This week on Cyclingnews.com, there is a blog entry discussing the current state of women’s cycling, specifically highlighting the recent loss of funding for some of the larger professional European teams. While I commend the author for trying, she doesn’t really get anywhere in terms of a true dissection of why the sport is deteriorating from the top down, or what we can do to fix it. I’ll spare you the time spent reading it and summarize if for you.
(I’m paraphrasing here)
Recently the women’s pro peloton lost a major team when sponsors pulled out at the last minute. The team in question happens to have a roster that includes some of the current top female riders in the world. Also, we lost three major UCI events from the calendar, including the Montreal World Cup, Tour of Montreal, and Tour of PEI. We need to solve this problem. The problem can be solved at the grass roots level.
If you do take the time to read the original entry, you’ll find that it’s rather disjointed in writing style and full of sentence fragments and stream of consciousness editorial statements. It also leads to no clear explanation of what is going on in our sport or how we can fix it. It’s really unfortunate that Cyclingnews.com, arguably the largest media outlet for the sport of cycling, would screw up an opportunity to discuss this issue. But then again, it’s Cyclingnews.com, so why am I not surprised?
There are definitely issues with the sport of women’s cycling at the moment. Some of those issues are financial. The loss of funding for teams and events certainly is a substantial blow, but in case the author didn’t notice, the economy really blows right now. Lots of races are being canceled and teams are losing funding, not just the women. It appears, however, that the women are significantly harder hit.
Now at this point, you may ask yourself, why are women’s teams harder hit in this economy? And to answer your question, let me explain that women’s teams make less money, receive less support or coverage in the media, etc. Although I cannot give a definitive answer to why this is the case, I can offer my own experiences after 11 years in the sport as a one sided analysis of what goes on in women’s teams and why they haven’t ascended to a higher level of financial success, or at the very least met with the success of securing long term sponsors.
One of the major differences I see between men’s funded teams and women’s funded teams is the lack of loyalty the women riders exhibit towards the team and each other. I haven’t heard of many instances with intra-squad fighting in a men’s professional team – Astana not withstanding – but on a women’s team it’s par for the course. Really. The men’s peloton is full of domestiques, riders who flog themselves day after day, selflessly sacrificing their own results for the team leader. Although many of these riders are anonymous to us, it is still possible to rise through the ranks of media darlings and gain a following as a top domestique.
Examine Exhibit A: Jens Voigt.
Can anyone name a female domestique with the reputation of Jens?
Anyone?
Ok, can you name a female domestique who perhaps doesn’t have the media following of Jens but still has made a career out of working for her teammates?
Yeah, I didn’t think so. Women, in general do not work well together to support one team leader. They may say they do, but when it comes to crunch time, the women will be the first to leave you for dead if it means giving themselves a shot at glory. Women are opportunists, but they do not sit back and wait for when it is their opportunity to win. They will take any chance they can get at winning, even if it means selling their own teammate up the river. If you want to dispute this, fine, but I have seen it happen in major stage races.
The other thing that women lack is a sense of responsibility to the job. Now, I am not talking about club level riders who buy their own equipment, pay their own entry fees, and are 100% financially responsible for their racing. I am taking about those on sponsored teams. Sure, there are different levels of sponsorship, and not all of us are making a living off of bike racing. However, there are a goodly number of teams that offer full equipment sponsorship to their athletes – everything from helmets and sunglasses to bikes and wheels are provided. As a sponsored rider, I was more than happy to use all of the available product and would pimp it out whenever possible. I guess it was just really obvious to me that as a sponsored rider, my equipment was provided to me so that I could effectively be a rolling advertisement for my sponsors. I recognized that by using the equipment and publicly promoting the stuff, I was giving back to the sponsor who was so generous to provide me with this opportunity.
I am not aware of too many situations on men’s professional/elite teams where riders refused to use the team issue equipment. However, this has happened in the women’s peloton, and on more than one occasion. I’ve been privy to seeing equipment issues debated on my own team -riders refusing to use team issue equipment because they thought it was inferior. And as Richard Sachs so eloquently put it, when you as an individual refuse to ride team issue equipment that was provided for free from a sponsor, you are jeopardizing the sponsorship opportunities of the entire team.
Now, loyalty and responsibility are both major components of what I’d like to call a work ethic. Anyone who’s ever had a job can tell you that with a paycheck comes expectations – such as, showing up on time, doing the job correctly, etc. Women’s cycling teams are often hampered by an issue related to this concept of a ‘work ethic’; specifically, it’s the ever popular ‘not wanting to show up when you are scheduled to be there’.
Example: Rider X doesn’t want to race at Local Stage Race because she’d rather attend National Level Criterium, where she believes she has a better shot at a decent placing and establishing another result for her race resume. But, Local State Race is held in the same city as the team’s Title Sponsor, and the Title Sponsor wants a strong team presence at the race. Local Stage Race, although small, is the showcase event for the team. Elite regional teams in the US are often faced with these scheduling challenges – we want to please our local sponsor by racing in our local event, which would be of the most benefit to our sponsors, the ones who make this whole team possible with money and gear. But we have riders who want to pad their resume with hopes that a good result at a big race will net them that big contract with a better team. If the team doesn’t have the budget to fund a trip to a big race, the team needs to prioritize. Now, if this were your job, and your boss said “I don’t care if you want to take the day off to go work for Company Y tomorrow because you like their project better, you have a responsibility to be here, and no you can’t get paid for it if you don’t show up,’ none of use would really argue with our boss. We recognize that if we were to blow off work every time something better came long, we’d have a rather paltry paycheck at best and would be in the unemployment line sooner or later.
And yet, I have seen on numerous occasions riders trying to rationalize blowing off a team race in order to go do something better, like a bigger, more prestigious race. And I do realize the importance of results and being at the right race against the right people to show just how good you really are. But, the moment that someone else is paying your entry fees and giving you equipment, it’s your job to race when and where they want you to. Most teams finalize the racing calendar very early on in the season – many teams discuss that prior to the signing of any contracts, to ensure that everyone involved knows the expectations for the coming season before being locked into something that they do not agree with. So, when it’s now July and you’re whining about wanting to blow off a team race to go race another event as part of a composite team, forgive us if we are a bit put off by that.
I recognize that not all professional or elite women cyclists exhibit this type of behavior. I have met many of them who would rather not race at all than race on non-team issue equipment. I have met riders who will be where you want them, when you want them, and will not even bat an eyelash if your directive to them is ‘your job today is to fetch water from the team car.’ But I have seen time and time again in the women’s peloton a certain level of disregard for the concept of a team, of loyalty, of responsibility.
There is also the the issue of “who are we working for today.” For a women’s team to have any hope or prayer of remaining even slightly cohesive, there needs to be a team director who is not currently a member of the team or is not currently sleeping with a member of the team – otherwise it’s a recipe for disaster. The team director needs to be objective and be able to decide which rider is the protected rider for any given race, and then provide clear instructions for what everyone else is supposed to do. And even then it’s a crapshoot as to whether or not the team will execute it. I don’t know how many times the plan has been for Susie, Jenny and Andrea to protect team sprinter Kelly for the final lap, covering all attacks and breaks, only to find Jenny sitting in the back doing nothing and then sprinting against Kelly at the finish line. Oh yes, it happens. Frequently, might I add.
Now, back to the Cyclingnews entry that led to this lengthy diatribe. Yes, it is unfortunate that women’s cycling has taken a huge financial blow. Yes, we need to do something about it. And yes, we need to grow the sport at the grassroots level as well. But, there grassroots level is not where things are falling apart. We have record numbers of women racing in the beginner fields. What is happening is we lose them at the regional elite level. There’s a disconnect there, and I am not sure what is causing it. Many find that it is just too difficult to remain competitive while holding down a full time job, and after they upgrade to Cat 2 they retire. I’ll admit, racing a full season and being competitive at the elite level is not easy, with or without a job. A lot of the younger elite level riders won’t understand that statement because they’ve never had one, but trust me it does wear you out. Perhaps there is a deficit in team leadership, and in place of cohesive teams we have groups of women riding around on free equipment, abandoning team plans at the drop of a hat in search of a perceived better opportunity, and chasing each other down in desperate pursuit of that lone upgrade point/podium spot/payout.
What emerges at the other side of this is a women’s peloton of spoiled, self centered prima donnas with no concept of a work ethic or loyalty. Teams rarely stay together for more than 2 seasons and rosters are constantly revolving. Sponsors lose interest, directors give up, and the sport as a whole starts to deteriorate. I’m not sure how to solve this problem – given the psychology of women, I don’t know if it can be solved completely.
To quote from the venerable Jens in the video above, “My loyalty is to my team, my leader, my boss.”
January 26th, 2010 | 
Wow. That was good.
I read the cyclingnews.com piece and came away with the question, what the hell did I just read?
I hope this generates some comments. It could be a real eyeopener.
Now THAT is a damn good write up. I would love to hear LVG’s take on this situation, she’s been racing as long or longer than any women and has one hell of an amazing resume. And she got screwed last year when the team she signed with, couldn’t land enough $.
I read this and it makes sense. Nice job Kerry.
I second Bruce!
who pissed in your wheaties?
Hopefully things are changing a bit with the advent of HTC-Columbia and Cervelo pro women’s teams. Everything I’ve read about those teams is that they carry on the ethic of their respective men’s teams, working for each other and going for the team result instead of individual glory. If only Team Sky and Rabobank and other large men’s teams could follow suit. In fact, I really think Team Sky dropped the ball in not putting together a women’s team, but that’s another rant. Team Tibco in the USA seems to be similar in values and work ethic, and the results show it. Let’s hope they can be an example for other up and coming teams.
But it’s so true about women and how they act towards each other in the peloton. After merely a year of racing, where I’ve moved from beginner cat 4 to cat 2 racing national-level races with elites in the UK, I see it happen all the time. Social bullies trying to micromanage who does exactly what in the break, catfights at the finish line (“you sat on in the break and did nothing, how dare you win the sprint!”), teammates attacking each other or worse, teammates in the bunch working to bring back a break with one of their riders in it, etc. Any team with a few strong riders and even a smattering of organisation in the UK will clean up at local/regional races, it’s such a pathetic “every woman for herself” attitude, even amongst established clubs. Women’s cycle racing reminds me a lot of high school in fact: the mean girls and their sycophants, the social outcasts and misfits, the rebels, etc.
Frankly I much prefer riding with men in cat 3 races as it’s just more fun and less bitchy. If I were bigger and stronger, I would race with men full-time and leave the women to natter and cluck amongst themselves… alas, at 115lbs I can’t really do that if I want any success. Maybe I should just put in earplugs so I can ignore the constant bitching and moaning in the women’s bunch.
Thanks for the write-up. Depressing to think it doesn’t get any better for me in the future as I improve and move up. And glad I don’t cycle race for a living!
Interesting perspective of women’s racing – though probably a rose-tinted view of the men’s racing too! I think there’s a lot of in-fighting at Pro teams, the Contador-Armstrong debacle just being the most recent and public, but there’s plenty of other examples too.
Also I remember reading about male pros not using team-issue kit – sometimes products are simply disguised and re-branded using the sponsor’s colours and logos.
I also think that possibly men’s amateur racing at the grass-roots may be changing subtly, and possibly for the same reason that women’s racing is how you say it is. I think etiquette is part of a cycling tradition that stretches back over the past century. As the sport grows in popularity I think the culture gets diluted slightly and the ethics evolve (or possibly decline). Maybe women’s racing lacks a long cultural history to draw on, and hence the bitching, in-fighting, etc?
So I take it you’re racing unattached this year?
@smayka: Social bullies trying to micromanage who does exactly what in the break, catfights at the finish line (“you sat on in the break and did nothing, how dare you win the sprint!”), teammates attacking each other or worse, teammates in the bunch working to bring back a break with one of their riders in it, etc.
This behavior is NOT gender-specific: I’ve seen Pro/1/2 men get in fist fights after races over the same type of crap.
great post. i don’t know who you are but this is some great writing. going to poke around your site now.
Here, let me help you little girls and boys out. Put down your crayons and toys and pay attention. The problems with women’s cycling are as follows:
1.) Complete lack of TV coverage of races by idiot NRC race promoters who keep doing the status quo and are still living in 1979 watching re-runs of Breaking Away.
2.) Women who think they are the same athletes as men, but insist on racing in a completely different category while refusing to acknowledge an iota of femininity. The fact is, there is no rule preventing women from racing with men. So why not race with the men if it’s all about being the best cyclist?
