey. The best sprinter, which is the green jersey. And then of course what we call the maillot jaune, the yellow jersey, is the overall what we call GC, general classification contender. So there's just so much to watch.

And I'm excited for some new fans to, you know, be able to appreciate like the depth of this sport. And you know, I think a lot of people, when they first watch a bike race, they're like, why isn't somebody just riding off the front and trying to win? There's so much strategy. It’s like a chess match and a NASCAR race, because there's crazy crashes, and there's just, it's just a whole bunch going on. And once you get to know it, it's thrilling. And women's cycling is especially thrilling. It's just a lot of action. It's a very dynamic racing style, and I will be glued to it.

Jessica: Yeah, me too. Now I'm like fully invested.

Ashleigh: That's great. 

Jessica: Ash, whenever I talk to an endurance racer, I always wanna ask…I feel like when I watch cycling, my gut tells me that your legs hurt a lot. But is there like a part of your body that would surprise people that hurts in the middle of all this endurance racing?

Ashleigh: Yeah, so, I mean, you're absolutely correct. The legs are, you know, the main feature, [laughs] in terms of hurting. But it's funny, as pro racers, we learn to somehow love that pain. It's kind of weird, you know, for normal people to understand. But you know that when you are hurting, the others are at least hurting the same if not more, you know, so it's kind of like, this competition about who can hurt the most, right? [laughter]

Jessica: Endurance athletes are incredible.

Kate: That's literally what cycling is. It’s who can suffer the most. 

Ashleigh: [laughs] Yeah. Exactly. But anyways, there are plenty of other parts of the body, and it kind of depends, like, if we’re doing like a cobble stage or gravel, then your hands, because you know, the uneven surface and the vibrations can even cause blistering on the hands. But then if we're talking more about like big mountain stages, then I'd say the lower back is often the one that takes a bit of strain. Or even on a windy day, the lower back can be a bit of an issue. And then, yeah, I mean, shoulders, neck can also, like, if it's a really stressful day in the peloton, because you now have to consider that we have over a hundred bicycles all in one bunch, riding really close together, and there's a lot of moving parts, you know? So crashes can happen quite easily. So some days, and for various reasons it can be because the parcours is really technical, or it can be because the bunch is really nervous.

So for example, the first day on the Champs-Élysées, for sure the bunch is gonna be super nervous, because we all wanna put on a great show, and everyone wants to go for the win, and it's the start of a grand tour, you know, the first Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift. So it's gonna be super nervous, and in those kind of stages, then also like your shoulders and neck can take quite a lot of strain because you're kind of tensing up, you know, and using the brakes quite a lot. So, it sort of depends on what kind of day it is on the bike, but yeah. Other parts of the body do hurt.

Jessica: Yeah. It always amazes me what you all can do. Kate, can you explain how the beginning of the race…Because it is the same day that the men's race ends. So they'll be sharing a similar space, correct? 

Kate: Yes. 

Jessica: So how will that actually work?

Kate: I am so excited about this. So, the women’s Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift is going to start in Paris on the final day of the men's race. The men's race always finishes in Paris with grand panache on the Champs-Élysées going around the Arc de Triomphe. It is magical and the whole city is out and it just incredible. And so you have, you know, the world tuned in, you know, to see the final day of the men's race. And that's where we'll launched the women’s race. So we'll capture that audience, capture that emotion. The women will start at the Eiffel Tower and finish on the Champs-Élysées, and shortly before the men finish too. So, I think that it's just gonna give the race the best chance of success, because we know that cycling fans around the world are gonna tune in because they're like, well, it's here, so let's watch it. And now traditionally, also the day after the men's race finishes, people have been watching cycling for three weeks straight, all day. And then it finishes and there's sort of this like letdown on Monday. You gotta go back to work and life. And now there's better, more racing, you know, to watch for the next week. So it'll give the women's world tour that iconic stage that they deserve and that attention that they deserve. It’s really gonna be electric.

Jessica: I love that. Ash, do you have a stage that you're most looking forward to?

Ashleigh: I actually have two, [laughs] but the first one I'm really looking forward to is the stage in the Champagne region with some gravel sectors. I think it's going to be super exciting because, you know, the gravel is going to create this sort of chaotic element, which some people are like, oh, it's too much chaos for a stage race! But I'm like, no, this is amazing, because it's gonna shake things up. I mean, I could be on the receiving end of that. I could be on the other end of that, where it could be sort of catastrophic for the race, you know? So if you puncture at the wrong moment or maybe a crash at the wrong moment could be totally catastrophic. But I think that's gonna make it super exciting. And then, yeah, the finale at the Super Planche des Belles Filles, you know, it's really a climb that suits me quite well. I really like a steep climb.

Kate: It's very steep. 

Ashleigh: Yeah. It reminds me a lot of the Zoncolan, which is a climb which featured in the Giro in 2018. And I finished second on the GC in that Giro, but I really loved that stage and, you know, that I could really race aggressively there. And it also kind of reminds me a lot of Rocacorba. So yeah, it's really the stage I'm looking most forward to.

Jessica: I love it. That sounds wild to me that you're looking forward to climbing an incredibly steep hill on your bike. 

Ashleigh:[laughs] I’m crazy, right? 

Jessica: I'm excited to watch you do it.

