Festival Elsy Jacobs stage race to become two one-day events in 2024

The Festival Elsy Jacobs will move from being a stage race to two adjacent one-day races in 2024, race director Claude Losch has told Luxembourgish newspaper Le Quotidien.

The Luxembourg events will also step down from the ProSeries as the organisers of the long-standing race feel the impacts of increased running costs, and being squeezed out of an increasingly busy calendar as women’s cycling continues to grow.

First raced in 2008, the Festival Elsy Jacobs is one of the longest-running continuous races on the women’s calendar.

“We have decided to seek to ensure the continuation of the Ceratizit Festival Elsy Jacobs and to no longer try to step up,” Losch told Le Quotidien.

Formerly a one-day race, the Festival Elsy Jacobs grew into a three-stage race in 2011, and ran that way for over a decade, often attracting a strong start list despite its non-WorldTour status, but in 2023 it shrunk to two days. In 2024 those two days will be separate races, raced on similar roads around Garnich and the city of Luxembourg, but without an overarching general classification.

“The idea is to reduce costs,” Losch said. “We have fewer and fewer volunteers, and most notably fewer young volunteers. With the organisation of our event, we require three days of hard work and each year it’s harder to organise it and also to obtain the necessary funding.”

Despite being a long-standing race, organised solely as a women’s event by passionate organisers, the Festival Elsy Jacobs is one of several races feeling the effects of bigger organisers like ASO and other men’s races taking precedence in the scheduling of the calendar.

In their case, the race’s early May spot - which used to be uncontested, hence attracting many top teams - has now been encroached upon by La Vuelta Femenina.

“For the last edition in April 2023, we found that not all of the professional teams took part. Participation was not what we hoped for. And then the UCI suddenly moved the Vuelta to the day after our event, which deprived us of several big names. Teams that had already registered with us suddenly withdrew,” Losch explained.

They are not the only race to feel the impact of the busy calendar, with a two-tier system of races and teams not quite yet developed on the women’s side, but Losch said the race is determined to secure its future, rather than be entirely pushed out by costs and scheduling.

“We have decided to change direction,” he said of the decision to step down from ProSeries status to 1.1 status. “But we think that our position in 2024 will be at the very least as good as it was in 2023, if not better. Why keep paying for ProSeries status when we can still maintain a certain quality? We will also then be able to continue to broadcast the race, even when we will no longer be obliged to.

“Another advantage will be that we can open up the race to regional teams, which is more difficult to do with ProSeries races.”

Being able to welcome young Luxembourgers - as well as the established pros like Christine Majerus (SD Worx) - is also important for the race at the heart of the small nation, which is another benefit of staying at a lower level.