The town of Baix Llobregat will witness the first edition of the women’s Tour of Catalonia stage race, which will be held from June 7 to 9, 2024
Molins de Rei will once again be the stage for the Volta a Catalunya, the oldest cycling race in Spain. This time, however, it will not be to welcome an arrival or a departure from the men’s race, but to give the start to the final stage of the first edition of the women’s Tour of Catalonia, which will take place between the 7th and 9 June 2024. This was announced today by the organization of the Tour, which highlighted the role of Molins de Rei as a municipality committed to cycling and gender equality.
A historic test with a first level participation
The women’s Tour of Catalonia will be a historic test, as it will be the first time that the Catalan race will have a stage competition for female cyclists. Until now, only one one-day event had been organized, the reVolta, which had passed through Molins de Rei on several occasions. Now, however, the Women’s Tour will make a qualitative leap and become an international UCI 2.1 category event, the second highest on the world calendar. This will allow the women’s Tour to have a first-class participation, with twenty teams from all over the world, including seven UCI World Teams, the world’s elite teams. This milestone has been made possible thanks to the “Entre totes, tot” program of the General Secretariat of Sport, which has supported the Tour to promote its female version.
The antecedents
Molins de Rei has a long cycling tradition and a great passion for this sport. The municipality of Baix Llobregat was host to an arrival of the men’s Tour de Catalunya in 2023, in its 102nd edition. It was the sixth stage, which started from Martorell and ended with a tight sprint won by Australian Kaden Groves. This finish coincided with the 75th anniversary of the Molins Cycling Club, which enthusiastically celebrated the arrival of the Tour in its town. Earlier, in 2003, Molins de Rei was the starting point of a 13.1 km individual time trial that ended in Vallvidrera (Barcelona). The winner of that stage and that year’s Tour was José Antonio Pecharromán, who beat Roberto Heras and Santiago Botero. In addition, in recent years, Molins de Rei has hosted several intermediate sprints of the men’s Tour, with great public attendance.
