2022 PRO Thread

[ooo]

[Lina]

It's a straight up fact that majority of the women's peloton aren't fully dedicated to cycling. But that's mostly because there's hardly any money in women's cycling. So it's a choice of having a day job and cycling on the side or then living on what little cycling brings and maybe benefits. If that improves more of the women can focus fully on cycling.

And when it comes to physical feats women are not equal to men. Humans are sexually dimorphic species and the males are stronger, taller, faster. That doesn't mean we shouldn't treat women as equal to men. But when it comes to sports it's good to remember that men and women are no equal because it does matter in sports. The main reason a lot of womens sports don't get as many views is because mens sports is the premier event. It's the one with the best results. And at the end of the day the amount of money available for athletes depends entirely on how many people you can bring in. In womens cycling right now one of the biggest problems is that there are so few riders that are actually fully dedicated to the sport that the races are rather boring when it's the same half a dozen girls that clean up every race. It's gotten a bit better over the years but there's still ways to come. Cycling is one of the sports where the absolute speed doesn't matter that much for interesting racing so there's hope for women's cycling. It doesn't matter if the average speed of a stage is 35 or 45 km/h if the racing is interesting. There are also sports that massively suffer from women being weaker and slower, football(soccer) and ice-hockey for example. Not many people go watch teenage boys play football or hockey, so it's really hard to get people to watch women's football or hockey when they get handily beaten by the teenage boys no one goes to see, and you can see that in their play. But there are also examples of womens sports where the womens competition draws in almost the same viewers as the mens. Biathlon, XC skiing, tennis, and track and field all bring in plenty of viewers for the womens events, which means there's money for the women. There's no reason why womens cycling can't get itself into the second group of sports where people do watch womens cycling. The numbers are already improving.

Yet 87k watched England v Germany yesterday, the highest viewing figure ever for a Euro final, male or female, one reason being the lack of violence women bring to the game and that their lack of raw power makes for a more skilful & watchable game, less hoofing the ball and chasing after it...like overgrown toddlers....

There are also vast differences in ability in the mens peloton, do you or anyone else question their dedication? no you don't because they are men & from your POV abover reproach, perhaps men are slightly faster in cycling because they have a very long history of using PEDS?

Women compete against women, therefore comparisons with men are utterly pointless.

As Ty said, its very clear many men do not see women as equals at all... or as i once said to a BC guy "all you want women to do is hold a flag and make the teas"

Except the difference is, the men we see on TV all have the ability to be full time cyclists, albeit some at small salaries. That's simply not possible to all the women. It's not us questioning their dedication because of their sex but the realities many female cyclists live in. And one that they've gone on record to talk about. Even mens cycling had this same problem not that long ago and in below pro conti levels it does still exist. There isn't a lot of money in cycling for people who aren't winning big races. You can be as dedicated as you want but if you have to work a second job to make ends meet it will have an impact.

And yes, there is differences in ability in the mens peloton. However the differences aren't nearly as big. And it's most noticeable in that the womens peloton simply doesn't have high level domestiques in the same way as the mens peloton has. Which in itself makes the races a bit different from mens races, not necessarily worse from a watching point of view but different because the dynamics are different as they lack the strong diesels.

And no, the difference in power between men and women doesn't come from PEDs but from men being stronger than women. Just because women aren't as strong as men it doesn't make them any less of a person compared to a man. And it doesn't mean that they don't deserve equal rights. And it's relevant here. There's two ways of going about it, screaming everyone deserves equal pay even though their physical abilities aren't the same or trying to come up with ways to make people watch your sport even though it's not the absolute fastest display of cycling in the world. There are sports that have managed this, there are plenty of sports where women can make excellent careers in.

[Karvalo]

There's two ways of going about it, screaming everyone deserves equal pay even though their physical abilities aren't the same or trying to come up with ways to make people watch your sport even though it's not the absolute fastest display of cycling in the world. There are sports that have managed this, there are plenty of sports where women can make excellent careers in.

I think we've just found out how to make people watch women's cycling..... show it. That was pretty much it. And it worked.

This question of whether women's sport is as watchable as men's sport pales in comparison with the blatant discrimiation against women's sport for decades from all levels of organisation, funding and promotion.

As you used football as an example - in WW1 women's football took over from men's in the UK since all the male players were drafted. It was incredibly popular and remained so after the war ended and men's football restarted. Several years after the war ended Women's domestic football was sill selling out stadiums across the country - and we are talking attendances comparable to today, tens of thousands at one match. The Football Association was so worried it was taking attention away from the 'proper' men's game that they simply banned it, and it stayed banned for 50 years, and was effectively an unfunded side project for decades more since then. Now the women's Euro final sold out Wembley and football is a step closer to being back where it was a hundred years ago. Now that's a particularly egregious example, but don't kid yourself into thinking the underlying discrimination is at all unusual.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/20 ... justify-it

[CrankAddictsRich]

I think we've just found out how to make people watch women's cycling..... show it. That was pretty much it. And it worked.