The fact is, women race in separate events because they have vaginas and all the physical accoutrements that come with having vaginas. These same women however want to have their cake and eat it too…they don’t want to be “objectified” and only want to be appreciated for strictly their physical abilities. Such women should go race with the men where they will be appreciated for their physical ability (and good luck to you when you’re jettisoned out the back in the first 10k). So women need to accept the fundamental fact of human nature that sex sells and sponsorships are all about marketing. That’s how it works for women like it or not. And the fact is there’s nothing wrong with selling sex since it’s a part of evolution. As it is, there’s way too many “pro” women (the quotation marks ” are because if you make $5,000/year, you NOT A PROFESSIONAL athlete) who want to neuter their sexuality on the bike and this does not go over well for marketing people. Or men. All men. When women do this, they have essentially turned their sport into a Cat. 3 men’s race. And then there’s somebody like Liz Hatch who has managed to overdose on this advice to the point of calling herself a professional cyclist even though she’s really just a Cat. 3 with a Cat. 1 license and the only reason she’s riding for Lotto is because she’s sleeping with one of the rider’s on the Lotto men’s team who got her that job.
3.) Women’s incessant unrequited love affair with a known wife-beater: the Olympics. The Olympics is a 1-day lottery that means nothing in terms of who is the best cyclist in the world. Not only does the road race favor a rider in a highly course specific way, the selections are getting more and more political (based on UCI points, which excludes women who race for teams with domestic schedules) and monopolizes 2 years of the women’s schedule every 4-year cycle thanks to the idiots at USA Cycling who are ruining the sport for U.S. teams seeking U.S. sponsors. So if London Games has a flat road race, Amber Neben is not going to win it. Why? Because she’s never won a flat road race in her entire career. How’s that for a Jimmy the Greek prediction? It doesn’t matter how much she trains for it, she’s never gonna drop Vos or Nicole Cooke, or any of the other 30 or so faster sprinters is in the break. So why aspire to it?
Although the Olympics time trial has far more predictability than the road race, the TT translates poorly to TV viewers and therefore has little long-term fan base appeal and sponsorship ramifications to the woman who wins gold, let alone her trade team. In the Wok Games [Beijing Olympics], the women’s time trial was shown for approximately 8 minutes and nobody knew who won the race until the last rider crossed the line. This is very anti-climatic and the nature of the way the time trial plays out on TV does not translate well to the classic Olympic image of excitement that normal head-to-head Olympic competitions can evoke. So winning the Olympic time trial in cycling has about as much excitement and sponsorship value as winning a gold medal in archery or ping pong. The road race is a different story, granted, but if you look at how Nicole Cooke won, she basically sat on wheels and came around somebody in the final 100 meters. It was a cheap win. Steve Prefontaine’s non-medal performances at the Olympics had far greater emotional impact with TV viewers than Nicole Cooke’s 10-second pussy move. By the time the TV viewers figured out who won the Beijing road race, the race was over. Call me a party pooper, but no TV viewers cried when they watched it on TV. In fact, that Russian girl (tight) who was away in the break all day was the only memorable performance during the women’s road race. The rest was cookie cutter BS womens’ conservative cattiness.
And although I will concede that sports such as figure skating and gymnastics do not have simultaneous competitors on the playing field, there is something intrinsic about the way those sports play out on TV that makes them far more romantic and endearing to viewers at home, not to mention their winners more bankable to sponsors. There’s a certain drama about many sports that cycling doesn’t have, at least the way it’s currently filmed. And that’s why the richest woman in cycling is Sue Haywood and not Kristin Armstrong. Sorry, but winning the gold medal in the time trial means that if Kristin Armstrong walked into a local shopping mall anywhere in the U.S., the overwhelming vast majority of people will still ask her what it was it like to be married to Lance Armstrong rather than anything about her forgettable 2-minute face time on TV with her head covered in a funny space helmet.
So women – and especially their teams (I’m talking to you Peanut Butter 2012 and TIBCO) – who think it’s cool to spend your entire career trying to win an Olympic gold medal in cycling are basically suffering from a form of battered women’s syndrome and chasing a silly dream that will not matter in the whole scheme of things in terms of improving the women’s side of the sport or the personal banakability of its athletes as a whole. If winning a gold medal in the big “O” was such a big deal as women would have everyone believe, Nicole Cooke would be the one dumping washed up recording artists who never wrote any of their own music (but I digress) and getting the $10-million/year Radio Shack team and not Lance Armstrong. Instead, we see that gold medalist Cookie Monster cannot even find 1 company on the entire planet Earth to sponsor her team for the second year in a row (recall Vision 1 racing too) for a mere pittance of a men’s team while her male compatriots in the UK get Sky to back a freakin’ Brinks’ armored car into their driveway and dump $20 million Pounds into their soccer hooligan hands. With 20 million Pounds, you could conceivably bang Posh Spice or get to third base with a B-list celebrity like Kate Hudson. It is worth noting that Lance not only never won a gold medal in the Olympics (his bronze medal performance in Sydney was little more than a footnote in his career and added little or no marketing value to the Lance brand). In fact, Lance skipped the Athens Olympics intentionally because he didn’t want to prepare for it. Yet he’s by far the most popular cyclist in the world and has endorsement income comparable to top NFL and NBA players. Same goes for LeMond, who never even rode in the Games.
So women need to stop trying to re-invent the wheel on their side of the sport and stop treating the Olympics like it’s their wedding day all over again. Because in the end, the Olympics is a man wearing a wife beater T-shirt underneath the wedding tux. And once the honeymoon is over, you’re gonna find yourself barefoot and with two black eyes doing laundry.
4.) I forgot what else I was going to say, but whatever #4 was suppose to be it was both significant and correct, and people should feel obligated to embrace it simply because #1 through 3 are so goddamn compelling that #4 gets an automatic qualification.
Have a nice day.
Just to note, the above poster does know the difference between Lance’s wife and gold medal unrelated winner Kristen Armstrong, just to clear that up, however I agree with much of what he said. For various reasons, I can’t articulate that in public but it’s nice to have blogs and forums, isn’t it?
Blackie, come on. Really? Baby is making a point. Why are so many bike blog readers such literalists. Nuance Blackie, nuance.
Go on? I am listening….
Women’s cycling is suffering, and sadly, other women’s sports will follow down the same path. There are many reasons why this is happening, but a two of them stand out more than some of the others.
One reason for the slow demise of women’s sports is that women aren’t being represented at the top levels of our National and International governing bodies. We have laws to help with gender equity, but we don’t have role models for our young female athletes to look to. Just look at the governing bodies, and head coaching positions, of our sports. You will not find too many females holding upper level positions.
Another disturbing trend that is hurting our sports is born out of the notion that you have to sell sex in order to gain attention. The idea that ’sex sells’ is being taken to the extreme in the sporting world. Athletes are beautiful, healthy, and nice to look at, but too much emphasis is being placed on the sexual aspect of what is pleasing to the eye. Female athletes need to ask the question of what sex sells, and to whom is sells it to. It’s not selling anything to young females! It’s a notion that was put out there by men, and unfortunately, bought into by females. You will not see many head female coaches and officials trying to persuade young girls to pose for sexually explicit magazines. We need to be atheletes, not pinup girls. If we cheapen our sports, they will not thrive.
great post. but i submit that perhaps one reason for the lack of loyalty among the women riders is more to do with the lack of money in women’s cycling than any failing in women. i rode elite men’s amateur in europe in the 80s and that was every bit as back-biting as you mentioned the distaff peloton is. we were competing for a limited number of contracts and riders did everything they could to gain an advantage, including sabotage and bribery. perhaps doping too, but i was not a witness to that. riders thought nothing of turning on their own team member if it would get a result or a stagiare’s contract.
With all due respect, you’re full of crap. There are women who have spent their careers being loyal domestiques. Meredith Miller is a prime example.
There are plenty of teams whose riders remain loyal, who turn themselves inside out to get wins for the team. But does anyone make a career as a domestique? No, you know why? Because NOBODY MAKES A CAREER AS A FEMALE PROFESSIONAL CYCLIST.
There are a few dozen women who get a living salary to race their bikes, but most do so on poverty wages and the support of their family – or they have a full time job and race on the side.
Do you know why the women’s peloton is being hit harder by the economic downturn? Because NOBODY GIVES A SHIT ABOUT WOMEN’S CYCLING.
Women’s races don’t draw spectators or TV coverage and even though Cyclingnews.com covers most major women’s races the page views on those races are 1/10th of those of their male counterparts.
The Peanut Butter team is doing a great job of marketing themselves and stirring up interest – so why mock them for focusing on the ONE prize in women’s cycling that ACTUALLY MATTERS? Olympics are big – it’s the ONLY time women’s cycling gets any attention from mainstream media. And even then it’s appallingly small.
Kerry, you haven’t been on a pro team, and as far as I can tell you haven’t run a team, so you don’t fully understand the challenges of doing so.
Sponsors don’t really care about results, they want IMPRESSIONS. They want their name in front of as many eyes as possible.
Here’s one quote I got from a potential sponsor: “For $5,000 I can get a million eyes on my ad if I run a TV spot during a NCAA (MEN’s) basketball game. Do you think you could deliver those kinds of numbers?”
NO. You know why? Because NOBODY GIVES A SHIT. You’re never going to match the impressions of a mainstream men’s sport and so selling yourself to a potential sponsor is extremely difficult.
What it comes down to is WHO YOU KNOW. The sponsorship becomes CHARITY. Most women’s teams are run by people who care about women’s cycling but are not necessarily educated in marketing.
You know why that is? Because NOBODY MAKES A LIVING WAGE RUNNING A WOMEN’s TEAM! So how can you get experienced, knowledgeable people to run it right?
So there you go. If anyone actually gave two shits about women’s sports – if there was a Title IX for cycling – then we might have a chance. But sadly, women’s cycling will be a charity cause run by amateurs and populated by opportunists who are trying to take every little benefit they can out of the sport and from their teams in order to offset the huge expenses that are coming out of their own pockets.
It has NOTHING to do with how women race, whether or not their sleeping with their director or anything like that. It, like everything else in the world, boils down to the almighty dollar and there just aren’t enough of those flowing our way because people have better things to do with their money.
If by “Pro” team you mean the team did not have a UCI license and did not pay riders salaries, then yes I haven’t been on one. I was, however, a member of a regional elite team for three years, a team that had a budget of approximately $45,000, provided riders with brand new bikes and wheels every season, along with all of the other necessities that go with racing, and raced in several national and international level events. Our sponsor was a women’s cycling product company and used the team as a form of marketing – we were not a charity case, although I agree most women’s teams are as no one is making money from sponsoring them. We were not “pro” because as you state so eloquently, women are seldom paid. However, we were used in advertisements and catalogs and were sent along to work the booth at Interbike and represent the sponsor at local and national events. I helped moderate topics on the company’s forums, I let prospective customers test ride my bike to ensure a product sale, and I answered endless emails from potential customers regarding things like bike and saddle choices. Maybe I was not a pro but I feel like I had a wonderful relationship with my sponsor and that we all benefited from that relationship. My sponsor continually referred to the team as a Pro Team, so if you want to dispute my experience, take it up with the CEO of the company who was writing checks and giving us free stuff.
The situations of which I speak that I associate with problems in our sport were very real situations that I witnessed both on my Non Pro team and on other Pro and Non Pro teams. As I stated in my entry, I was offering a one sided analysis based on my own experiences. I did not say that my experience defined everything that is women’s cycling. I think it would be great if people would all respond with “you’re wrong, your situation was unique, not all teams are like that.” Sadly, however, most of the comments on here and the private emails I receive indicate otherwise.
Title Nine: You are incorrect.
If women truly wanted to be appreciated solely for their athletic prowess and not their sexuality they would simply race with the men. The women’s category was created for them based upon their different sexual parts, as was Title IX, your moniker. The problem for women was that they felt that by creating this second category for them in all sports, that they were then somehow entitled to the same popularity, fan attendance and sponsorship support even though their athletic abilities are substantially lower then men.
As you can see, judging by the fact that there is no women’s NFL and all the women’s sports leagues such as soccer and basketball are little more than models of failed concept after failed concept, the women need to accept the fact that once they created that separate category, they were ACKNOWLEDGING THEIR SEXUALITY. What’s more, they were also parading it around proudly as the sole basis for their own separate league.
But you can’t have it both ways. If you think about it, life doesn’t separate men and women in any job – except for athletics. So all the women who patronize a separate women’s sports league, but then tisk tisk acknowledging that their sexuality is in serious denial and being hypocritical.
You would admit that pro women are about as fast as Cat. 3 men, correct? Once you acknowledge that reality, the only reason for women’s pro cycling to be as popular as the pro men’s is if they somehow trumped the pro men with something the men don’t have. Gee, I wonder what could that be? Think something that marketing people can identify with…. and that something is, you guess it, sexuality. Because absent that, all you got is a neutered Cat. 3 men’s race.
Some of the women in cycling sound like those supermodels who get fat and are no longer hired. They knew the rules going into it. Barbie is 6′ 4″ and weighs 94 pounds. And if fat women could be supermodels, then everyone would be a supermodel.
There’s a reason why women tennis players make $20 million/year and women basketball players, cyclists, and soccer players don’t. Figure it out and let me know if you still need some help.
gregariousD – you are correct.
