Today I would like to jump into the hot moment thanks to UCI weird decision to ruin men’s ITT World Championships deciding that Men Elite and Women Elite should run the same ITT kms, even against their rules, and buried it without any discussion behind the usual “equality” – magic word that keeps everyone silent if posted as reason and don’t you dare discuss it.
I can’t stand it anymore and I want to broke the wall of silence behind and want to speak out loudly about the problem, according to my opinion, of the women’s cycling situation, the current point and what we can do to improve the movement for the future.
DISCLAIMER: These points are my only and doesn’t represent the point of view of the other people managing LFR account (blog is personal).
The calendar
It’s unclear what is UCI direction now because they are trying to make actual men’s race having a women’s version but making them co-existing with already existent races. You get so a mirrored calendar in spring, then you lose tracks in the summer until ECs and Worlds brings them back together. From this point of view it’s indeed clear that the women races creating under the brand of the men’s races are the most followed because they are on the same day of that and it usually are bigger classics.
We then in Calendar the Tour de France Femmes following the Tour de France, Ceratizit challenge in the end of Vuelta but still Giro d’Italia Donne is not related to the main Giro and this caused it to be in a terrible spot of the calendar because whatever is running at the same time of Tour de France will not get enough attention.
Stage races are indeed a problem because after the cancellation of California there isn’t a good quantity of mountain battles that is what makes cycling epic. Waiting to see Itzulia Women at the moment true mountains are provided only by Giro Rosa – the same faced by Giro d’Italia. Tour de France Femmes in first edition brought in Vosges, that are hard but aren’t Alps or Pyrenees. Tour de Suisse and Romandie are finally adding stuff on the field in 2022, honestly something in earlier season is missing (UAE/Tirreno period) but level seems definitely improving.
The real problem – at least for me – come when I noticed that this year I barely watched them in comparison to the classics. Sure, got a 2nd screen on Giro Rosa and even the Suisse, Burgos and Ceratizit stages – but the rest? While for other is surely different I noticed that I struggled a bit in following copy-paste races with sprint and punchy stages. Timeslots are also important and the rest got basically overlapped a lot with Romandie or even Giro d’Italia making it difficult to follow both at same time.
Would like to have numbers to see if the number of this races are good in absolute terms or there are other people having the same problem.
TV coverage
We covered this aspect two articles ago – situation is now increasing with almost every race covered. I am still of the opinion that the most important aspect is to bring a decent coverage to Girodonne being the most ancient Grand Tour and the only one featuring difficult and iconic mountains that men did. 2021 coverage suffered all the problems of a 4g TV coverage including spectator not being able to see the mountain finish of Prato Nevoso or the Climb Time Trial. Giro was indeed the race that did most for women’s cycling, being there since 1980s before everyone jumped on the virtue signaler / politically correct bandwagon and now going to be slashed by Tour de France.
Today we have essentially a good TV coverage for classics and a terrible TV coverage for Stage Races even if situation improved from the time these races existed only on livetext. Tour de France Femmes can be a game changer for both because will surely bring more attention to the movement. More Paris-Roubaix, Giro Rosa and a general increase of the rest of stage races are surely the main priority.
Lack of data
That’s terrible if you are used to do live-tweeting of the races. For almost every WT race you got a live tracker from the organizer, possibly with distance, breakaway composition, gaps and so on updated in real time. For women races there is nothing like this and you have to do all on your own from the TV. It has a terrible impact on the real time narration and doesn’t help the spectator also. It can be maybe secondary – but a personal appeal here is: improve your real-time data.
Field situation and governance
People in charge of the women’s cycling development are in my opinion now doing more harm than good: token gestures of the UCI like the ITT length are a problem because it doesn’t help the development, it just helps some PR relationships and people obsessed with matching equality in every aspect, doesn’t matter if to achieve this you have an impact on men’s cycling.
