Megan Armitage has been confirmed as the first Irish rider ever to compete in the women's Tour de France. Her team - Arkéa Pro Cycling - named its selection today, with the Offaly woman included in the line-up, as had been long expected.
Indeed, as far back as April stickybottle reported Armitage had been told by her team she was in the line-up for the Tour. At that point, Arkéa Pro Cycling had just been named as one of the five teams to receive a wildcard invitation to the race by event owners, ASO.
Her participation in the Tour marks a really exciting new chapter for Irish cycling in a year when Alice Shape and Mia Griffin are competing at World Tour level for Israel Premier Tech Roland.
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Lara Gillespie has also been riding for a pro team on the roads of Europe this year for the first time - with UAE Development Team. She has also just won two European U23 track titles; claiming the points race and omnium golds at the weekend in Portugal after dominant displays.
Armitage has been one of her team’s top performer this year, with the new signing winning the final stage plus the overall classification in the Vuelta Extremadura Féminas in March and netting fourth in the mountains classification in the Tour de Normandie Féminin later that month.
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She has not just secured the first ever victory by an Irish woman in a UCI-ranked stage race this year but has also been really aggressive - often in very hard finals - in major races where she did not place in the final results, including De Brabantse Pijl (1.Pro) in Belgium in April.
She also placed 4th in Grand Prix Féminin de Chambéry (1.1) in April and since then has finished 13th overall in Internationale Lotto Thüringen Ladies Tour (2.Pro) in Germany and also completed Tour de Suisse Women (2.WWT) last month, ideal preparation towards Tour de France Femmes (2.WWT).
Armitage's sports director, Franck Renimel, said he was delighted to name her among one of the seven riders who will start the week-long Tour de France next Sunday, July 23rd.
“Megan Armitage has great climbing skills. It is capable of achieving great things on so-called mountain stages, and has already demonstrated this during the season," he said.
"The Tourmalet stage, in a very high-level context, can prove to be a good test for her in order to benchmark herself against the best climbers in the world. Our desire for this Tour de France Women 2023 is for our riders to be offensive, to move forward without necessarily thinking about the general classification”.