Part one of two…
First off, no offence to Kerry. IMO, she got balls bigger then church bells, forgive the gender crossover joke, but she’s smart, and I give her credit for shining light on what seems a taboo subject. However I can name a few riders who have made careers out of being domos, in fact there are many! It’s a small point in the overall scheme of things in this discussion, so I won’t belabor it. However Kerry posts are hard hitting, and stir the heart and the imagination to the very core of this subject. I’ll give more then my two cents here, cause I believe it’s extremely important topic, and I do know a few things being in the business for many years now. I’ll get to that later. This is a major rant, so put on your seat belts.
Title Nine poster is in denial, IMO. Women cannot deny their sex at bike races, and hide everything like butch boys or cat-3 men. This is absolutely true. When I go to bike races, the girls say I am cute, even though I try to hide it under my hat, they still see me. Women can’t hide their good looks anymore then I can hide mine, nor should they. I was born with my mine, it’s always been my advantage in life.
The typical fans at bike races will run from them if they do. You got to remember that most fans at races are not true bike geeks or nerds who collect five different cycling mags, and spend every waking moment mediating on cycling. No, far from it. Most are just either local people who happen to live in the area and came out for the race, or happen stance, just happen to be out and about on the town and happened over to see what all the fuss is about.
Very few people who actually attend bike races are true hard core bike fans and see deeper then the spandex. For most, its a visual spectacle of short entertainment, and many see bike races as boring. The one thing women have going for them is that at least men enjoy watching them both as women and bike racers. They marvel at both their sexual nature and their athletic abilities, but sex is part of our nature and you cannot deny it. One study suggests that young males get sexual thoughts hundreds of times a day. I don’t know if that’s true, but you can’t turn it off. It doesn’t mean there is something wrong with men, but it’s natural that men want to see women as women for starters at the races, then they can appreciate their athletic abilities as the race progresses, but you can’t separate the two. It’s true absolutely that sex sells. I have been looking at all kinds of data for years now, and the women pro races who get the overwhelming amount of hits on various sites are the ones who are the cutest, sexist, and the most outrageous in that regard. The market for that is like rats to the trap, its big!
Women like Rochelle Gilmore, Tiffany Cromwell, Chantal Blaak, Modesta Vzesniauskaite, Emma Johansson and Jennifer Hohl to name a few, are the glamour women of pro road cycling. They are world class riders, and the idea they should deny their sex and cover it up to look like some cat-3 man is ridiculous and stupid beyond belief. The reason these girls got to where they are, is because of the natural gifts they were born with, both genes for cycling and good looks. You can’t separate them. I’m not saying its fair, life isn’t fair. Someone like Nicole Cooke is a great champion, but she’s not a glamour girl and that has hurt her image in this respect, IMO. When women don’t have it in looks, they have to make up for it with brains or brawn, and having all of it is great, but some women are just born lucky in that respect.
We got to remember we live in a male dominated patriarchal society where men rule, and women are second fiddle. We are not living in the days of Helen of Troy or some golden age for women, but all things considered, women are better off in America then just about anywhere else in the world. Hollywood sells sex by the boatload, and the media plays to sexy athletic superstars like Tennis Superstar Anna Kournikova and the like. Women like Williams don’t get the same attention and that’s a fact, not based on race, but on their looks. If you need an example just look at how well Iman has done in modeling. Sex and good looks sells, and when you get a superstar with both good looks and super talent like Leontien Z. Van Moorsel, the sky is the limit, there are no limits and indeed Leontien probably made more money off the sport then any women in history or thereabouts. There are a few who made more, believe it or not, but they were not anywhere near as famous as Leontien.
I can’t remember seeing any women pro who was sexy that tried to hide it or dumb it down in order to only highlight their athletic abilities. The girls who have it, flaunt it! They know it helps move their image forward, no doubt about it. I’m not advocating turning women’s cycling into some kind of beauty pageant, far from it. I believe women should follow their hearts and act in accordance with who they are, and let nature and the rest play itself out. To me, all the women are fun and exciting to watch for both reasons, and the few who do shine above and beyond the rest is something that spices up the peloton. I say let it be, let things be as they be. So this is not a disturbing trend, but has been with us since the beginning, nothing new under the sun.
I do agree that women have not risen through the ranks to the highest levels of the UCI or the USAC, and perhaps other important organizations. This might be because women go on to other careers and don’t stay in cycling. Very few do it for life, from bike racing to working in these organizations. I believe mainly cause they can make much more money and have a stable family life in a career job instead of in a sport with few opportunities. There is much more to be gained on the men’s side since men run most everything from the top down and bottom up. It’s not easy to break into that, and many have to end up patronizing these organizations to stay afloat. If they had tried to really shake things up for women, I suspect they might get booted out. Some of those positions are filled out of nepotism as well, so it’s probably not something to aspire to.
On role models, my concept of a role model would be killer team, not an individual rider. Often individuals can let us down, but a well organized solid team could be a great role model both for young riders and for sponsors to take note of. I made note of this in my other post, a solid UCI team with all our top women on one well sponsored, well organized, well trained, UCI all American team. Armstrong is gone, but my UCI dream team would of been, Neben, Armstrong, Stevens, Abbott, Anderson, Olds, maybe Rais and Tamayo, etc. I don’t have any doubts that if in this instance, going against the grain of putting all your cookies in one jar, had such a team, we could clean house in Europe in both the world cup and the classics. That would really go a long ways towards getting big sponsors onboard, or at least get their attention. I mean big sponsors, not domestic but international sponsors which benefit by their products worldwide. Domestic sponsors have little interest in Europe because their products are not sold there often. I am talking about one big international sponsor, not half a dozen small ones. Boy, dreaming huh, yeah I do dream up crazy stuff, but not so crazy.
Still raining, still dreaming, let’s move on to the next part of this rant.
Coffee Girl drank too many cups this morning, but how does “all due respect and full of crap equate together?”. There are other domos out there who have made a career out of cycling, but Kerry is very knowledgeable, IMO. Yes, MM is one, but how about Kim Anderson? No finer example then Kim Anderson! Now there is a role model deluxe. Mirjam Melchers was very loyal domo for Leontien for many years. I would certainly give some credit to Kristin Armstrong, she did a hell of a lot of work last year on Cervelo so Hausler could win those two tours. I also think Amber Neben is a good team player. I think Lyne Bessette seem to have the heart of a team player, and she lost I think over 50 victories to Jenson who was doped to the gills, and she never complained nearly as much as I have read others do. I believe Mara Abbott is nice, and seems to be a team player. I believe both Fabiana Luperini and Nicole Brandli were good team players, two class acts. There are others if I wanted to really take some time to consider. On the Tibco girls I think Amber Rais was a faithful domo and I believe Lauren Tamayo probably was a good team player. I think Alex Wrubleski has a nice even temperament, I bet she’s a good team player, as the same for Erinne Willock, both Canucks.
I wouldn’t say nobody gives a shit about women’s cycling, that’s going too far. There are thousands if not millions of fans of women’s cycling worldwide, but with a population of 6 billion people, its still just a drop in the bucket, and compared to the masses that follow men’s cycling, not very many. At races, we share the same fans, as men who come to see men’s races, also watch the women’s races. We don’t have the luxury of only a women’s tour anymore like the HP Challenge. Women’s racing in Europe is seen as a specialty and admired in that regard unlike America. Also they have many races that are just for women. It’s a national past time, part of the culture there. Here, its a different ballgame, and often like a hobby winning prize money on the side as weekend warriors while working part or full time jobs, but we don’t have nearly as many full time paid pros here as they do over there. Also we call cat 1-2 pros, but the UCI definition of a pro is someone who rides for A UCI team, has a UCI license and get paid a professional wage. Generally speaking being a pro has always meant someone who was paid to perform in sports. How professional our domestic cat 1-2 are is open to debate.
On 1/10th of their male counterparts on CN, I would say much less then that. I have been looking at the data and numbers for years now and its very disturbing. To the contrary, CN doesn’t cover most major races, unless you are talking about just posting results. I don’t call that covering a race. They usually get their reports and photos 2nd hand from CJ, which I think, without her help, there would be almost nothing about women’s cycling. When they do send out reporters, its usually only one person who gets the report and that person usually doesn’t take photos either like CJ does. In fact in many years, CN failed to cover the biggest women’s races. In fact the last two years, their coverage of women’s races have been dismal, almost non existent, and check out how much they relied on CJ for their coverage?
I was once told from higher ups there, that CN coverage of women’s cycling has about one percent of the viewer-ship or market value they deem is bankable for the popularity of their site. So, disturbing is not even the word, the scale of the problem is epic in proportions. So from what I was told years ago, they feel they already go above and beyond what is good for CN in terms of viewership and a bankable marketing perspective. They might be the centre of cycling for men, but not for women. However from looking at data collected from a huge variety of sites, its very clean to me, IMO, that CN is not the centre of cycling worldwide.
Its true that many sponsors and people who work for women’s cycling do it like charity, they don’t get and don’t expect a return on their investment. More on that latter in part 2 of my rant. The idea of comparing cycling to the big five sport isn’t even ah, I won’t go there! Let’s stay with cycling. What Cranmer is doing is great, always thought so, but that doesn’t cover up or dismiss any facts here. Women who weather these perfect storms like Jackson and Cranmer are to be commended, but we are talking about a huge bigger picture. Part 2, I will cover the bases, or metrics, IMHO.
Coffngrl – you are partially correct, Vampire Slayer. When I read Kerry’s original post, Meredith Miller’s name came to mind as well. She’s the exception, not the rule though.
I’m not mocking the Peanut Butter team. I’m criticizing them. The difference is more than semantics. Let me splain.
If I recall correctly, Team Lipton put out the same idiotic Olympic nonsense as their sponsorship battle cry. But for some reason, they abandoned the team a year before the Beijing Olympics, leaving a future gold medalist to fend for herself. Evidently, Lipton didn’t buy into the whole Olympic thing – especially given that the Lipton logo would NOT be visible on TV during the Olympics. They must have realized that and questioned the ROI. What the Peanut Butter team is doing is harming the sport because virtually no professional sport I know of uses the Olympics as its central business model foundation. Tennis, basketball, football, soccer….none of them use the Olympics. Add to that men’s cycling. See my point?
So why are women cyclists trying to make the Olympics the foundation of their women’s pro cycling? First of all, the Olympics occurs once every 4 years. It’s a freakin’ one day road race and a TT that’s about as long as a junior crit. The TV time for both amounts to a drop in the bucket compared to other sports. You can’t build a successful financial sponsorship model on this type of gimmickry. The Olympics is raced by idiot national “teams” with riders who race for themselves, thus desecrating the entire concept of how a cycling TEAM (notice the lack of quotation marks) is suppose to race. Either give the fucking gold medal to the entire team or race in separate jerseys. But don’t lie to the public and to yourselves.
Name one other team sport in the Olympics where only one person in what is suppose to be raced as a team event gets a gold medal? Cycling is the only one. The fact that only 1 person gets a gold medal in the Olympics road race means that there is NO TEAM USA. There are simply 3 girls from the U.S. who race with the same clothing. That’s it. But that’s not how professional cycling is suppose to be raced and that’s not how it is raced in any UCI race. So any women’s team who patronizes this nonsense is undermining the professional trade team concept to the point of harming the actual real sport of cycling.
So the fact that Olympics has this hokey model whereby only the individuals gets the gold is a joke. Women ignore this because they’re more about getting dressed up for wedding than the marriage. Like I said, think Greg LeMond and Lance…neither were Olympic stars. You know who were the Olympic gold medalists in men’s cycling? Well, Alexi Grewal. Pascal Richard.
Getting back to the Peanut Butter team….people don’t care about teams in cycling anyway. They care about individual riders. Fans, that is. People root for Levi, or Lance, or Floyd or Contador…not Gerolsteiner or Astana. So nobody’s gonna root for the Peanut Butter team. Perhaps Mara Abbott, but not the team. If you want fans to identify with team loyalty, then you need to go to a city model (i.e. San Francisco Peanut Butter team).
TITLE IX only applies to PUBLICALLY FUNDED (i.e. taxpayer funded) sports for women. It does not apply to professional sports. Corporations are not obligated under the law to sponsor women’s teams equally or any women’s professional sport and they never will be unless you amend the Constitution. Even Danica Patrick races with the boys.
But Kerry is correct in her observation that when you have race directors and managers sleeping with one of their riders, it debases the entire sport. It is completely inappropriate, according to Carrie Prejean, for a team to hire a boyfriend or husband as the director for a team because all the other girls feel like they are playing second fiddle and are afraid to voice their opinion. That’s far more oppressive than women making $15 million/year because they flaunt their sexuality.
According to half the women posters in here, we should all treat Anna Kournikova like some kind of victim. The reality is she is not a victim in any way, shape, or form. The cyclists who refuse to acknowledge their sexuality are victims of their own irrational concept of sexuality and are relegating their entire sport to the poverty level with that righteous mentality.
Say, Lindsey Vonn vs. Allison Baver: Who would you rather…
Aye Aye, BlackBeard is absolutely correct. This asexual nonsense spouted out by the big-boned sperm whale crowd needs to wake up and smell the coffee.