Let’s look at the current number – at the moment according to UCI official riders list there are 569 World Tour riders, 119 Women World Tour riders, 451 ProSeries riders, 2013 men’s Continental Team riders, 651 women’s Continental Team rider. So there are more or less 3300 men vs 700 women in continental peloton. UCI acts like if these numbers are equal. They aren’t.
Problem is not only in numbers, it’s in depth. You can easily open a World Ranking and check – for example – riders around position 50 in both rankings and you’ll realize how much more deeper men’s field is. It’s so correctirating Colbrelli’s Roubaix victory as more difficult than Deignan’s one. Comparison is a problem because at the moment it harms women’s development and it focuses on the outcome rather than the current situation.
While men’s movement is pretty much settled, women’s movement needs to improve the depth and not going immediately demanding from equal outcomes like if it’s settled. At the moment women’s cycling started mainly from money of men’s races but it’s not sustainable in long terms. As Van der Spiegel (CEO of Flandersclassic) reported on Twitter earlier in the season, for example, media should start to pay for TV rights now being offered for free.
The right step is so to increase the WWT teams in number and in number of riders thanks to different races being added in the calendar year by year, add a ProSeries level and hoping to have a comparable depth. Then you can act like today. Sad reality that people doesn’t want to read or hear is that currently field is like men’s were in the 90s with really few riders that can win a race and that there are differences.
Women are not men: Men’s cycling is currently tailored on that market and that field, copy-pasting doesn’t work. You have to tailor the suit to what you have in front creating a value with your field instead of continuing with useless comparisons. Worlds ITT is the perfect example: while in men 30 and 50 km ITT have different type of riders winning it, in Women you get what you get after 30 km with more gaps. This is basically because top field is much stronger than the rest now, but situation can (should) be different developing the movement in 4-5 years.
The social justice warriors fans…
Fans sometimes are a plague, in the women’s cycling narration especially. If you disagree on Demare or Sagan deviating in a sprint you get some complaints and then is over. If you disagree on UCI making men and women’s ITT the same length you get aggressed by the Women’s Cycling Talibans. I’ve done my idea of these people being prevalently from a certain culture that for unknown reason judge everyone and everything with that standards.
These aggression are unfortunately tolerated but are not normal as it was not normal what happened to Van der Spiegel last time he tried to talk on Twitter about why Flandersclassic prize money aren’t equal and why TV is a priority over it, getting aggressed by sjw screaming it to take it from men. The whole logic of “if we can’t get it, at least the others shouldn’t get it“ it’s honestly terrible also in life, but that’s another stuff.
Roubaix case I think it’s also the most evident and ungrateful at the same time. ASO finally put a race with the second best WWT TV coverage after Plouay and was basically got slaughtered because it doesn’t match what men had instead of thanking them to have put it and said it’s a good beginning for the first year. At the same time Lombardia Women and Sanremo Women, for example, doesn’t exist and get 0 criticism. How do you think an organizer will plan to open a race if every time there is the run to the wailing wall by the social justice warriors creating a bad image and basically spitting on what they got?
Races aren’t earned by any right, they are organized if there is a market – and market is fortunately free because we don’t live in a communist country (thank God). Also, market for women’s cycling is mainly composed by the “white males” (not used as a dispregiative like ignorants) that also watch men’s cycling and that are accused by the “fans” above. To improve it you should convince them to watch it – more audience, more revenues into the sport – and whining on them doesn’t help.
It’s also not normal to get aggressive with Lefevere for expressing his opinion about not wanting to risk to run a business in loss and for that ask for sponsor to leave and making the team close, leaving riders and staff without a job (did you think about that when you ask sponsor to leave, right?) while there are other teams that have more money, doesn’t have a women side without providing any motivation about it and for that 0 criticism.
It’s honestly sad seeing a part of the fans living this as politic matter and not as a sport and using it to show that they are “on the right side”. Following a sport isn’t mandatory, investing in a sport isn’t mandatory and politicizing it in my opinion risks to keep more people out than in the sport. It’s even more sad that you can’t even have a talk with people speaking for slogans – but fortunately for that Twitter has a block function. For the rest of normal twitter users: don’t be afraid to stand up – you are the silent majority.
