We will start the Tour de Suisse Women on Saturday 5 June with a roster led by Elise Chabbey. The Swiss national road champion will race with Hannah Barnes, Ella Harris, Mikayla Harvey, Hannah Ludwig and an in-form Alexis Ryan.

“It’s super nice to have a tour in my home country because my friends and my family will be able to watch and this will be an extra boost for me! I’m very proud to wear the national champion jersey for this edition of Tour de Suisse Women,” said Elise.

“It’s really cool that both stages will on Swiss television! It’s a chance to show a bigger audience how professional women’s racing is and that Switzerland has many strong riders. Cycling culture is not really the biggest in Switzerland, or at least it’s not the most popular sport here, and this tour is an opportunity to show more about our sport. Hopefully it will inspire others to get involved, either by riding or becoming fans.”

Stage one of Tour de Suisse covers three laps of a 38km circuit with over 1300m of elevation. Stage two is set to be a sprinter’s delight with eleven laps of a flat 8.8km circuit. The two-day tour is a welcome return to the women’s calendar after the last Tour de Suisse Féminin was held in 2001. Organisers  are aiming for a longer stage race in future editions.

“I haven’t seen the stages but I’m excited to discover this nice area of Switzerland. The first stage is quite hilly and will personally suit me better so I hope that I can show something there. With our strong team we’ll want to play all of our cards in order to make the race hard and go for everything on stage one. The second stage is completely flat and we’ll aim to race as a team and bring our sprinter safely to the finish line.”

Elise has been training the past two weeks at altitude in Livigno, Italy and will return to Switzerland to race the tour on the weekend.

“I was in altitude last year and it really worked for me so I hope it’ll be the same this time! I really enjoy the mountains and the atmosphere there. It’s quiet, I feel really good and I’m mentally refreshed. I’ve done some quite hard training here so I’m interested to see how I react racing Tour de Suisse Women.”

Facebook

Twitter