What is so hard or unfair about women just accepting that an aspect of professional cycling is entertainment and must therefore satisfy the sex appeal quotient that all male demographics fans demand in their female athletes? Mind you, no male fan is asking any pro woman cyclist not to train or lose races…they simply want to see a little puma or cheetah.
It’s not like women have to compromise anything athletic.
So I really don’t understand what all the fuss is about. You won’t see Madonna putting on 20 pounds and showing up on stage without make-up demanding that her concert fans respect her for her singing. Because in the end, if you wanna be a Material Girl and carried around stage like Cleopatra by 10 studs in tuxedos, you can’t weigh as much as Rosie.
Not part 2, but a quickie on the Olympics..
The problem with the Olympics is that cycling is being edged out by other sports, and with two black eyes, I guess the powers that be don’t think its a good role model for the Olympics. Indeed perhaps cycling doesn’t need the Olympics, and IOC has been whittling away at some events. Also TV sponsors have really been whittling away at it too. Add to that the USA has about the worse coverage in the world of cycling, since DirecTV and Comcast are having a pissing content over Versus right now. Add to that neither Dish or DirecTV get Universal Sports or Europsport, Eurosport being about the best in the world at covering cycling in English. In 2008 the actual coverage of cycling was almost non existent. What little coverage NBC had was chopped into segments all day long disheartening even the most rabid cycling fan. The best coverage of the road race was on the Internet, and that was weird as hell. It was like several hours of video on the road race without any audio commentary, spooky and weird. You call that covering cycling in the Olympics? Not only that, but if you had a Mac without an Intel processor, you would out of luck, which millions were, out of luck!
The Olympics has not just become a one day lottery, but also the elections are very political. It doesn’t host the best riders worldwide, but instead allows tiny little countries to compete in cycling who have no good riders to send. More then likely some of those riders are dangerous to others because of their inexperience in real world competition. If they really wanted it to be about the best riders in the world, they would select the top women in the world to compete. As it is, some really good riders are left out and some countries like New Guinea can compete as well as a host of other obscure nations. That is a lottery, but since the course is usually not selective for the climbers, usually you can count them out as well. While challenging, often its probably no different then one of the world cup courses only longer perhaps. At least the Worlds comes every year, and I feel that is much more worth while and realistic goal. However, if you win the Olympics, you won the lottery, hit the jackpot so to speak, but if you actually looked at the endorsements for women that come out of that, you would probably wonder what all the fuss is about. What I would say is this. If you win the Olympics, there is a fair chance that if you play your cards right, you might be able to milk it for all its worth for years down the road. Well, I was actually somewhat impressed by the monument and streets named after Sara Carrigan. Wonder if they would do that in the states? Who knows!
http://saracarrigan.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/p41516461.jpg
http://saracarrigan.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/p4151648.jpg
The elections for women to the Olympics are worse than political – they are downright unfair. You had all sorts of 3rd world nations permitted to send riders to the Olympics time trial, but a rider like Amber Neben (a rider who went on to win the world championships 1 month after the Olympics) wasn’t even selected for the TT team! What does that tell you?
So the Olympics doesn’t even have the best competitors and Kristin Armstrong got a free pass by not having Amber Neben to compete against.
Neben was pissed, and considered filing an appeal, but in the end went Ziploc mouth so as not to jeopardize her future Olympic chances. But she made a mistake in my opinion because Beijing was her time and waiting 4 years until London will turn out to be a mistake.
Sue Haywood did the right thing and punched USAC right in the fucking teeth.
I simply can’t agree with this notion that women must accept being objectified if they want to race separately (or at all). Juniors race separately for not dissimilar reasons (ie. they are at a biological disadvantage from competing with the top men, although there are other reasons of experience and whatnot), does the same logic apply there? Paralympic cycling?
Men (or lesbians, or whoever) appreciating women sexually is normal, and harmless up to a point. There are male and female riders I fancy and I won’t pretend I don’t. But objectification is different, it’s when expectations and pressure are placed on women to appeal to men, and when they’re criticised for not doing it. Women should be able to do anything, including cycling, without feeling like they’re being judged for who they are rather than what they do.
The “sex sells”/”it’s human nature” argument is a cop-out which is designed so that people don’t have to bother changing their behaviour. The death penalty is popular in a lot of countries, hitting children is popular in a lot of countries, that doesn’t mean those of us against it should just throw our hands up and say, “Fair enough.” Extreme examples? Yeah, probably, but the application of logic is similar. The public isn’t always a good arbiter of decency. If something’s not right then it’s not right, and blaming it on hormones is cheap, and women shouldn’t feel they have to do anything they’d find demeaning in order to be appreciated as sportspeople.
There was something else I was going to say, but I’ve forgotten. Black Beard makes some good points about domestiques, I think the comparison to Jens Voigt begs the question a bit. Voigt is popular and well-regarded for the exact reason that people can see him doing all the donkey work on their TV screens. Result sheets and half-arsed reports aren’t going to convey the same thing.
Anyway, these are good posts and I’m glad you’ve got a bit of decent debate started!
Some brave comments and true. some of the best stuff I have ever seen written about the women’s scene. Well done for that. However, some really off the wall nonsense as well.
Fastest
Baby get rid of the fantasy that men watch men’s sports because it is the fastest, strongest etc. Thinking that all women have to do to get the coverage,(and consequent money) is become faster, is signing up to the ultimate wife beater.
300m in and I have no idea how fast anyone is running the 800m athletics event and in terms of the impact of the respective speed on the spectacle, it is irrelevant. However the male winner will achieve publicity and adulation far in excess of the female winner, regardless of the fact that the man won in the 58th fastest ever time, and the woman in the 18th.
Sport is unscripted, a film without the pre-release hype that has spoiled the ending. Men watch it because they dream of themselves taking part or owning some small part of the story, via some team kit purchase. They want to talk about it to their mates. It is produced by men for men. It is exactly like politics 100 years ago. Nothing, nothing, is going to get them to willingly take their hand off the tiller. It is going to have to be forced from their grasp and women finding some sport where they can parade round in skimpy bikini tops is not the solution, it is re-enforcing the problem.
Sport is male dominated in every facet. The sponsors paying the checks will happily sign up to corporate policies on fairness and equality in all they do then spend the marketing budget with an organization that is wholly committed to treating women as a sub-species. When sponsors are made to come to terms with accepting an unfairness that they would shrink from in every other form of life, then they will call a different tune.
Team loyalty.
I have worked in a number of jobs over 40 years. Do I expect loyalty and commitment to the common good from those at the bottom of the food chain, the ones paid minimum wages? I do, but I rarely see it, and I know it will not run for too long or too deep. A fact of life. They see the World through a different set of specs. “You want me to do something big, great then reward me for doing so.” Paying a low wage buys little loyalty. Giving a rider no wages and telling them to ride a nice red bike because that is the sponsors color, buys next door to nothing.
Trying to draw parallels with the men’s peloton is just madness. Voigt is probably paid 100 x Cooke’s money to be the very best domestique. Take one step forward all applicants for this highly rewarded equivalent position in the men’s field. Your comments regarding lower level men’s fields exhibiting the same degree of lack of team spirit define. No reward for such sacrifice, why do it ? Fact.
Olympics
Best riders not there. Stop bitching USA. That looked like all the key World players in at the death at Beijing. Lance didn’t show because he doesn’t have to. There is a bigger media show, you know the one where all the journos get to go on holiday to France for a little short of 4 weeks. There is no women’s equivalent so the Women’s Olympic RR is as big as it gets for the women’s circuit. Wanting to win that, is going for the best pear on the tree. All the obvious points about circuit are relevant and well made. Unless I missed it no-one made the point as to why the Women’s teams are so much smaller than those allowed for the men. USA you want more riders there. Simple, put a motion before the UCI, asking for equality. 6 up teams of the leading nations. I think you will find at the men’s race there were competitors there for the “experience” who would find no place in the top races. It is a fact, 3 riders per team strips out one of the elements we all love about road cycling, there is no scope for team tactics. “Pity that, we would love to cover more women’s racing but gee, it just isn’t as good as the men’s stuff, did you see the way team Spain attacked again and again.” …..Hand on the tiller. It ain’t coming off without a fight. “(Let’s just keep these women in their place.) Take a trip to the boutique darling. They have some nice skimpy tops on the left as you go in”.
Indeed, in all the screaming about equality at the track, why the heck can the UCI get away with a 2 up women’s team sprint and a 3 up team time trial. Make them the same number of riders and same length.
Not part two, but you guys…
Ok you guys, Skip and Freddie on the women’s sex thing. First actually I think Skip is actually a fan of women’s cycling if I read him correctly. His posts on Giro de Feminin at Cyclechat last year were pretty decent, but on the women’s thing, if you notice my take is right up the middle, not forced, but I personally don’t believe on taking sex out of the equation. It’s just not possible. There is no way you are going to get some of the hot women in the peloton to buy into the dumbing down or neutering of attractive women during races. While a skit on Saturday night live using some of the sexiest women in the peloton dressed up in lyrca but dumbed down as Butch boys might be outrageously entertaining, its not reality and won’t fly with them in public.
I’ve been around the cycling scene for many years and i have yet to see a single hot looking pro women cyclist try to hide or dumb down her sex while racing. Just the opposite has always been true from my personal observations. They use it, they flaunt it because they know they are hot looking in lycra. But really what I stated before is acceptable. Let nature play itself out as to be expected. A lot of women who are good looking, but perhaps not super sexy, and there are a fair number of them usually just act the way they are naturally, and nothing special needs to be added. They don’t overdue it and they don’t hide it either. The ones who are sexy usually do try to look their best for the cameras, or least reasonable. I don’t ever remember seeing any hot rider show up to a race with her looking like what I used to mop the floor with last night, or like they haven’t taking a shower in five days. They usually look pretty good, and sometimes very hot!
When women are hot, it just radiates, and that’s not something that should be filtered, IMO. Some women are not so attractive, and others are Tomboys so to speak, and perhaps they take offence and would rather join the camp of having all the women look like Butch boys, I don’t know, but certainly the ones I have seen who are world class riders and have the butch boy image are more just focused on racing and don’t seem to care much about what hot riders might be building their image in front of the cameras. It’s funny that you guys don’t seem to understand that it works both ways for men and women, or maybe you do and won’t say so. Women want to see hot men, and vice versa. I have heard women at the races say things like, “You wanta see huh?”. Sure, you are dam right we wanta see! Just as much as you like to watch hot men race, or hot men anywhere in any sport for that matter. The idea of covering them up and hiding it all is stupid beyond belief, IMO.
I got news for your guys, women in cycling are already covered up more then most sports. In fact in the winter time races or spring classics, they are usually covered from head to toe, and with helmet and glasses, you can’t even tell who they are! That’s why some races have started making rules that women wear clear sunglasses so we can see who they are, recognize them so fans can identify with their favorite riders. Dark sunglasses are something women hide behind sometimes by using them to stay clonish and unrecognizable. If the riders all look the same, then it’s not very unique or interesting to the fans. Then its just back to the bunch boy thing, riders mummified in cycling garb. Summertime forces riders to strip down some because of the heat, but they still hide behind dark sunglasses.
However I have seen some riders go without sunglasses even during a sunny day. IMO, that would really seem to hurt the eyes, but I think some riders do it because they want people and the press to see exactly who they are, maybe for the image, but perhaps they are looking for someone too, who knows! The point is you won’t get a consensus on this cause there are a lot of girls out there in the peloton who are good looking and some are hot. There is no way they will change using the gifts they were born with to get ahead building their image on the bike. On the flip side of that coin, there is no way most young and middle aged men who watch bike races are going to join the bandwagon either on the dumbing down of women’s sex in bike races. I have heard from men who don’t really go to the women’s race much because they say the women are not all that attractive or interesting, but they agree some are.
If you want to put the fire out completely, then you are asking to strip the one thing that has highlighted women’s cycling for decades, from superstars like Leontien, to even today women like Liz Hatch. You know who used to get the most hits on various sites? Anyone guess? It was Odessa Gunn. You know who by far is getting thousands of hits on various sites, blogs, etc? Easy guess? Who? Yes, right, it’s Liz Hatch! Yeah, I know all the intellectuals hate her, and all the geeks cause she got no results but the simple fact is most male fans like hot chicks who race bikes! This hasn’t change, it will never change so just accept it! The hottest rider right now is Tiffany Cromwell, and she is behind the eight ball on this all the way!
Have you seen her site? Its nice, and she not only got some very cool photo galleries, but she also has a hot clothing line. The point is she is not hiding her sex, but she is making a name for herself. She knows she is hot, and she is using that to help her image. Hello? “Keyword” here is “image”. Powerful word, we live in a world based on “images” to some extent, often to large extent. There is nothing wrong with this! I’ll say it again, life isn’t fair. When women can’t make it up in one way, they do it another way with their brains usually. There is more then one way to skin a cat, but I agree those women who are hot, get way more attention in cycling and that is totally out of everyone hands. Its nature, and you can’t stop it. It’s like a runaway freight train. The media feeds on it however, because there is always money to be made, but you can’t stop nature, nor should you. Cycling is spectacle, and its entertainment, but leave women’s sex alone cause its the one truly great cards they got to play, IMO. There is nothing more beautiful then hot looking athletic women adorned in the colorful attire of lycra.