My appeal to the fan is so to be positive and propositive. Don’t blame and insult who freely chose to not watch the race – try to persuade them to watch it. Give them the background of the riders they ignore. Don’t be aggressive to organizers who decide to invest in new races just because they don’t immediately match your standards – and so on.
… and media feeding them
Narration of women’s cycling is terrible on mainstream media. There is no doubt on it. I would take two example over all the rest: Van Aert / Evenepoel in worlds and Van Vleuten / rest of the team in Olympics. While we know everything about the first we barely know something about the second because all we got is some statements after San Sebastian and barely someone searching for the athletes.
Dualisms are good for cycling. Polarization bring audience, it always was like that, it will always be. We had the same for Pogacar-Roglic for example in 2020 with backgrounds on the two riders but we barely get these things in women’s cycling articles. I want to know what’s Van Vleuten’s background, what is her relationship with Van der Breggen, what brought Wiebes to start professional cycling and so on. Lorena Wiebes, the best sprinter in women’s peloton by far in this moment, has barely 1300 followers on twitter. Something isn’t correct here.
Then you look at the media and what you get are all clickbaiting articles for the social justice warriors. Giro d’Italia put a chairlift of Zoncolan winners and didn’t put women. Nokere-Koerse matching prizes. Some criterium in USA that we don’t even know it exists put equal prize between men and women and so on. I am pretty sure these articles are written to cause easy indignation between the subjects above, generating clicks and revenues for who writes them but doesn’t help anybody the movement in development itself.
My appeal is to stop calling out people from your workplace as free hobby and go interviewing Cecile Uttrup Ludwig or Emma Norsgaard. Give more background, write about the rivarlies, give fans reasons to get closer in riders knowledge and support them. There is nothing bad if there is some beef between riders – it’s actually even good for the movement. And of course give tactical insights about races and how they were won – on that of course I strongly reccomend Lanterne Rouge Cycling Podcast to find out good points about the racing.
Conclusion
This article was written as a positive contributes from my points of view to develop women’s cycling as a thing on it’s own, less dependant from the men’s side and as a thing that ideally gets a market value and lives on it’s own. Women’s cycling is amazing if you live it as an addition to what we always have and not as a political stuff in competition with men. Let’s get rid of the toxic crap surrounding it and develop it as it deserves, without shortcuts. Having a chicken tomorrow it’s surely better than having an egg today.
Co-Founder of LFR account. Cycling lover since early 2000s. Say no to short stages.
You won’t have to worry about this soon because soon all the women cyclist will be men
While I might agree with many of the points raised, I still feel that this article is out of proportion.
Surely, the best way to foster women cycling isn’t hindering men races. I also suspect that it’s women in different roles within cycling who should be asked about what they believe is good for the women side of the sport: I wonder if having the same distance a the Worlds ITT ever was one of such requirements.
Let’s also add that this specific decision can be seen as belonging to a process which is detrimental for cycling as a whole, that is, taking away from it those aspects which are more related to stamina and long, complex performances, rather than shorter and more controllable efforts.
All that said, we might also consider a different facet of the question. It’s a symbolic gesture (call it marketing or façade if you please…), yet an action at least, which brings general attention on the matter of equality in cycling. This same debate proves it. Lots of interesting input above which were raised by this polemic decision. Let’s be frank: what’s actually being sacrificed isn’t that much. The Worlds ITT is a race with modest tradition and whose importance has always been relative. I’d be more than happy to see it evolve in a different direction (shorter courses, maybe… but harder or more technical ones) while at the same time supporting the recent resurrection of the Hour Record for… well, hour-long efforts on a flattish terrain! Which, by the way, is by definition equal for men and women.
Please also note that during their not so long history under their current format (“equivalent” races against the clock we had in the past…weren’t *this* race), the ITT Worlds already has several times courses which ended up in efforts closer to 45′ than to one hour, on 40 kms or so courses.
