Women's professional cycling could host the Tour de France as early as 2022, Tour de France race director Christian Prudhomme told AFP (opens in new tab). The proposal comes after the UCI announced Tuesday that the Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO) has agreed to host the first ever women's Paris-Roubaix as part of a revised post-COVID-19 women's World Tour calendar.

"We want to expand the number of women's races step by step," Prudhomme told AFP (opens in new tab). 'The UCI has set a clear path for women's cycling. We have to keep adapting."

The ASO said last year that it was considering a women's stage race equivalent to a major men's Grand Tour, but did not say at that time that it would be a women's Tour de France. He also stated that a special working group had been set up with the goal of supporting the development of women's cycling.

The ASO stressed that it was "logistically impossible" to hold both men's and women's races at the same time.

Earlier this year, Prudhomme reiterated in a report in Le Telegramme that ASO was working on a multi-day women's race and that plans were underway to bring back a women's stage race.

"Our goal remains the same with the idea of having a race held after the Tour de France," Prudhomme told AFP.

"The calendar is pretty shaky right now, we have the Olympics in 2021, it would be logical to have it in 2022."

The UCI on Tuesday released a revised 2020 Women's World Tour calendar, replacing plans that were cancelled due to the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic. The top-level series will retain 18 of the 22 events and will run from August 1 through November 8.

The revised calendar includes five stage races and 13 one-day events, including ASO's La Course by Tour de France, Flèche Wallonne, Liège-Bastogne-Liège, the Madrid Challenge by La Vuelta, and now Paris-Roubaix are included.

The first women's Tour de France was held in the 1950s, but only once; ASO hosted the women's Tour de France from 1984 to 1989, although this French version of the Tour de France was held throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, It officially ended in 2009.

The ASO then launched the one-day La Course by Le Tour de France in 2014 after a successful petition to the ASO to include a women's race alongside the Tour de France. The seventh edition of the women's World Tour one-day race will now be held in conjunction with the opening stage of the men's Tour de France in Nice on August 29.