How to Grow Women's Pro-Cycling

[laurence]

This is quite heart-warming
http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/fan-funded-womens-team-nearly-a-reality

i've pledged my £100 for this.

 

[thom]

A lesser known cycling scandal

 

[Flying_Monkey]

A lesser known cycling scandal

Good piece.

 

[Rob3rt]

and there is the rub.

in nearly every sport, and FM has rightly pointed at one of the few exceptions, if you picked the top 5, 10, 50 or 100 performers in the world for a dream team regardless of gender how many of them would be women? Then there is a question to ask about how inevitable this is given nearly all the sports are designed by men for men and women just take them up.

Take women's soccer, or rugby union. Knowing that on average elite women players generally don't have the strength and power and speed of their male peers why are they expected to perform on a pitch the same size as their male counterparts? The playing field is literally wrong. Why do the women themselves cavil at the idea of a slightly smaller pitch in both sports? The result of mismatch of pitch and players renders watching the women's elite games as something like non-league soccer or community rugby and isn't a great advert for elite women's sport.

So with cycling. If you made event 'open' and say had a field of 100 men and 100 women how many of the women are going to get top 20 places let alone podium finishes. Sure there's plenty of gurls who can kick my butt on and off road on a bike but then I'm not the sort of person they are racing against.

Men are the main consumers of sport as spectators, sports generally have been designed for men by men and women are therefore at a double disadvantage.

Just noticed this thread, there were a few people complaining on here about the Olympic BMX course being different between the men and women! Not going to rehash my comment's re that topic but the discussion is somewhere on the board if you are interested in the debate at all.

As for how to grow women's pro cycling, a good start would be to stop referring to female athlete's as sex object and talking about how pretty their smiles are, how lovely they are and how much you love them because they didn't tell you to fark off when you "met" them etc. Turns my stomach when a female athlete puts in the performance of their lives and people commend their smile and start blathering about how pleasant and lovely she is etc. Next time Cav pull's off an epic win, how many people will be commenting on his lovely dandruff free scalp?

 

[Flying_Monkey]

Vos calls for women's versions of the one-days classics. Too right. There might well be arguments around the GTs, but I can't see any good reason why there shouldn't be women's versions of most big one-day races. With good co-ordination, they could be held on the same weekend or even the day; disruption would not be much greater than with just the men's race, and it would mean even bigger crowds and greater economic benefits.

 

[thom]

Vos calls for women's versions of the one-days classics. Too right. There might well be arguments around the GTs, but I can't see any good reason why there shouldn't be women's versions of most big one-day races. With good co-ordination, they could be held on the same weekend or even the day; disruption would not be much greater than with just the men's race, and it would mean even bigger crowds and greater economic benefits.

Yeah definitely and the UCI could if they wanted create a disincentive for races not to do so by reducing the status of races that don't do so. What is more important ? A fair equitable sport or that MSR is a bastion of alpha males ?
Practically speaking it might be hard to run races on the same day for events that loop back on themselves or come close to doing so unless one race set off sufficiently early but if that's the case, run them on consecutive days

Edit: in addition, in logistical terms it makes it easier for teams to run parallel male and female teams
you could make an argument that teams should only be allowed to the highest Pro level if they have both a male and female team and in consideration of admittance to that level, take into account the points women's teams earn too.

 

[User169]

Consecutive days on a weekend might be problematic given that most classics now run a sportif the day before.

 

[thom]

Consecutive days on a weekend might be problematic given that most classics now run a sportif the day before.

True but what's more important ? An equitable sport or a sportive ?

 

[Rob3rt]

Consecutive days on a weekend might be problematic given that most classics now run a sportif the day before.

Real racing should always take precedence over pretend racing!

 

[User169]

True but what's more important ? An equitable sport or a sportive ?

It wasn't really a comment on desirability, more of a comment on appetite from race organisers. FM suggested running a women's event alongside the men's would be relatively straight-forward and would generate bigger crowds and revenue. I'm not so sure given that it would likely involve loss of sportive-related income. Doesn't mean to say that it isn't the right thing to do.

 

[thom]

It wasn't really a comment on desirability, more of a comment on appetite from race organisers. FM suggested running a women's event alongside the men's would be relatively straight-forward and would generate bigger crowds and revenue. I'm not so sure given that it would likely involve loss of sportive-related income. Doesn't mean to say that it isn't the right thing to do.

point taken
i think innovative rase organisers ought to be able to solve such problems but the UCI ought to offer incentives for them to address the issue
With MSR for example, I guess it's a problem that the point of the race is to go from Milan to San-Remo... from one climate to another and welcome in the Spring. It's a supremely long race for the men. Were you to commence a women's race
from the 200km distance, it isn't MSR any more.
I think it just requires a will though.

 

[Flying_Monkey]

It wasn't really a comment on desirability, more of a comment on appetite from race organisers. FM suggested running a women's event alongside the men's would be relatively straight-forward and would generate bigger crowds and revenue. I'm not so sure given that it would likely involve loss of sportive-related income. Doesn't mean to say that it isn't the right thing to do.

Well, if they've already blocked the whole weekend, then there's even more of an argument for the same day then. The disruption will not increase at all. It's particularly odd that you will have a mixed sportive, then a men's race, but no women's race...

 

[beastie]

As has been commented previously, women's sports gains the highest profile, and gets nearest to equality when run in parallel with men's sport.
Tennis, athletics, gymnastics. Can one day races not follow the model of the London marathon? Three different starts: women's elite, men's elite and the sportive. The starts do not have to be at the same place or time, or even follow precisely the same route.

Is this model not being used for an event in London next year now that I think about it?

 

[beastie]

RideLondon 2013.

 

[thom]

Cycling news interview with UCI rep on developing women's cycling.