What about a mixed Trofeo Baracchi, instead?
^__^
At the end of the day, aren’t you also slashing an organiser for taking a (maybe wrong) decision in order to promote the idea of equality, just because it goes against your expectations? Let’s push things towards a balance of positive and negative effects rather than venting anger. It’s just healthy that there’s some sort of debate, although on social networks it goes often down to insults (as if there wasn’t anything of the sort in the piece above, right? :-P).
And, please, let me insist again that I fully understand your general point and even share similar feelings.
Lastly, let me only add that the weakest point above is the “economics” approach which is based on lots of wrong assumptions. In fact, it would be quite easy to argue that men cycling is taking advantage of a privileged position to cannibalise resources, which actually prevents any sort of *actual* or *fair* competition for spectator attention time, hence damaging from the very beginning the option for an organic growth of the women side of the sport. As it’s very usual, the distorted idea of a non-existing free market is just a cover-up story to protect unfair advantages. Cycling can’t be spoken about *without politics* because most of the money flowing through the system a *public*. So the system should be held accountable to spend that money in the most equal way because it comes from society as a whole, although only a little part of that society (middle-age to older white men) are actually enjoying the most *both* the monetary income *and* the show. With exceptions, of course, which are still just that… exceptions.
But men’s cycling didn’t start as men’s cycling. Starts as “cycling”. We had women racing with men in the first days, Alfonsina Strada is one example. I don’t think there are even rules forbidding that now or – if there are – there shouldn’t be. The privilege is that no woman can beat Pogacar on Tour de France, so they need to race as a separate category, exactly like the Men Under 23. Conceptually Women Elite and Men Under 23 are the same thing: you put a limit to field to held a separate category. While you can do market correction it’s always in this way because sport it’s about who jump higher, who runs faster or who cover a distance in the short time in its prime.
Cycling isn’t running on public money, is run on private money. Organizers are privates. Team are privates. UCI is entirely relying a lot on sportwashing money. From experience we had race being shut down because they couldn’t be run in profit. I fear the same thing may happen here when the “woke” wave will be over, because… it already happened! Tour de France was run in 1980s on equal route and was cancelled.
The best way to avoid this in my opinion is to have a system that can live on its own and not on men’s race money. My point is wanting these races to survive instead of ending like California, being closed after activist lobbied for having same race days and equal prize money and then having even men’s race being closed because it wasn’t realistic.
You’re a little short on information, my friend… ^__^
Both on Alfonsina *and* the money financing pro cycling.
Let me expand on the above (I was running short on battery life and later short on time).
Cycling is quite exceptional among commercial sports because of the huge quantity of public money it draws on.
Just start thinking: infrastructure used both to train and race is mainly public, both when we speak of roads and quite often also when velodromes are involved.
Hosting fees are paid by public entities (municipalities or regions).
TV rights are mainly paid by public TVs which often sign deals which include TV production. Nowadays few to none private TV business can compete with the main public TV offers, which are raising year after year. When some private deal is signed, we often see cycling ending up quite much harmed by low quality production or by exclusive deals with private pay-TV partner which hugely reduce cycling’s reach (the infamous Eurosport-RCS deal). Are you aware of the huge importance for cycling of Belgian public service TV VRT?
An impressive number of teams is and was backed by public money – which includes what you call sportwashing. When a team is sponsored by a lottery, remember that it’s public money we’re speaking of. The various Belgian or Dutch “Lotto”, or French historical FDJ (although in very recent yeat it went through to a privatisation process). Sometimes, as in the case of the Dutch team, public money is sort of a safety background: if the team finds privat sponsor, that’s great, but if it doesn’t, then the State comes and protects its “national” team. You can also think about the role which British Cycling played in tight connection with Team Sky, sharing some (private) sponsors, public money, public structures… and perhaps something more. It’s nothing new, anyway. Do you remember Kelme? Scroll through its history and you’ll read about Comunidad Valenciana, Costa Blanca, Elche, Xacobeo… that’s all public money. Just as with good ol’ Euskaltel. Or Illes Baleares on Valverde’s jersey (already in the now-Movistar structure) when he beat Armstrong? Public money. Speaking of Lance… I guess you know that a significant part of the troubles he went through depended on the team being partly funded on federal (public) money. Through half of its history Telekom or T-Mobile was also public funded. And what about Bernaudeau’s team in France (“Vendée”)? What about Armée de Terre?
