Kate Veronneau has led two distinct athletic lives. In college, she played NCAA Division 1 basketball; in her twenties and thirties, she raced professionally on the road and track. “The disparity was pretty shocking,” she says. With the emergence of the WNBA, “It seemed like there was no limit to my basketball dreams.” In cycling, the opportunities for women felt paltry. “My heart broke knowing people weren’t making a livable wage,” she says.
Veronneau eventually put her pro-cycling dreams to rest. But today, she’s making the dreams of other racers a reality through her role as director of women’s strategy for the virtual cycling platform Zwift. In 2021, Zwift announced a four-year title sponsorship of the eight-stage Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, the first multiday women’s Tour de France since the 1980s. (The shorter La Course by Tour de France had run since 2014, thanks in part to the advocacy of women including pro cyclists Kathryn Bertine and Marianne Vos, and Ironman world champion Chrissie Wellington.) Though the sponsorship arose from a longstanding relationship between Zwift cofounder Eric Min and Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO), the group that organizes the Tour de France, the road to the TDFFaZ has Veronneau’s fingerprints all over it. Veronneau joined F F Zwift in 2016 to run Zwift Academy, a competition to award a pro contract with women’s UCI World Tour team CANYON//SRAM. The buzzy contest established Zwift as an industry disrupter and a platform that supported women.
When Zwift launched e-racing in 2019, Veronneau was adamant that men and women race equal distances and win equal prize money. When the pandemic hit in 2020, and ASO approached Zwift about hosting a virtual TdF, Veronneau and Zwift ensured that parity remained. The women received equal broadcast time as well, in over 130 countries, and they rose to the moment, Veronneau says, animating the racing to more exciting levels than the men’s. The result: equal viewership for the men’s and women’s races.
This was powerful data that had not existed to date. The question of viewership and interest had long been cited by ASO to explain its unwillingness to invest in a multistage women’s Tour. Now, with the virtual TdF as proof, Zwift and ASO began to discuss an IRL women’s Tour. The Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift was born.
Veronneau is the partnership lead for Zwift, and she is the event’s most relentless and public-facing champion. She shows up for our Zoom interview wearing giant hoop earrings and a tie-dye shirt in bright orange and pink, the official colors of the race, and tells me how she spearheaded the popular #watchthefemmes campaign. Of the tagline—equal parts directive and rallying cry, she says: “It felt clear and concise and there’s no way you can interpret it other than watch the race. And it’s fun!”
Veronneau continues to use her role at Zwift, and the seat at the table it comes with, to advocate for parity, like equal broadcast time and prize money for the TDFFaZ. These decisions ultimately remain with ASO, but when I ask Veronneau—who is 6-foot-1 and known among friends and colleagues for her contagious energy—whether that’s challenging, she flashes her thousand-watt smile and says, “I feel like I’m the right personality for this.” She advocates fiercely, she adds, but also builds bridges. “She’s incredibly passionate about women’s cycling,” says Zwift’s senior vice president of marketing Luc Osborne. “That’s hard to argue with.”
When I ask why it’s important for women to have a race associated with the TdF, Veronneau points out that it’s the one time each year when all eyes are on cycling. When women are denied that chance to be seen, she says, they miss out on cycling’s most powerful opportunity for investment.
For the next couple years, at least, their place is secured. Veronneau has attended both editions of the TDFFaZ, and she says they both felt historic. But in 2023, when the women had their own start, Veronneau was awestruck by the crowds outside the buses, kids jockeying for autographs, media clamoring for interviews—not because they were already covering the men’s race. “Everyone was there just for them,” she says. “There is just this fresh energy—you know you’re witnessing something real and historic and momentous.”
Recalling this makes Veronneau emotional. She takes a minute to compose herself. “You just see the sport changing before your eyes,” she says.
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