Kate: I'm excited about that Champagne stage. [laughter] 

Jessica: Yeah, me too. So I have one final big picture question about women's cycling. When it comes to the future of the sport, what do you all hope changes or what needs to change in the next five to 10 years to grow the sport? Or maybe grow its popularity.

Ashleigh: I mean, I think we've taken really, really big steps. Actually, since the COVID pandemic, funny enough, because a lot of people thought that the COVID pandemic was gonna set women cycling back, you know, because it was a big challenge for pro sport and they thought, you know, men’s cycling would be the first to kind of return to norm. But actually it's been the opposite for women's cycling, and that's been a lot of thanks to obviously Zwift and the virtual world and the way the virtual world, you know, put us in center stage. So yeah, we've taken big steps, and those big steps are really around exposure, because that was really the biggest obstacle for women’s cycling, is that, you know, although the women's peloton was growing in strength and the racing was really exciting, we just weren't getting enough exposure. And the other big challenge was we weren't getting consistent exposure. So, before 2020, you know, some races would invest in live coverage, you know, Flanders, some of the classic races invested in giving us good exposure.

But the problem was because it wasn't consistent, you know, it was very difficult to build a fan base, because people would watch like the Tour des Flandres for example live, they'd go, wow, I love women’s cycling, it’s super exciting, it's constantly changing. And then the next classics race wouldn't be live, you know? So how do you build a fan base if they're constantly having to like search all over to find how to watch it? So, you know, GCN, which is also owned by Eurosport, they've also invested in women's cycling since the COVID pandemic. So now we have great consistency in our exposure, which is really helping to build that fan base. And then of course we have the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, which is hugely important because for the first time in many, many years, young girls can watch women racing the biggest race in the world. And that's super important because that's when the sport really grows, because it grows in depth, because these young girls are watching and they can see pro cycling as a future career choice.

I mean, we've taken really big steps, but yeah, what needs to continue is that the women's peloton needs to continue racing with all the passion that we do, because I think that's what also sets us apart from men's cycling, is that all of us in the pro women's peloton, we have a huge amount of passion for what we do. It's not just a job. It's something that we really love doing. We need to continue to have the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, because it’s going to just evolve from year to year and the audience is gonna grow. And thankfully, we know we will have it for the next four years, because Zwift is the title partner for the next four years. Yeah. And then we just need to try and keep engaging more women, you know, because at the moment I’d say our fan base, even for women’s cycling, is majority men.

And so we need to start figuring out how we can attract more women to watch our racing by building the characters, by telling the stories, by creating meaningful interactions between the pro and the everyday cyclist. Because I've seen this manifested in my own virtual community, Rocacorba Collective, where when you create that connection, when people ride with me on Zwift and they chat to me and they get to know me as a person, that's when they watch, because they feel they can relate. They feel inspired. I don't know what it is. And so I feel that that's where, you know, this whole relationship between Zwift and the Tour de France Femmes is so powerful, because using the virtual world and the platform, we can create those meaningful interactions which will convert more women to becoming fans and to actually watching the racing.

Kate: Yeah. I couldn't agree more, honestly. Number one, having little girls sitting, watching the race, and dreaming of lining up for the Tour de France is incredibly exciting. At Zwift, we just wanna be a catalyst for change. This is a big moment in sport. There's wonderful momentum right now. We're seeing so much more investment, so much more media attention, so much more broadcast. And these are all the keys to unlocking a bigger, global audience. You know, other races are stepping up and getting more sponsorship dollars, higher prize purses, and more broadcasts. So we just need to continue the trajectory and just…I want everybody telling 10 friends about the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, and I just want them to tune in. All I had to do is get people to tune in for one stage, because I know how good the racing is, how incredible the personalities are, you know? They're gonna be hooked. So we have a really fun campaign. I'm gonna send you some stuff that is all about…Just watch the Femmes. It's just super simple, call to action. We just want people to tune in to see the beauty of women's cycling and this incredible, iconic moment. 

Jessica: So, for our listeners, Kate just put on a riding cap, [laughter] and it is like…It’s amazing. So, then my final absolute question: Kate, can you tell our listeners how can they watch the Tour? How do they tune in?

Kate: It's gonna be broadcast globally, like 190 countries, two and a half hours a day. If you literally just search “Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift” you will come to either the Tour de France site where you'll see in your region how to watch. It’s gonna be broadcast on NBC Peacock in the US. Eurosport, SBS in Australia. You can always also go to zwift.com/watchthefemmes. And we'll have the latest also there.

Jessica: Yeah. So again, the Tour de France Femmes sponsored by Zwift starts on Sunday, July 24th, and runs through Sunday, July 31st. Good luck in the race, Ash. We will be watching. And thank you both for coming on Burn It All Down to talk about the Tour. 

Kate: Thank you so much for this opportunity.

Ashleigh: Thanks for having us. It's been great. 

Kate: Ash's gonna crush it. Everybody look out for Ash! [laughter]

Jessica: That's it for this episode of Burn It All Down. This episode was produced by Tressa Versteeg. Shelby Weldon is our web and social media wizard. Burn It All Down is part of the Blue Wire podcast network. Listen, subscribe and rate the show wherever you listen to podcasts. You can follow Burn It All Down on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. For show links and transcripts, check out our website, burnitalldownpod.com. You'll also find a link to our merch at our Bonfire store. And as always, thank you to our patrons. Your support means the world. If you wanna become a sustaining donor to our show, visit patreon.com/burnitalldown. To all of our flamethrowers, burn on and not out.