The idea of keeping women in their place sounds like something that dates back to the Romans. Women are as women are. If you see Anna Kournikova type enter the cycling world and she’s good too at getting results, I’m betting the ranch that both the media would flock to her like rats to the trap, no doubt. Heck Liz Hatch doesn’t even have any results, and to tell the truth, she has gotten more media attention overall in any women I can remember in many years, maybe since the days of Leontien.
I’ tell you about Liz Hatch. I took her photos as a press agent before, and while she didn’t really flaunt it, she didn’t run from it either. In fact she is probably the most relaxed women cyclist I have even shot in front of the camera, and I have shot way plenty in my day. When women have it, they seem to have a natural instinct in front of the camera, although some have better camera presents then others. Certain Rochelle Gilmore has excellent awareness of the camera and camera presents, but Hatch has to be about the most accessible and most relaxed of any rider I can remember ever seeing at the races. You guys seems to be seeing things from an intellectual capacity instead of real experiences out at the races. It’s a much different story out there in the real natural world! On the press end, I see it through the eyes of the camera, the image is what counts, and without images, race reports are only half the story.
“There is no way you are going to get some of the hot women in the peloton to buy into the dumbing down or neutering of attractive women during races. While a skit on Saturday night live using some of the sexiest women in the peloton dressed up in lyrca but dumbed down as Butch boys might be outrageously entertaining, its not reality and won’t fly with them in public.”
First of all, this is a misappropriation of the term “dumbing down”, which confused me a bit at first. Being recognised as achievers in their occupation first and sex symbols second is the exact opposite of dumbing down. Dumbing down is emphasising a women’s sexuality over her actual achievements. I’m not sure what the SNL bit refers to. I’m not even sure what the “Butch boys” refers to. But whatever it is, it appears to be irrelevant to one’s ability to ride a bike.
At no point have I suggested that women should cover anything up. They should be able to cover as much or as little as they want without that being the permanent topic of conversation. What I want is a cycling media which is prepared to spend more time talking about the racing and the riders for their achievements than devoting their attention to whichever ones cause the biggest erections.
You bang on about us living in a world based on images, but I want there to be substance (unfortunate term in cycling, but you know what I mean). Images are fine when they are only images, but when they form substance itself then that’s a problem. Marketing yourself is one thing, but we should be able to follow and talk about the sport without having to wade through wank-fantasies, and women should be able to be recognised for their achievements without having to pander to them if they don’t want to. Saying “life isn’t fair” is not an argument for the status quo. If it’s not fair, try to make it fair.
You say if women “can’t make it up in one way, they do it another way with their brains usually.” If this is your explanation for some riders emphasising their sexuality, it’s fine for those who are happy to do so and would do so anyway. For those who want to be recognised as cyclists and not as objects of male desire, though, what’s the option? Do they deserve to be ignored because they won’t play that game, a game which the male pros never have to play?
You say we don’t understand that it works both ways. The whole point is that it *doesn’t* work both ways. “Women want to see hot men, too.” Well of course. But is the media coverage of men’s cycling – or any men’s sport – tailored to that want? This is the double-standard. Male sexual desires are driven into coverage of women’s sport, the same is not true of the reverse.
As for, “Damn right we wanna see!” – speak for yourself. I don’t watch bike races for that. I watch bike races because I like watching bike races. If you want to see it then fine, but that’s not what the presentation of women’s sport should be about.
I’m not sure what you’re referring to when you talk about the “idea of keeping women in their place”, or that “women are as women are.” I would have thought that pressing on women that what they achieve is secondary to how they look is keeping them in their place. Women are whatever they want to be, and should be left to pursue that without pressure to be what men want them to be.
I remember some BBC pillock interviewing Victoria Pendleton, saying how much more feminine she is than all of those muscular eastern Europeans. That’s the kind of bollocks that men don’t have to put up with nor pander to.
I have to follow up on this cause it begs the question.
What would you rather see, Cat 1-2 pro women race or Fatty Master men, or even cat-3-4-5 men? Well, if you say the latter, then have at it, but I’m not going to follow or shoot that stuff. There is far too much of that out there already, in fact that’s part of the problem, IMO.
I think the cycling world is out of kilter. First off, when push comes to shove, really with limited resources the only two that should be getting any quality air time is pro men and pro women. After that, you guys can have at it with whatever you want with thousands of cycling websites worldwide, but when it comes to prime time, it should always be pro men and pro women, and with fair and equal coverage, IMO. I would like to think prize money would be equal too, but we are not quite there yet. Why they don’t get it is another story.
I think fans want to see pro women race both on TV and at the races, but media models that have been built over the years are fixed and very hard to break into. Big five are men sports, and for the women, its Tennis and Ice Skating. Cycling is way down on the list, but the idea that we should watch some fat old men in spandex because they might be as fast or faster instead of watching top pro women to me is ludicrous, and I think it’s a lewd form of public conduct, not something we should embrace.
Watching pro men in spandex at the pro level is hard enough to swallow, but fair enough they are superb athletes and since the “Chic” movement doesn’t have a say, that’s the model we are stuck with, but times are a changing. (see Video).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZWvuSe18UY
Plus add to that, those materials are the most efficient, so I won’t bark on that one too long. However watching women in spandex is about as natural as it comes, fits them perfectly in the sense it highlights their sexuality. When the men wear that stuff, it just seems sort of gay to me in all those colors and such, but that’s just me and I’ve been around a long time in this business.
But since women get such a minority of coverage at the highest level, I think we could cut out a lot of these Fred races and put that money and time into the Pro women, cause the pro men already got their share, well and beyond. Let’s focus on equality between pro and women races first, and then if there is something left over, go ahead and have your Fred races. The way it is now, you got Pro men getting the lion’s share of the pie, the Pro women are getting a tiny slice, while a big slice goes to the rest of the Fred races. I am talking about time, resources, money, staff who are devoted to these extra races. Why do we need them? We need Pee Wees, Cadets, Juniors, Seniors, Elites, but I don’t think we need Fatty Masters and the rest of these over-aged Fred races, at least not when the Pro women are getting so little.
You know who started cycling mostly? It was women. In American cycling was bigger then Baseball at one time and you knew that, but you didn’t know women were some of the first to actually hold all kinds of weird races and competitions even before that? You know who set some of the first records?, it was women. Read about Annie Londonderry or Evelyn Hamilton exploits, or Alfonsina Morini riding in the Giro. If you research it, you will find all kinds of records set by women on bicycles going back before any solid organizations were established.
There is a good article here on how women were first and paved the way. It’s very good, you can read it here with many rare photos, but its PDF, shouldn’t be a problem though for anyone. Its a little sluggish cause its good size with photos, maybe perhaps better to download it first.
http://cyclingintro2.webs.com/CyclingIntro5b.pdf
With everyone going on about wanting to see half-naked women riding bicycles, I think people have largely missed the point of why nobody really cares about watching women’s cycling. To be blunt, it’s quite simply that it just isn’t as exciting as men’s cycling.
At the heart of things, people watch sports because it’s entertaining. Said entertainment could come in the form of exhibitionism (translation: women riding around showing more flesh than a pole dancer) or actual race drama like the whole Armstrong/Contador thing or the Armstrong/Ullrich drama or Cavendish’s sprint finishes and weird gestures at the end of races. Who doesn’t remember the HTC phone finish?. There just doesn’t seem to be that kind of drama in the women’s peloton – the courses don’t seem to be terribly selective, and there don’t seem to be women who specialize in things like TT’s, pure climbers, sprinters, etc. – they all seem to be generalists and not specialists, so the results are fairly predictable and not all that gripping.
Take a look back at women’s tennis. For the longest time it was an exercise in watching paint dry: mindlessly boring baseline rallies with the occasional “huh-uh!” squeal thrown in. Whenever I saw that kind of monotony I’d wind up changing channels even when Anna Kournikova was playing. Advertisers are cognizant of this and really aren’t interested in buying spots when the viewing population has tuned out, but I digress somewhat so back to tennis. After some time spent in the wilderness of boredom, the Williams sisters came along and effectively changed the game: they produced a more dynamic style of tennis with serve-and-volley and brute force overpowering their opponents, much like the top male tennis players, and suddenly the world of women’s tennis was much more interesting to watch because it became more spectator-friendly.
Cricket is another example of adaptation. Who has actually sat through a 5 day international test? I’m betting nobody, because I’ll contend that it’s completely freaking impossible to remain interested in it. In the 1970’s or so cricket was dying a not-so-slow death, and the international cricket council was somewhat concerned, so what did they do? They introduced 1 day internationals, made the teams wear brightly colored clothes and staged the matches as day/night matches, marketing it as a huge party. In other words, they catered to the spectators. More recently they’ve introduced Twenty20 or something like that, all in the name of appealing to a wider audience.
Why is this relevant at all? Well, it’s simple: the male peloton is larger, more dynamic, has specialists who excel at one part of the sport, and therefore produces a spectacle that is much more viewer-friendly than the women’s peloton. Until the women’s peloton becomes somewhat more diversified than it currently is, expands in size and produces racing that is more interesting to watch, sponsors will not be interested in throwing money in their direction – from a financial perspective it is a marketing investment and until someone can show a positive return on investment said sponsorship will be few and far between.
Skip..
It’s not a misappropriation of the way I see it, only the way you interpret it, but you have the right to your opinion. I’m not talking about their achievements in this context, but about their sex. That should be quite clear. The “dumbing down” refers to doing something completely unnecessary in order to hide their sex or make then look like one of the boys so to speak. I just don’t believe in that concept. However they choose to act and dress is entirely up to them.
In regards to what you want out of bike racing is usually reserved for bike nerds or geeks like me or you, no offence. What you don’t realize or maybe you do is that most typical fans at bike races don’t have any knowledge of bike racing and they just want to see the riders as women. Yeah, they may be racing bikes, for most fans they are still being eyeballed as women, not some neutral clone that bike races. In fact probably most of the legions of fans on Liz Hatch’s myspace page are not bike geeks either, but admire her strictly for her good looks. They don’t care about palmares, but they do like Liz Hatch for her looks.
The point is even though you are one of the few who want to talk about bike racing and their achievements, the majority of typical fans don’t care about that and just want to be entertained. Do you know how many women’s bike fans there are out there who like to follow the women’s cycling calendar closely with both the NRC and UCI? Very few and the media doesn’t cater to us. However they do cater to whatever makes their products marketable. Show me just about any commercial on TV, and I’ll show you a pretty model to go with it. Regardless of what you or me want, that’s the way it is and the media won’t change in that respect.
On the wank fantasies, that’s what typical fans want or maybe that’s all they have time for. Did you even notice how much interest Victoria Pendleton gets? The only people who are going to recognize their achievements are guys like you or me, but most the masses won’t. They don’t care! On pandering, women cyclist don’t pander, at least not at the races. They might to the higher ups or the USAC, but I have never seen any behavior like that with any media at the races.
I don’t divide women into two parts, objects and athletes. I don’t like the use of the term object either. I see them as women athletes, some are more sexy then others, that’s the luck of the draw in life. What’s the option? Well, that depends. There are lots of women cyclist who were never that hot looking, but went on into meaningful roles inside cycling organizations or started their own training camps. Some of the ones who were sexy might of gone on to career jobs, or maybe are working at Starbucks. Being sexy or smart doesn’t mean one is superior over the other to get ahead in life. Some smart people can’t get a job cause while they might be a genius, they might not have the skills for a certain trade. On the other hand, there are lot of models who are too old to model and are now working at Starbucks, so the point is moot. However on the men, I am sure if a top well known pro was asked to pose for Calvin Klein underwear, he would do it.
You say, “Male sexual desires are driven into coverage of women’s sport, the same is not true of the reverse.”
I just disagree with that statement. Women groupies are in many sports, basketball, football, baseball, all kinds of sports, and rock concerts. They seek out all the hot male sports stars, this is nothing new.
On this statement…
“As for, Damn right we wanna see! speak for yourself. I don’t watch bike races for that. I watch bike races because I like watching bike races. If you want to see it then fine, but that’s not what the presentation of women’s sport should be about.”
No, I speak for them cause its true.
To me that statement is a cop out, but I speak for most typical fans cause this is true, but how I actually feel personally about cycling is a whole nother matter. Fans want to see absolutely. They check out the photos first on the web and don’t always read the race report. Race reports without photos sucks, and you know that, or should.
Keeping women in their place was the other guy’s comment, maybe you missed that.
You said..
“Women are whatever they want to be, and should be left to pursue that without pressure to be what men want them to be.”
I have said the same thing time and again, maybe you didn’t read my posts. The point is, its what the media demands, and also partly what men desire.
