Applying sense and market forces is wrong. Rigged markets remain rigged and defeat norms, for centuries if necessary. This is a rigged market - from the governance - women's 500m TT/ men's kilo, through to the male commentator who talks in so derogatory manner of women's races or in Hugh Porter's case often talks over the race about the next men's race. Sky are a massive part of the problem and it sickens me each time I read about their initiatives to grow the sport at the grass roots - only have aspiration if you are male.
There is only one way to break a rigged market and that is with legislation. Anything else and you will be planning going around the same tree, in 75 year's time.
So - I am sorry to say, I have a view - Are the guys at Sky who make the decisions not to do a women's team chauvinists or misogynists ? Are Harmon, Porter and the others chauvinists or misogynists ? Are the rulemakers at the UCI chauvinists or misogynists ? Are the program commissioners at Eurosport chauvinists or misogynists ? Dead easy test. Swap the story.
Instead of male/female [because that is ok the poor weak little girls, well they are no good at sport anyway and they don't really want to do it, well only the weird ones anyway, and nobody is interested in it anyway, well not anybody who counts, like a man, well I suppose they might watch it if all the other channels are broken and the porno channels have not started up yet (Fluff - that is exactly how you come across !)] make it
white/black. We will segregate sport on colour of skin. We will restrict event lengths and Tour lengths. We will rig sports coverage. We will show lots of white people racing but never ever show a complete black race apart from the Olympics or World Championships when we will look and point and beat our chests and say how fair we are, And on those few occasions when we see a black person race, we will have only white people report on black peoples races and they can make outrageous comments about how they are not real racers and decry them at all points. As a consequence, pay for backs would be about 100th that of the equivalent white athlete and then as a defence we could say that they did not ride the same distance so that justifies them earning 100th of the white athletes and we can have a nice warm feeling that we have justified our outrageous and disgusting attitudes. Would that be modest bias or an outrage against humanity ?
Flying Monkey gets my vote.