This.... 100%. The Tour de France Femmes was awesome! There have been many great women's races in the past, but this race has shown a HUGE spotlight on it and I can't wait to see what new growth and oppurutnities come to this generation of female cyclists and those yet to come.

[BenSiskri]

As ever with the cycling media, they completely forget there is racing outside of the road. We've just had a weekend of World Cup MTB in Snowshoe, and women get equal billing as the men. And it's just normal.....

[LeDuke]

As ever with the cycling media, they completely forget there is racing outside of the road. We've just had a weekend of World Cup MTB in Snowshoe, and women get equal billing as the men. And it's just normal.....

One of the best weekends of XCC and XCO races I’ve seen. Been watching World Cups for a long, long time now and that was near the top.

Good gallery for anyone interested:

https://m.pinkbike.com/news/xco-photo-e ... -2022.html




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[CrankAddictsRich]

awesome photos.... thanks for sharing that!

[tymon_tm]

has someone designed the final km with a speedbump along the way? freakin incredible

today most definitely wasnt a good day for spronters, both Vuelta a Burgos and Tour de Pologne ended with a massive crash near the finish line

[19dford78]

I think we've just found out how to make people watch women's cycling..... show it. That was pretty much it. And it worked.

This.... 100%. The Tour de France Femmes was awesome! There have been many great women's races in the past, but this race has shown a HUGE spotlight on it and I can't wait to see what new growth and oppurutnities come to this generation of female cyclists and those yet to come.

Absolutely 100% - it's not a difficult formula. From there the platform builds. Triathlon, CX, MTB has done it pretty much from the start and it works - even created mixed versions. Great to see sports like road cycling and football starting to catch up. Love watching both the men's and women's events.

[Karvalo]

has someone designed the final km with a speedbump along the way? freakin incredible

And the state of the barriers was even worse. Not secured together, collapsed like a house of cards and then had unprotected open tube ends sticking up in the air while riders were still flying in. Pure luck that no one was impaled

[tymon_tm]

yeah, who could've funk it.. at TdP, where crash occured, there were also these same old metal barriers Jakobsen crashed into - new, elastic thingys were placed only about 200-500 meters before the finish line. guess riders should know better where to crash

[flying]

One of the best weekends of XCC and XCO races I’ve seen. Been watching World Cups for a long, long time now and that was near the top.

Good gallery for anyone interested:

https://m.pinkbike.com/news/xco-photo-e ... -2022.html

That was super! Thanks

[kbbpll]

in WW1 women's football took over from men's in the UK since all the male players were drafted.

Very similar thing happened with baseball in the US during WWII with the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. (See the movie A League of Their Own)

The preceding few pages of discussion were interesting to read. We have to keep in mind that they're not competing against men, they're competing against each other, the strategies are often different but it's just as interesting to watch, and money and promotion is a major problem. The comments about few female riders dominating I take with a grain of salt - the Sky and USPS eras of the TdF were downright boring to me. From the US perspective, women's cycling is booming and I dare say I see as many or more women out there riding as men. Sponsors are fools if they're ignoring that.

[TobinHatesYou]

Women’s road cycling in the US is suffering as much as or worse than men’s road cycling. There were 9 women in the San Rafael Twilight Crit P12-W field last weekend. A rider who has been racing for 4 months nearly beat a pro-am level MTB/gravel rider. This is a race that’s been running for three decades and was part of USA Crits in 2019.

[kbbpll]

Women’s road cycling in the US is suffering as much as or worse than men’s road cycling. There were 9 women in the San Rafael Twilight Crit P12-W field last weekend. A rider who has been racing for 4 months nearly beat a pro-am level MTB/gravel rider. This is a race that’s been running for three decades and was part of USA Crits in 2019.

I don't follow it as much as I should so I probably shouldn't even comment, but US cycling perplexes me. "Cycling is the new golf" was the mantra at least a few years ago and it doesn't seem to have subsided that I can perceive as far as people out there doing it. The USA Pro Challenge went literally right by my neighborhood twice, friends from all over the country came and stayed with me to watch the stage, tens of thousands of people were out on the course, Voigt Froome Evans Sagan Porte I can't even list all the big names who were in it at various times, and then the whole thing went poof. I suppose in the US that football, basketball, hockey and baseball suck away all the money/sponsors/TV.