On the BBC, I don’t think the men have nearly as much to put up with as the women do. It is after all, a man’s world.
Nobody advocating women racing half naked on bikes, but let me say something about not be selective anymore. Redlands used to be selective on Oak Glenn and that favored climbers like Mara Abbott. Courses stop being selective in 2003 or thereabouts. That was the last year they had 17 stages in the Grande Boucle and three of those stages were dam hard climbs! It favored the climbers and indeed, the top three women climbers in the world dominated those climbs, and to a certain extent the final GC. They were Luperini, Brandli and Somarriba. The reason courses are more selective are two. One, they don’t want climbers to dominate races anymore. Two, they want to make races shorter and faster, and that includes making stage races much shorter. They want faster speeds, more drama in a shorter period of time to keep viewer attention.
To use Kerry’s phase, Exhibit A:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=supsOkMmyVo
But that doesn’t mean the specialists are gone. There are plenty. Pooley and Abbott are specialist climbers, and there are still others, but obviously Armstrong and Neben were both TT specialists. Specialists sprinters are riders like Vos or Teutenberg, etc. There are plenty of specialists out there, but less opportunities to use those skills. Classics, even stage races are increasingly being designed to level the playing field.
BlackBeard – I don’t agree, but I think we’ll only be going round in circles so I’ll leave it there.
SlowSpeedDr – the courses in women’s races aren’t often that interesting (although the Giro usually provides some fun), but saying that there don’t seem to be women who specialise in anything… I honestly wonder how much you follow it! The drawing lines are identical to men’s racing, there are the sprinters, the climbers, the rouleuses, the all-rounders, the punchers, and we see the differences between them every season.
Personally, I don’t want to take the self-righteous approach in these threads. If I didn’t enjoy the women as women besides my cultivation as a true women’s cycling enthusiast, it would be dishonest to do so. Instead of trying to justify or espouse what women’s cycling should be about, I just saying what the facts are currently. I don’t think that will change much, but that doesn’t mean women’s cycling itself cannot change for the better. A large majority of fans will always act or think a certain way.
Again, though and I’m not sure how things are in GB, but I’m betting most fans are a lot like here. They are the typical hot dog eating, beer drinking pizza and popcorn crowd who spend just as much time frequenting the vendor stalls gobbling up slices of pizza during the race as they do standing roadside watching. About all most of them can do is notice that women are racing while belting down a slice of pizza and noticing that hey, “those are women racing, cool”, let’s check them out. The idea that typical fans respect women for their achievements or palmares at races is ludicrous cause most don’t even know who the riders are. In fact I bet if you ask any fan roadside about a cat-1 rider, they would say, “cat-1 ?” huh, you mean like a Kitty cat or what are talking about?
See what I mean?
Fans see riders as women racing bikes, and their attention span doesn’t really go much further, but they do notice hot chicks racing bikes. That comes pretty natural to everyone, and they probably would forget about that last slice of pizza and just watch the race with someone like Tiffany Cromwell or Liz Hatch in the race. I am sorry to say it but yeah, sex, drugs, rock and roll, or what was the political cliché, sex, power and money, or whatever I can’t remember, but I am not going to post some self righteous diatribe about how clean and geeky I am only wanting to know about women’s achievements in women’s cycling cause that won’t help the reality of the way things really are in the real world.
There will always be two sides to this coin, that side that the typical fans, media, sponsors and the market wants, and that side who wants to build and set a shining example of what women’s cycling should be. Whether those two sides can ever find a happy medium, I don’t know.
Blackbeard you are the stereo type. “Fans like to see hot chicks racing”. That makes the assumption that the “Fans” are all male. The argument is that whilst female fans may well like to see hot men racing, female fans will also like to see women racing for the same thrill and dream that men like to watch men racing. However the way the sports media is packaged is that it is “for men by men”. The “for women by women” bit never gets a look in because the sporting media is misogynistic. Rarely does it rise above treating female athletes like sex objects. That’s why Tiffany’s site gets more hits than any higher achieving rider, the way it has been packaged, for the audience it has been packaged for, thinks “hot chick”, 1st, 2nd and 3rd. Fine as long as the corporate sponsors know they are backing a misogynistic organization that treats women as a sub-species. And the crucial point I make is that most corporations or sponsors would run a mile from any such behavior in any other form of commercial life. However, whilst numpties sell tokenism with all sorts of sugar coated excuses laid around the edges, more riders, longer races, skimpier tops, stick the make up on darling, sponsors are not aware that they are supporting organizations trying to support cave dwelling as the future for a fair society.
Reply Slow Speed Dr,
I echo Skip’s subsequent comments. I don’t think I have ever seen any race more exciting than the World Champs in 2008, and no, I don’t mean the team Italy push over on the Sunday.
Whether Sastre was 3 minutes off the EPO fuelled pace (set years earlier by Riis et al), up the Alpe, was irrelevant. He could have been 10 minutes off the pace, the pace would still have been sufficient to make it irrelevant. The spectacle is elsewhere. “Faster, higher” is an excuse by men for men to assist in preventing equal access to the media.
I’m assuming you’re a Fred and probably don’t know a whole lot about women’s pro cycling. If you need a classic rant on Freds, let me know, cause I have a whooper. If you read most of my posts, it’s quite obvious I am telling you how it is, not how is should be, nor how I really feel about the whole mess personally. However I gave a short answer to smayka on how things should be or could change over in part 2.
Your logic is incorrect, IMO. I don’t really believe the sporting media, the sponsors, etc. as a whole are misogynistic. What I know to be factual is that except for those doing charity, smart sponsors won’t invest a penny in something that won’t return a bang for the buck. However, I don’t think painting the sporting media with a broad brush as misogynistic is fair either. I been observing how they operate in Europe for quite a while, and I don’t believe that’s always the case.
I can give you examples that prove my case, but I digress cause I don’t want to start naming people and their sponsors in regards to the sporting media right here, but I know otherwise. I don’t believe most corporate sponsors would run from what you suggest but I don’t buy the way you suggested it. Its also unfair the way you said Tiff packaged her profile, cause for one, you probably know very little about her, and two, two, she is a rider who has results and commands a fair amount of respect.
But then this gets back to what I said, which people keep missing the ball. I have said it again and again how things are in reality, that doesn’t mean I endorse the current media models in existence. Some I do, others I don’t. If you want to say we live in a somewhat male dominated patriarchal society, then I can accept that to a certain extent, but there is much more to be said about this, the devil in the machine. Probably better to start talking about how to fix things as in part 2.
Black beard, I cannot edit the post. It needed a full stop after the bit about Tiffany. I did not intend to give her a hard time. I was kicking myself as soon as I posted. The packaging comment was not aimed at Tiffany it was aimed at the sporting media. They package the whole deal for men, because that is the audience they have. That is a fact. But that is like saying we don’t deal properly in women’s trousers because we don’t sell many. Yes, but you don’t sell many because you make no sizes to suit women, you only happen to sell trousers to women, who happen to be able to take men’s sizes. There is a whole market out there untapped.
Also, if you want to pick holes I should have differentiated between intent and execution in terms of misogyny of the press. It is a bit like the UCI thought they were being equal minded when they introduced the 3 up team pursuit and 2 up team sprint into the Olympics. What they have done is reinforced the stereotype that women’s cycling is second rate for second rate citizens. No offense was intended, they thought they had done the girls a favor. And a typical press response to criticsm – “At least we print their names in the results columns and give them a (token) sentence at the end of the report on the (real) event”. The intent cannot be faulted. The cave-man wants to be fair, he just does not know how he is being unfair.
My view on fix is on part V.
On you comments about the UCI, here is actually what the UCI said in response to women’s cycling. It’s a bit old now, but still. It’s part of last part 3, but i will post it here since you brought up the UCI.
The UCI addressed at one time about the future of women’s cycling and moving it forward. That article is here:
http://www.womenscycling.net/2006/Interviews/PatMcQuaid.htm
Cut…
Part 2
I think many women find cycling as a way to travel and see the world, well at least I mean the ones who can go to Europe on either the national team or some side trips sent by various teams and such. I think a lot of women enjoy the travel and outdoor experience of riding on beautiful roads in Europe, the culture, the people, languages, etc. Indeed many women call it living the dream. There seems to be a big dream in just doing it, and not so much always in winning anything, and with that, probably a naivety about what really goes on with sponsors and team agendas.
Well, knowing a little about women who race in Europe, I can tell you they aren’t getting anywhere near what they used to get. The glory days are over. UCI salaries aren’t what they used to be. True, no return on the investment. In fact, often people and organizations who support women’s cycling in Europe do it like charity projects. There are many who are just trying to work to keep the ship afloat, but the data I have is extremely disturbing. The sport has to grow from the ground up, and we need a bigger pool of seasoned talent like Kim Anderson. The number of top US women are very few, and that just won’t cut it. TV is something that is key, but without good talent, races that are otherwise boring would really have to have a lot of special effects and exciting clips to keep viewer interest. The NRC race series is not always that exciting as you know, but if a series was well done on TV, viewers might get used to seeing it, and enjoy it. I say do it well for TV, and let the public decide.
I believe women can be exciting to watch race, they certainly try hard at our races. If you build it, they will come, but it has to be built on a solid base, and that includes solid TV coverage, no way around it. Plus we need stars, on the same level as Leontien or Super Mario. It needs spice!! Leontion had the palamares, Liz Hatch does not. Classiest rider ever in my opinion for both looks, class, and abilities was Nicole Brandli, but she retired last year.
More disturbing, and i have been looking at the data for years now, I have become very disturbed about what the data and numbers tell me. That is really, what seems to be a male dominated society where blood sport, WWF, and ever increasingly stuff like Cage fighting is taking hold, akin to the days of the Romans. The number of fans for male sports is off the scale, and when I look at what my numbers show me for women, its very sad about the unfairness of it all. I believe in equality, but shit this is ridiculous. I agree with Kerry that I blame the media for a lot of it, just the way I blame rich corporations and republicans for being greedy rats, but let’s not get into politics right now.
I’ve been watching women race for many years, and I can tell you I enjoy it very much, but I don’t see it as speed or just hellish sprints like what rabid fans of the men watch. I enjoy solos and I enjoy much more, which is everything that can go on in a race, sometimes some great drama. I just think general fans are dumbed down, and are used to watching too many special effects on TV. If they are not shocked out of their chairs, they are not entertained. The sentiments about how the French used to have for bike racing and its riders I don’t think every really took hold in America, but even in France, things have been on a downward spiral, largely now due to drug use, EPO.
Women’s gene pool for great talent like Evel Stevens is very thin, compared to the men’s side, although women have turned out to race in record numbers. But remember small countries like Australia who only have about 20 million people compared to the USA with 300 million, also have a government backed AIS system that helps to churn out new talent on a regular basis. Indeed Australia has a lot of hot women pros, new ones coming all the time. While what Mike Engleman is doing is good, its not enough in terms of a real investment in the future of the sport which countries like Australia have made in both track and road cycling. Women could be tested in high school and college which would reveal who these gifted genetic freaks are out there. Certainly we have plenty that are probably working at Star Bucks and don’t even know it! Australia seems to be figuring this out, although its unclear how much you would want the government involved in a national sport like cycling. Certainly the USAC has its detractors, and they are not my heroes based on some observations I have made over the years.
It’s true, many women are weekend warriors. I used to joke with a friend that you could take almost any full time UCI women, and bring her over to a domestic crit here, and she would clean the field. Well, not quite true, but UCI women do train as full time pros, at least the top UCI teams do. Their riders are very good, and they don’t usually just get on a team the way Liz Hatch did. Also note, that some races are held like tea parties or social gatherings. Some races, especially in Europe will take you out of the race if you are dropped, especially in world cup races. I remember a women who went over last year to Alfredo Binda, and she fell off the pace and they pulled her out. Over here, many races women are allowed to be many hours down on the GC, so it becomes a social ride for some. That’s not good for bike racing. The actual number of cat -1 women in the USA is not very many. This also disturbs me.
I think Kerry’s post contained just the right amount of vinegar to give the salad some flavor, good reading and some interesting points. However there is more to this picture. I was there at the first year women raced in 1978 at Nevada City, and 77 the previous year which the men’s event had a spectacular finish. I wrote about that one. Since that time I have been back to this famous classic many times which Lemond, Hampsten and other big names have raced over the years including Armstrong last year. This year is to be their big bash 50th celebration and possibly their last year, but who knows. I have seen this race go from a grand and glorious event with countless thousands of fans lining the streets to one which almost no one came two years ago. I have seen this race decline over the years. In fact many races have seen a decline in attendance, which women enjoyed as well.