If you look close, presently about half of the WT teams depend seriously on public money of this or that State.
We might also add as a curiosity, even if it’s a whole different story, that when a team is backed by a “once public” company (like Movistar-Telefónica), albeit the latter is now private, they often keep strong ties with politics and political parties which are quite important in determining what decisions are taken.
That said, how important is public money to the main financial assets of cycling, that is the GTs and the Worlds? More than 25% (!) of the whole revenue (!!!) of the TdF or of the Giro just comes from the one *single* national deal signed with respective public broadcasters. Add to that hosting fees, and you’ll get an idea of how dependant they are on public money. Sure, they’ve got private sponsor also… unless, hey, wait, who’s the owner of Enel, for example? And who does sponsor the “stage winner” prize? What is Agenzia Nazionale di Turismo? Who contributes as the “Official Green Carrier”?
We could go through the whole calendar and watch how most of short stage races would disappear without public sponsor (local authorities). Do you remember the diamond which Formigoni used to give to the winner of the whole Trittico Lombardo’s combined classification? That was because Regione Lombardia sponsored the event. Do you like Paris-Roubaix, the biggest one-day race in commercial terms? Who is its one main sponsor, or “partenaire majeur”? Yes, the regional institutions (and you must add the support of all the municipalities).
Let’s have a look at the UCI, now. Some 45% of the reported UCI total revenues depend directly on public money, in the form of hosting fees and TV deals with public broadcasters.
I could go on and on, adding subsidies for grassroot activities, for buying a bike, even (!) and more and more indirect financial support. But with the direct one as sketched out above it’s more than enough to start getting the picture.
Of course, many sports (starting with football) enjoy way more public funding than they’re ready to acknowledge (tax, urban planning…). Yet, cycling is rather unique in that it’s a small sport (in financial terms) which relies heavily and directly on public money for so many facets of its mere existence.
I’d be more than happy if you can name me a commercial, global sport whose infrastructure is mainly public (…skiing is held on state property, as mountains here, but concessions for ski stations are for private ventures!); whose TV production is essentially carried out by public broadcasters who also pay the *vast majority* of TV rights, in which half of the teams or so are backed by public money (which isn’t even new in historical terms); whose competition’s got public companies and institutions as the main sponsors; whose international federation lives on public money… well, I’d be happy to make a comparison.
I really struggle to come up with any main sport that comes even close.
Sponsorships. Not funding.
They freely decide to invest in what they think they can have a return. It’s the market.
If public sponsor decides to invest in both, we ideally get equal prize money. It’s different than forcing the hand of the organizers.
TV rights are for big races. For small races and women races at the moment they are given out for free if it’s not the organizer itself to pay for TV production. Flandersclassics women races are given for free.
In a real world Tour de France and Paris-Roubaix will always get sponsors, if someone pulls back there is another one. The same can’t be said for Paris-Roubaix Femmes. Just a reality check.
You can’t force sponsors, public or private, to invest where they don’t want to invest.
Do you really believe that the fees paid by RAI or France TV are aligned with… the market? Any market?
Just compare what RAI paid for Italy (production costs included) and what ES paid for the rest of the world.
If one day an European law was passed preventing public entities from “investing” their money in private sport ventures, even more so when such events actually can’t prove a manifest and proportional return from a social or economic point of view (many Worlds look triumphal, then go broke and struggle to prove actual social impulse; and I’d be curious to know what would come out from a serious audit of French public institutions investing in Paris-Roubaix, the area’s been simply free-falling for decades!)…
… that day, we’d witness the end of pro cycling.
