PEZ at the Movies: Breakaway Femmes
03/30/2025 03:01 AM
The recent success and high visibility of women’s professional bike racing is a breakthrough in what has been an overwhelming male and unflinchingly traditional sport. The Tour de France Femmes, launched in 2022 under the auspices of the Tour de France’s owner ASO, has become the highlight of the women’s season and in the euphoria surrounding this highly professional venture it is to easy to forget that there once was another Tour de France for women put on by the ASO four decades ago. On April 7, 2025, selected cinemas across Canada will be showing Breakaway Femmes, a documentary about this race run between 1984 and 1989 and featuring the very feisty women who were there.There had been a non-ASO women’s version of the Tour in 1955, which attracted 41 participants in a race of five stages, covering a total of 373 kms, entirely contained within Normandy. Racers of five nationalities took part and it was dominated by the British riders. The stages were hard-fought and in the end although only four racers failed to finish the whole thing was treated as a kind of curiosity and not repeated. But in 1984 ASO took up the challenge of adding a real Tour de France for women.As the film shows, 1984 was a milestone as it marked the first time that the Olympic Games would have a road race for women. Unfortunately, the date of that race was in conflict with the ASO’s new Tour de France Fminin. At that time...