So the answer is complex and also applies to the men as well in some regards, and the men are largely responsible for a sport that remains in tatters over decades of never relenting doping scandals that still go on to this very day. Just go to CN and read about the latest EPO bust, it never ends. Would it be any surprise that fans are running away from cycling? Used to be in forums during the 90’s that people were more respectful and posted positively in-line and affirmative about cycling and everything related to it. That was the short golden age until about the time of the Festina affair. Since that time, not only has the doping never stopped on a scale never heard of before, or at least they were getting caught more and more as technology caught up, and they could no longer got away with it, but kept doing it anyway. The fallout from that is that sponsors were also running away from the sport like Leprosy, and the good fans, well many of them have become jaded and venomous, vitriolic, and down right crasp and mean. Add the economic nuclear holocaust into the equation, and yeah, women’s cycling is really hard hit right now and the image of cycling is not improving either.
Note: I do admit there is that top level marketing machine at the very top, where so much cash is on the line in the TDF with sponsors that this even eclipses doping scandals. In spite of doping, the TDF is still very popular, but when you look at the data on the graph on how doping has affected the sport over the years, and every other small fry down the latter, it can be quite disturbing.
Where does this leave the women?
I do think women want to please at the races, they certainly race their hearts out at our races, but to address some of those issues, and add a few, I will elaborate more here.
Yes, we have lost a lot of races due to economics, just heard recently that not only Etrusca was canceled, all of it, but Brissago as well. Nobody has been hit harder then California though, we lost at least 8 potential races due in part to the AmgenTOC which gutted all the women’s races. Along with doping in the men’s side, which gave the sport a black eye, sponsors were fleeing the sport in droves while some are returning now, but its no wonder women are feeling the fallout in a big way. I don’t see it as their fault of course, but partly due to these problems. While Kerry makes good points about what’s going on with women inside the teams, the biggest problems are out of their hands, which rock the very core of the sport.
Kerry wrote about the fact that women are less loyal at teamwork and domo work, sometimes traipsing off to races which might hurt the team, but might help their own personal chances. What some might fail to realize is that cycling is a sport with unique problem. It’s the only sport I know of which is called a team sport, but only one person wins! Think about it! As fans, we have our individual heroes, and when they win, we only see them as our heroes, not the whole team! Indeed, when someone wins the worlds or the Olympics, only that person receives the gold medal, and only that person is recorded as the winner in the history books. Only that person gets the palmares and recorded as the winner of a race, not the team! Nobody cares or remembers the team!! At least not regular fans anyway!
When a baseball team wins the world series, every member get a gold ring I believe, but when the Italians work hard together and get Tatiana to the finish line to win the worlds, only Tatiana gets the win and all the glory and endorsements. The team gets nothing except a few words of praise. This is a problem unique to cycling, and there are very few events called individual events, mostly are track related. Only the ITT is an individual event, but its of little consequence since that is usually part of a stage race, except the worlds and Olympics. One of the world cup races is an ITT, but it is the exception, not the rule. What you have is a sport riddled with contradictions, is it any wonder there are so many problems? Even Kristin Armstrong suggested in an article in USA-Today I believe it was or similar, that everyone on the team should receive a gold medal. I know some of the top women are aware of this unique problem cycling has as a team sport.
Riders know that in the end, 1st is what matters, 2nd and 3rd place are of course important to make the podium, as far as building market value and getting yourself known, but hardly anyone remembers 2nd or 3rd. 1st is what counts, and lots of them! So unless you are Kim Anderson and making good money year in and year out on teams like HTC as a super domo, and she has made a career out of it, your chances of making a living out of cycling are not too great unless you are a genetic freak like Evel Stevens or gifted in some unusual way. Perhaps maybe if lucky, you can obtain success some offbeat way. So in execution, it’s a team sport, but not when it comes to results and the final implications of what that means to a rider’s cycling career, and certainly is not viewed that way by the fans.
Now, lets move on.
I think a lot of what I have read has to do with two things in general. They are not paid well, the other, the teams are not professionally run.
If the teams had top riders who were paid well to do their jobs, and the teams were seriously professionally run, riders would work as professionals like in a professional environment, maybe something like the corporate workplace. If you don’t do your job, you are out! Many teams have small budgets, rider’s salaries vary, and some get paid little, or very little, sometimes nothing at all. Some riders pay out of pocket for expenses including hotels and food, gas, etc. I have talked to riders who say they have little incentive to go race without solid team support, they also need the company and comradery.
Teams that provide nice hotels, good meals, massages everyday and serious leadership from managers and coaches do well and there is a higher degree of professionalism. However, many teams here don’t even have that like they do in Europe, and worse, many are not even really teams at all. Many are just hodge podge sponsors who support riders Willy Nilly to some degree without a full team, no team website, no organization, no real mentors, coaches or managers to take the stress out of their lives. When you don’t sleep good, don’t eat right, and don’t train right, you stress levels go through the roof!
Top teams take big money, and few sponsors are willing to shell out that kind of money in this economic Holocaust, especially since cycling is equated with dopers. Women are clean for the most part and don’t dope which is great, but the bad part is the men always leave the sport in tatters in front of them, so its really disgusting what’s going on. Its shameful, and the image is something they have to deal with, which is really not their fault at all. Big money has all but wrecked the men’s side, as we know it. There is a huge incentive to cheat when you have a shot at millions. The fact that women are clean for the most part is a big moral plus, but unfortunately it has not translated into making their side of the sport shine.
Another problem is with that; women can’t make a living racing their bikes so they must work jobs. In Europe on UCI teams, women race full time, some teams used to get paid well, and they were professionally run. Certainly Cervelo and Highroad are shining examples of what women’s cycling could be, but here in the states, the best we have seem to be Tibco and Colavita, and now Proman Peanut Butter might be a good team, wait and see.
These teams are closer to a professional team, but even their budgets keep them from sending riders to some races, as noted last year. Women’s racing is lacking from a serious shortage of cash, which if spent right, can translate into good teams, good riders, managers and coaches, etc., but they need big sponsors, and there are none right now. If you look at the list of sponsors on the big teams, its scary. Dozens of small ones, but not big ones, not sure how much the company Tibco kicks in, but its always a game of getting so many small sponsors on-board, not an easy job.
Now another thing you have to remember, I have been looking at the data and stats for quite a while, is we live in a male dominated patriarchal society. The media is dominated by male sports, and in a country where baseball, basketball and football is king. It took Europe 100 years for cycling to become king, but that seems to be no longer the case. Cycling was king in America in the early part of the century until Baseball overtook it. Even the top women’s sports like Tennis, Ice Skating, are not really all that big, all things considered, and women’s cycling, well, its way down there on the list. Most women’s events take advantage of the same fans that come for the men’s events. They haven’t had a women’s tour since HP Challenge, and while Europe can support specialty women’s events like the Tour De l’Aude both with cash and a fan-base, it doesn’t exist anymore in America. The women need a Tour. Same case everywhere, there is no unique women’s tour in America. At one time, HP boasted a prize list of $150k, not bad for the women. However, women’s racing is more respected as a specialty in Europe, unique and interesting and we don’t have that mind-set here in America.
This was too long, so I had to make a part 3, but i will wait a little while.
I bet most of the people here arguing what is best for women’s cycling are men.
Isn’t that funny?
No, not really. Looks closer to half and half, but there are also more male spectators at races too, at least from what I see. However men run most cycling organizations too as well as race promoters, sponsors, etc, etc, and so many other aspects of the sport, so would that be any surprise?
Huh – Why shouldn’t men argue for what is best for women’s cycling ? We see gross unfairness and a dark streak across our society that, if it was race biased, not gender, it would attract the press. Imagine Cervelo or High Road running two teams. One for whites and paying them salaries 50 x those in the non-white team. “Excuse me Mr Nike, could you please sign up here to our $20m sponsorship package, you do agree that in repressing the non-whites, we are doing the right thing don’t you ? That is why I say, only the sponsors can call the tune, and then only if they are informed. At the moment the story is hidden and going down the “sex sells” route – “we are the cute girls that do the 50m dash, not a proper race like the boys and we look sooooo gooood with our make up on”, just ensures that the status quo is reinforced.
Last part, this one is about salaries…
Let’s take a look at the men’s side quickly. This is how the men stack up. This is some research I gathered from the Italian Republic and also feedback from an Italian organization who supported these numbers, so they must be close. From both research papers, I put this little report together, its worth sharing here.
The six top pro cyclists in the list earn a lot but the reality for all the others is another matter. The wage minimum for a squad Pro-Tour surpasses of little more then 30,000 Euros per year, and for the squads professional and continental the minimum is under 30,000 Euros. In a squad on average, half of the pro cyclists is at the minimum that I count, not even 2000.00 Euro each month. 80% of the group earns this amount except for the few who earn 100,000 euros a year. The pro cyclists that surpass 200.000 euros a year are very few, those that surpass the 500.000 even fewer.
1. Lance Armstrong 11 million Approximate
2. Alberto Contador 11 million Approximate
3. Alejandro Valverde 2,3 million Approximate
4. Philippe Gilbert 2 million Approximate
5. Cadel Evans 1.7 million Approximate
6. Filippo Pozzato 1 million Approximate
Pro cyclists like Cunego, Petacchi, DiLuca, Nibali etc, have an income however higher (between hiring and sponsors) and that to eye consider at least fifty in the world with high income. The top 50 tennis players are millionaires in dollars, (between prizes and sponsor) the others ’struggle’ 50-100 is fundamental struggle of survival. To look at the top 50 salaries would show the disparity between the top ten and the rest.
The article below quotes salaries from the research of the republic Italy, and this is pretty much backed up by the Italian cycling organizations I contacted.
This Research was done by by Eugenio Capodacqua from La Repubblica, Saturday, December 26, 2009.
I translated and corrected the English in my own words.
How much money does an average professional cyclist make?
Research publication in La Repubblica by Eugenio Capodacqua speaks for itself, the numbers tell us so emblematic of a paradoxical situation where the extremes of samples from live Contracts multi-millionaires and then immediately down into the vertigo of two zeros less.
(Most Pro cyclists) – (those on the Pro Tour at the top) have an average salary of 26.700 Euros and 33.000 Euros for the more experienced soldiers. That is equal to 37k US. The numbers put one hand on the bottom two zeros is higher than comfortably one million although in very rare cases. 23,000 per year is less than 2000 per month.
The 18 team Pro Tour in 2009 spent a budget total of 235 million in substantial growth compared to 165 million in 2008. The game is absurd in wages because some riders have lead sponsors to be paid, while others receive benefits over a million. The first two are above the double digits thanks to a wide range of sponsors.
Now, Missy Giove was probably the highest paid ever for women with at one point, a six figure income. Leontien never made anywhere near that much.
http://www.seattlepi.com/getaways/092696/bike26_top.html
In the early years after 2000 when women’s cycling was reaching a zenith in salaries and quality teams, Alison Dunlap, a two-time Olympian, estimates only 30 to 40 women worldwide could compete full-time in either mountain biking or road cycling and support themselves without securing part-time employment. As we know some women work jobs, and some even full time jobs.
Alison Dunlap competed in road and mountain biking. She’s also a five-time national cyclocross champion, a discipline where there’s little financial reward. She said, “I raced for five years on less than $10,000 a year when I was on the road (only) from 1992-1996, so it’s do-able,” said Dunlap, 33 at the time. “But now on the road, top women are making $35,000 to $50,000. On the mountain bike side, the top women are making $90,000 to $150,000.” Since that time, salaries have dropped off. I believe Luperini got around 50k in 2004 to ride for Let’s Go Finland.
Generally speaking, at the best of times, top women earned about half of what top men get. However to clarify, I mean not the very top men like Lance, but generally top men get around 200k or more, and top women got around 100k or more. However, many more top men got good pay, as where the top women who got 150k or 100k were very few. From there the graph would show a sharp decline in pay. Middle women I am guessing were getting around 30 to 50k, and the bottom around 7-15k. Below that, some women get no pay, but are provided with everything they need including meals and hotels, etc. Below that, some women pitch in out of pocket to pay for gas, meals and hotels, and I am guessing those would be the ones trying to break into the good teams.
However today, I am thinking top women are getting around 50-75k on top UCI teams, but they would be few of them at the very top. The middle are probably getting anywhere from 7 to 25K depending. Bottom are getting maybe only a few thousand dollars, but they are provided with everything. Below that again, we know about some of the hardships women go through to race, depending on friends and family, and I remember even Nicole Freedman slept out of her van at times to race. Some women stayed in schools during races, or had poor accommodations.
Prize money is (relatively) far more important to women than it is to men, as a glance at women’s salaries shows. A top female cyclist, such as Anna Millward or Leontien Zijlaard-van Moorsel, earns approximately $US 50-100,000 as a base salary, with an extra $US 10-20,000 in prize money. As for endorsements and advertising, this is nothing like as lucrative for women as it is for men. Unless they’re willing to pose in Playboy, as Leontien was asked to do for 100,000 Dutch guilders ($US 42,000). She declined, but accepted an interview in Penthouse doing an interview, but her clothes stayed on, as her father demanded it. Of course I don’t blame him at all at that point in her career.