No private sponsor would come in to substitute the gross mass of money now thrown in by public entities, and you know why I’m so sure? Because when such a financial space is there – however little – private sponsors *do* jump in.
We could compare different moment of cycling history, or different races (TdF vs. Giro right now), or both thing, and you’d always come up with the same.
We’d be left with TdF… and probably nothing less. But you can’t have a full sport out of TdF only. Paris-Roubaix would be among the first to evaporate away. Not to speak of the huge quantity of not-profitable races we just need to just keep the sport going (a full calendar, prep races, juvenile races etc.).
Again, just have a look at the sheer proportion of the public-money phenomenon and look at the situations in other sports. If you don’t see anything *peculiar*, well, not much more to add.
In that case we’ll be under communism and we are witnessing under this pandemic the idea of putting someone out of law because it’s immoral.
Don’t think will happen, but the day that Will happen we’ll probably have some serious problems of State controlling their citizens
God save capitalism and free market.
Saying that California was shut down because of activists begging for equality is as totally gullible as believing to what ARD said when they jumped out the TdF TV deal, that it was for “moral reasons” due to doping scandals. Yeah yeah, sure guys.
Everybody in the cycling circles always suspected that California was going to end up like that, and people were already predicting it well in advance, when back then some fans were worried because the race was seen as a menace for the Giro, being held in May.
It’s the social history of USA pro races, and the main reason because of which historical European actually-rooted races need to be protected while at the same time the sport tries to go global (which isn’t necessarily bad, not at all, once you do it the sustainable way).
This is the law passed in California, leading to the cancellation of the event: https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/california-passes-landmark-bill-to-force-equal-prize-payouts-in-cycling-events/
What went out from this is that market allows 3 and 7. Not 3 and 3. Not 5 and 5. Not 7 and 7.
So it went out 0 and 0 and mainly because of cost of additional road closures and the men even being less profitable.
Ehmmm… I’m sorry to be this rude, but, hey man, did you actually read the article you posted?
It says that the bill which tried to achieve equal race days was *brought down*, whereas the one which Cali gov passed was only the one concerning equal sport prizes – something which ToC was *already doing*!, as Bertine points out in the CN piece you quote, and let me add that they had done it *by their own decision nearly two years before*.
So… how the heck is any of this *really* related to ToC being shut down? There was no law forcing them to do anything about race days, nor the law which was passed changed anything for ‘em at the time it was passed – they had already acted freely many months before.
Bertine line above is expressing her own *hopes & intentions* – now, if you’re telling me that organisers closed everything down worried by Bertine’s lucubrations, frankly I can’t argue further.
Last but not least, if you think that equality is coming to the fore just out of pure activism and not *also* because what you call “the market” (or the capitalistic frame) now includes strong interests towards it, well, you might someday discover that you’re even more naif than I implied above.
Tour de France Femmes will NEVER be as important as Tour de France. This is the market. Same for the rest. You can tell all the lies you want.
Re: Women cycling. This is much more complicated, but let’s keep a couple of things in mind.
When Marianne Vos thought about racing with the men in 2012, Blijlevens soon discovered that it wasn’t so clear she could be allowed to do so. The option was finally ruled out behind the curtain to avoid a public conflict within the sport which would hinder its image.
And, no, currently no woman would beat Pogacar at the Tour de France – did any man make it until now? ^__^
Clearly the wrong question.
Most of the male pro peloton won’t ever win a major race. Many won’t ever win any race altogether. Shouldn’t they be riding pro? That’s not how pro cycling works. But that’s not how general sport works, either. From athletics, we know that women may not place in the top 20 of a mixed marathon event, yet they can occupy 30% of the 20 to 40 placements. Would you ever say that if a man isn’t making a top 20 in an event with hundreds or thousands of participants he’s not actually entitled to take part, from a sporting or athletic POV?
(By the way, same can be true for many U23 riders. Which isn’t a totally correct comparison, either, because that’s a category which exists in order to develop riders, not just as such, although I’ll acknowledge that in Italy it’s gone close to become a different sport in itself – which has been more or less a disaster for Italian cycling, but that’s a different story).
