La Vuelta Femenina 25 by Carrefour.es : Two days to go …
May 2 nd 2025 - 20:38 [GMT + 2]
· Barcelona already is hosting the pre-race operations of La Vuelta Femenina 25 by Carrefour.es. The team presentation is scheduled on Saturday at Portal de la Pau from 7pm, with the opening TTT set to happen on Sunday afternoon.
· The start of the Spanish Grand Tour is set to be a landmark event for Catalan cycling, which already counts on excellent ambassadors like local rider Mireia Benito or Australian ITT national champion Brodie Chapman.
· 21 teams will fight for La Roja, the leader’s red jersey for the overall leader, and Pauline Ferrand-Prévot is one to watch in that regard. Yet the squad that will for sure be the first to pass through the finish line on Sunday is local grassroots team EC Mataró Women’s Team Škoda Mogadealer.
From Poblenou to Colom, from La Pedrera to Pedralbes
La Vuelta Femenina 25 by Carrefour.es has already disembarked in Barcelona, setting up its headquarters at the Labtwentytwo Hotel, just north of the emblematic Poblenou district. All riders and officials are meant to visit it as they undertake all the pre-race operations. The team presentation is scheduled on Saturday, May 3rd at Portal de la Pau, a beautiful Mediterranean square near Barcelona’s port and just in front of the prominent statue that depicts Columbus pointing towards America. Although the riders will come on stage from 19:00 CEST, the party will start much earlier with a live, free music show hosted by DJ Neus González. It will be the ideal appetizer ahead of Sunday’s inaugural TTT, that both starts and finishes from Casa Milà (also known as La Pedrera) an iconic modernist building designed by architect Antoni Gaudí. Its turning point will be placed right in front of the gardens of the former royal palace in Pedralbes. The riders won’t have much time for sightseeing, though, as the 8-kilometre course will demand the best effort from those squads aiming to fight for the overall win - or just wear La Roja, the red GC leader jersey, at some point of the week. The first team will take the start at 12:51, while the last one will come home at 14:00 aprox.
Barcelona, a capital for both racing and recreational cyclists
Hardly above 100 square kilometers in area, Barcelona prides itself of having more than 2,000 kilometres of cycling itineraries thanks to the 264 kilometers of bike lanes deployed across the city. This is just a representation of the cycling culture in the Catalan capital, whose authorities are currently promoting bicycles as a key vehicle for both tourism and sustainability. Racing-wise, its streets have become a familiar sight in the top tier of cycling after hosting the opening TTT of La Vuelta 23, and will also enjoy the Grand Départ of the Tour de France 2026. “Starting La Vuelta Femenina 25 by Carrefour.es be from Barcelona is going to mean a lot for me,” celebrates local rider Mireia Benito, set to participate in the AG Insurance - Soudal outfit. “It is so exciting to think of how many young girls will get to see women’s cycling first-hand, and find out that it is possible to become a professional rider.” There will be a second Catalan cyclist in the peloton in Ariana Gilabert, from the Spanish UCI Continental Team Eneicat-CM Team.
Brodie Chapman, an Australian ambassador for catalan cycling
Over the past two decades, Catalonia has become a hotbed for cycling, with Girona championed as a hub for overseas riders to first settle in European soil. One of the many examples of this is Australia’s Brodie Chapman. “I had already heard from friends around the world that Catalonia was the best place for both training and living, that it had good weather and a nice cycling culture,” the UAE Team ADQ rider describes. “Coming from Australia, a lot of my social life was based around cycling and I immediately found a community of people with whom I could relate, ride and feel very much at home. I first lived in Girona, and just recently moved up to Andorra.” Her involvement has gone much further than just training and living in the area, as she also donated some of her racing gear to local cycling schools. “I hadn't seen so many young people cycling before as I did in Catalonia,” she says with enthusiasm. The reigning Australian ITT champion is looking forward to the curtain raiser in Barcelona. “It is one of the greatest cities in the world. I often go there just to experience the city life away from the bike. This race will be really good for women’s cycling in Catalonia. It's only going up from here, so I really can't wait to start.”
Debut feeling for Pauline Ferrand-Prévot: “It’s going to be a great experience”
It might be counterintuitive for a 33-year-old rider that has collected world championship titles across four disciplines, including road, but La Vuelta Femenina 25 by Carrefour.es is bound to be a week of discovery for Pauline Ferrand-Prévot (1992, Réims). “It’s my first Grand Tour, and it’s going to be a great experience,” explains the winner of the recent Paris-Roubaix, who just returned to road cycling this winter after seven seasons focusing on off-road disciplines. “Back in the day, the only proper GT was the Giro. But that was a very different cycling, less professional than today’s. I’m looking forward to finding out the dynamics, the logistics, and what a week-long race is like inside a team nowadays.” The French rider is the GC leader for Visma | Lease a Bike. “I'm feeling rather good. It’s true that the start of my season has been pretty rewarding, so I’m quite happy with how my comeback is going. We are entering this event with a pretty strong team, and hungry for victory. Marianne [Vos] is yet to win a race this year, and making her score a victory will be a priority for us.” Alongside them, the Dutch team is lining up four U23 riders - and two of them were juniors just last year! “It’s going to be cool to share these days with Vicky [Chladanova] and Imogen [Wolff],” says Ferrand-Prévot. “I just hope that they will enjoy the experience. And, of course, they have big engines that will be pretty useful during the race.”
21 teams in the mix, with two newcomers and three loyal regulars
All teams and riders signed up for La Vuelta Femenina 25 by Carrefour.es are already in the Barcelona area, getting ready for the opening TTT in the streets of the Catalan capital that will mark the first major showdown of the race. Amongst them, we find 13 out of the 15 current UCI Women’s WorldTeams and 8 squads that were granted a wild-card to participate. Two of the latter, Arkéa - B&B Hotels and Cofidis Women Team, are UCI ProTeams hailing from France and set to make their debut in the Spanish Grand Tour. On the other end, there are three teams that haven’t missed a single edition of the race, whether under its current name or its former identity, La Challenge by La Vuelta, dating back to 2015. Two of those feature in the top-tier of women’s cycling, UAE Team ADQ and Team Picnic PostNL, and have tasted overall success in the race previously - the former in the inaugural edition, the latter both in 2018 and 2019. The third team to have written its name in all 11 chapters of the event is Coop-Repsol, a UCI Continental Team from Norway that has been a consistent guest throughout the existence of the race.
A special action for women’s grassroots cycling
Catalan cycling has a rich history - both in the men’s and the women’s side. There are records of female cycling races held in Barcelona’s Parc de la Ciutadella as early as in 1932. Six years before that, the Esport Ciclista Mataró was founded in a city right in the outskirts in Barcelona. This nearly one-century-old cycling club proudly runs a grassroots women’s cycling team supported by the local Škoda dealer that, thanks to event sponsor Loterías y Apuestas del Estado, will enjoy a beautiful experience on Sunday at La Vuelta Femenina 25 by Carrefour.es. From 11AM, five young athletes of EC Mataró Women’s Team Škoda Mogadealer will be the first cyclists to ride the course of the opening TTT, to later hop on the hot seat and enjoy watching the pros in action from the VIP area. Once the race is finished, they will meet and greet the winning squad to top off an unforgettable day.