The whole question is more sociocultural and historical rather than phsyical – and that’s not to deny biology or whatever (that would be quite interesting, too, but far beyond the scope of a blog commentary). The point is that athletic performance is always the by-product of sociocultural conditions. How wide is the base of potential athlets you’re drawing on? How early do people start the sport depending on their gender? How many practice any sport in teen years depending on gender? Then, how professional is the actual setting for women? How specific? How long can a person go in his or her bet on the sport from an economic POV?
Maybe rather than comparing women cycling to U23, it would make more sense to compare it with male cycling of the very origins…
Another fundamental point to keep in mind is the problem with your simplistic definition of what a sport is. Sports were created in a male framework for male athletes, and that idea is constantly reinforced. For example, are you aware of those occasions in which a woman held a general world record (best of both men and women) in cycling? Most cycling fans aren’t. Just don’t know. Yet it would be a notable feat to keep in mind, especially given the more complicated conditions which women are facing – see Alfonsina below.
Recently some mixed events were won by women. Why don’t you cite those?
As you yourself know very too well, the setting of time and space plus the very nature of the effort define who’s got the best option to outright win. Well, that’s true in the case of shortened stages in modern cycling, but that’s also true when we think about how the very sport (and sports in general) were created, privileging for sports the time frames and the physical qualities in which most athletes could give their best. But, hey, what if essentially each and every athlete was a man in that environment? The answer is easy. And that’s also why we get some surprises when usual time frame for effort is changed, other qualities are involved, and perhaps the base of participants is made more equal being more niche.
I’ll stop here because it’s clearly becoming too complex a perspective.
Let’s go back to practice. Why a separate cycling for women? Because nowadays that’s the better option to develop cycling among women in social terms (impact, marketability, narrative, image, role models etc.). Full stop.
It’s not *just because of* any underlying physical fact. In fact, in decent conditions, you’d presently have some women which would be performing better in some mixed contexts than several men who actually enjoy a pro contract of sort.
Indeed, Alfonsina Strada showed precisely that one century ago, in way harsher conditions.
But, no, she wasn’t normally allowed to take part: she did… showing up as a man since her very first races. Then she mostly raced in women competitions. At her first relevant race against men, the 1917 Lombardia, she needed to point out beforehand with the organisers that they couldn’t prevent her to the start because the official rules didn’t *explicitly* name gender barriers (as… it was given for granted)!
Even if male colleagues complimented her, she was heavily criticised afterwards by public opinion. Those were the years when just finishing was a feat, half of the starters couldn’t even get to the line. Alfonsina made it, both in 1917, when she was the last rider – yet in a small group of men with her same time – and also in 1918 when she even outsprinted a rival.
Notwithstanding, her participation in the Giro only came years later, despite her previous insistence. She was already 33 by then. She signed up taking out the final “a” of her name, and was allowed to take part only because of the very special circumstances of that race (conflict between riders and organisers).
So, I’d say you’re totally wrong. Women didn’t only have to fight unfair social conditions in order just to think about pedalling (constant opposition around them), they had fewer occasions, and surely weren’t allowed to compete against men as the most normal thing! A woman like Alfonsina didn’t get recognition but was chastised for doing what she did, even when she showed on the road that she was better than a very significant percentage of the men at the start.
“Lies”? That’s the new name for “facts”? ^__^
However, I’m going quite much patronising here, and it’s not the mood I like better. Lots of respect for your good work. Keep going.
Nonsense in following up here, this sort of debate goes too emotional when assumptions are challenged, and nobody ever changed his or her opinion on the internet. Quite the other way around, stubborness goes wild.
I just feel there’s quite a lot of information out of your picture, but it’s not up to me to pull it all out.
In a couple of decades we’ll all found out… maybe we’ll be left only with self-supported ultradistance because of climate change ahahahahah.
Good vibes and goodbye!