Add to that here, many women work full time jobs, so perhaps in that sense, winning prize money at bike races would be a nice side hobby and a way to generate extra cash, instead of the concept of a cycling career and a paid professional. Different ball-game over here in the states. So while the men aren’t making that much either like the 12k dreamers and such, perhaps women in some ways are better off. So most men don’t make jack, and most women don’t make jack either, but at least some women make much more at regular careers jobs and make prize money on the side. Pro men who get paid 37k to race in the pro tour are doing it as full time jobs, and that isn’t even very good money for a middle class wage earner, not at the top of the middle class anyway. I had a friend who made 70k a year cleaning boats for rich people at the pier in San Diego, and he doesn’t even have a college degree. So while women don’t make much, the majority of men don’t make much either. While that is some relief for women to know, clearly men have a much better hand up in cycling if they are good. The stakes are much higher, and for the elite few, off the scale, that’s big money.
The biggest thing I think to move the sport forward for women, IMO, is TV and lots of it. In Europe they have much more coverage of women’s races on TV, and i know this to be a fact since I collect videos of women’s race. In America, its very, very slim. You have perhaps a few pieces with a few minutes on Versus or Universal Sports carried the worlds, but its pretty slim compared to the men’s with the TDF. This is where the problem is. In order for big sponsors to get on-board, you need a national televised series for the NRC calendar for starters, and then let the fans decide. Its a tough sell in a male dominated sports world with the big five sports, but if done well, and marketed well, it has a chance. Right now I see women’s cycling is on a merry go round going nowhere and it can’t grow without big TV nationwide coverage and big sponsors. Once that happens, then you will see that things should improve. Even in Europe they don’t cover the world cup, at least not all of it on TV there. Even Emma Johansson said some mogul should just go for it, and cover the whole world cup on TV. She admited the sport needs (primarily) TV as the biggest boost to its growth and success.
I think also the sport could benefit from a mogul, someone who can step up to the plate with big money and go for it! Someone who would pay for a TV series, and sponsor some teams on both a domestic and world class level. Some top UCI American teams that are on the same level with Highroad and Cervelo. We also need a superstar, which the sport hasn’t seen since Leontien, and that would also help the women’s side. Someone who has movie star presents and glamour with talent, and could really stand the sport on its head. Right now, we don’t have anyone like here in America. We have some good riders, and certainly Neben and Armstrong have been great riders, but they don’t really have the kind of charm and camera presents that turns heads and that is also lacking in the sport. For the men, they had Super Mario, and for the women, we had Leontien, but nothing since then. There are few glamour girls out there like Tiffany Cromwell and Rochelle Gilmore, but they are from Auss, and Liz Hatch, well she has done well for herself, but she has not captured the hearts of true cycling fans, at least not from what I have read cause she has no results, but that might come in time, who knows.
The UCI addressed at one time about the future of women’s cycling and moving it forward. That article is here and worth reposting:
http://www.womenscycling.net/2006/Interviews/PatMcQuaid.htm
My biggest beef is all our major domestic talent is gobbled up by Euro UCI teams. Any time a top talent pops up like Evelyn Stevens, since she’s so good and aggressive, she was quickly snapped up by HighRoad quicker then buying a lotto ticket at 7-11. That’s what happens and probably one of the biggest things that could help the image of women’s cycling in America never happens because perhaps not enough people work together or talk to each other in this business. What I mean is this. If Tibco is our top UCI team, and they should of been UCI the last two year, ideally you should of seen all our top guns on this team, which would of been the best team in the world by far. We would of whipped every UCI team out there, probably including High Road too if we had all the top US women I mentioned earlier. Same goes for Proman or any team since it doesn’t really matter what the name is. What matters is who’s on the team, and how well sponsored they are.
As mentioned, Tibco ideally should of had Armstrong, Neben, Anderson, Abbott, Stevens and half a dozen others on our top team. If this country put their best riders on one well backed UCI team, it would sweep the Euro classics, World cup, and just about everything else, but since there are so many other agendas, our best riders are spread about the world on UCI teams as domos in Europe and whatnot, not the best thing for our top riders, IMO.
However, its quite possible that Stevens is so dam good, that she might just win races on her own above and beyond the agenda of HighRoad, wait and see. Not because she is breaking the rules and team plans, but because she simply can win them, when no one else can. We will see what happens to Stevens this year.
Another part of the problem I see with women’s cycling in America are a couple of things. It seems to have a lot of older riders, or at least used to, instead of new fresh talent. There are lots of riders in their late 30’s and 40’s. I’m not bashing them cause some riders are late bloomers, but I like the AIS model for recuiting new talent. For a country of 20 millions, they produce a lot of good riders. I think if the USA could implement some kind of simliar program to seek out and find the nations best talent, we could certainly increase the number of riders with superior talent for sponsors to take a serious look at. Whatever the solution is, it’s certainly not happening despite the efforts of many people worldwide who have tried to shine a light on them. Oh well, perhaps some day.
As a cyclist with 2012 dreams, I find the negativity surrounding the Olympics extremely unfounded and dissappointing. Yes, I will agree that it is not perhaps the best business model to found a team based solely on Olympic hopes, but I also believe that the Olympics, as much as you might chose to believe otherwise, are more visible than many other races.
And that said, as a track only cyclist, we have only 1 big international race a year: the World Championships. The Olympics ARE our pinnacle race.
PB & Co. 2012, has some of the best track cyclists in the Country on their roster. If they chose to dream Olympic dreams who is anyone to take that away from them? Or any rider or athlete of any sport, no matter how small?
FYI: the salary for a UCI team need to only match the MINIMUM wage. And I know that many women sign on the dotted line knowing they will never even see that- but they want to race on a team and do the European Calendar so what more is there to do? So, YES, there are professional full time female cyclists who make less than $5,000.00 a year.
Circlegirl, the problem is if the Olympics is the pinnacle of the sport then it does a lousy job of showing it. The track programme is laughable, half of what we see at the World Championships. The women’s road race has a pathetic 67 rider field. Now given that it is the most-watched women’s race there is, it’s perfectly logical that it’s the golden(ish) ticket for women from an economic point of view in the current model, and because of that there is going to necessarily be prestige attached.
But my view on women’s road cycling at the Olympics and my view on track cycling for men and women at the Olympics are the same – they are really there to enable support for the rest of the sport. They are means rather than an end. If the Olympics got a full track programme a la athletics then I could see a case for making it the centre of track cycling prestige, although until then for me it’s all about the Worlds. But I don’t see that with the road, for me I just hope it sucks more people into the sport. An Olympic gold will never equal what Claudia Häusler achieved last season.
What I’d like to see is understanding for why pursuing the Olympics is significant but also an acknowledgment that cycling should be about *so* much more.
Blackbeard I think you will find, this year, your information on the salaries of top women road riders on UCI teams is well over-estimated. Leontien last rode 6 years ago. Things have really slid back. Circle girl is far closer to the mark for reality, for all apart from less than 10, and I am including High Road and Cervelo there. And those 10 do not have an average of anywhere near 100,000 euros, far closer to 1/3rd of that. In mountain biking there is a far greater sense of equality of pay male/female, because the link to the sponsor is far shorter. As a consequence a talented female athlete could make loads more riding off road. Some road teams keep the riders and sponsors very well apart, so the marketing guys have no idea that they are sponsoring an operation that exploits, they just see a line that says – “Salaries”. Some UCI women’s teams are running on budgets of around 250,000 Euros total, with the majority of the team receiving no financial remuneration. One big worry – health insurance. Some teams require the riders to pay for it themselves. It is ok (ish) for a man to take it out of his salary. When you are on 5,000 euro for the year, there is not space to afford. Some riders are living on chance – it will never happen to me. Don’t look to the team, the contract says – the rider will be responsible for their own health insurance arrangements. It is there, black and white.
Circlegirl,
I am going to squeeze in a quick one before making Tacos. If you notice, the Olympics cycling coverage has not just been reduced, but almost eliminated. I’m not sure about total coverage of 2008 track and road-TT games in UK or Europe, but in America is was beyond dismal. If it’s the one big ticket of exposure for women as you claim, then NBC should have covered it. What I saw of Track and the RR-TT was so minuscule and cut up into tiny slices of nothing more then 15 minutes here and there separated by hours sometimes, that not even the most hard core nerds of cycling could follow it.
The RR was like half hour total cut up in several very tiny segments over many, many hours. The TT, worse, I think it was 15 minutes on NBC. On the Internet, yeah, the RR was shown in its entirety, but there was no commentary, only video with ghostly creepy sounds of the rain and mostly distance sounds of shouting chinese fans who were regimented into their chants roadside. All Mac users without intel processors were shut out by Microsoft Silverlight software.
If the Olympics is the grand shining moment for cycling, then it should be covered, but instead I think the networks overlooked cycling became of the all the bad press from the doping scandals. It wasn’t a good ticket for network coverage. Consider this, in 2004, USA channel also had the road race in its entirely, but it was on TV, not the internet. Add to that, it had excellent commentary with Paul Sherwin and his guys, can’t remember was it Phil Ligget?, but still. On Eurosport, it was David Duffy and Russell Williams. They pulled out all the stops for the women in 2004. So what the hell happened? Well, relentless doping scandals for one, so cycling was all but cut out of the Olympics in the American household on TV. The friggin women’s triathalon has more coverage of the cycling part then the Olympic road race for crying out loud! Add to that, Maria Isabel Moreno tested positive for EPO, and it’s possible that could of hurt the coverage, I don’t know.
But Skip is right about the fields. Not only that, if you look at what countries are riding in the road race, its really a cosmopolitan field or more like a cultural extravaganza then a bike race. You have these tiny little countries with riders in there that don’t belong in there cause for one, they are not (ALL) the worlds best, and two some are dangerous to other riders. Case in point, the Korean rider who took out Jennifer Hohl and a bunch of other riders in that ditch, which was by the way, dangerous as hell.
I can’t believe the Chinese left that ditch open like that. But the road race is a one day lottery that comes every 4 years and if you look at who wins it, it hasn’t been a field sprint in many years but usually breakaways. You couldn’t predict who could win it any more then drawing sweepstakes tickets out of a hat. The idea that anyone trains 4 years to win the road race is ludicrous to me. While training for the TT is a much better gamble, which Armstrong did, the RR is very, very open to chance or luck. While Cooke put all her cards on the games and finally won it, that’s a big four year gamble.
Also the endorsements are not too great either right now for women who win the gold. I think the biggest thing about winning the Olympics is the gold medal, not the silver or bronze, and whoever wins it, that is a big dream for sure. However women’s cycling is the bigger picture worldwide and its so lacking in so many respects, and I think we should fix that first instead of putting all the hopes and dreams into this one day lottery that comes every 4 years.
Like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, if you followed it as a little kid, then you remember it was a even changing goalpost, not a reality. I agree, the world championships is MUCH more realistic goal, and that comes every year. I agree with Skip that what Hausler did last year was worth its weight in gold, even more, just incredible! However if Track is you dream and you are already into it up to your neck, then you might as well follow it through. But if things don’t improve by 2012, then you might want to rethink your cycling career, especially if you don’t medal.
Freddy,
Quickly, I agree. If you read again what I said, UCI salaries have been reduced significantly since the golden years between 2000 and 2007. Anyway, I got to get to those Tacos now!
Cheers!
I agree with many of the comments posted above. To increase the sponsorship levels for the women’s race teams it might be possible to combine mens and womens teams. This would create synergy which could be useful in promoting the sport. For example teams such as Sky, Garmin etc would have their current male team and incorporate into it several women riders for duties in races. These duties might include washing the kit out, making sandwiches and going topless to keep the lads moral up. Fact is womens sport just is not good on TV for power speed and endurance. Eye candy that’s all they are. We might not like it but that’s the way the world turns.
circlegirl – You say you have 2012 Olympic aspirations on the track. Good luck. But be careful what you wish for.
Nicole Cooke won the Olympic gold medal in road racing and then got the gold in the UCI world championships a month later. Not a single company sponsored her or her team. Her most recent team (Skyter) also folded. What does that tell you about what sponsors think of the importance of a gold medal in cycling? Instead, Sky – a UK Broadcasting network – dumped 20 million Euros into a men’s team. Sky also declined to sponsor Nicole Cooke despite a personal plea from her.
So all this Olympic nonsense is ruining the sport and comes across as very selfish of the women. Besides, the Olympics is just a one day race and has little bearing on who the best cyclist in the world given the limit of the number of cyclists allowed to attend the Games. Qualifying for the Olympics has monopolized the women’s side of the sport and is ruining the way they prioritize their races. The men don’t rely on an Olympic model and neither should the women.
Besides, the TV coverage of cycling in the Olympics is not like other sports. Women cyclists think it is, but it’s not. If you were to go to your local shopping mall and ask 100 people who Kristin Armstrong is, 99 will tell you she is Lance’s wife. So Lance’s wife is more popular than a female cyclist who wins a gold medal (by a factor of 99 to 1).
Here’s a list of gold medalists in cycling:
Connie Carpenter
Mark Gorski
Alexi Grewal
Pascal Richard
Sarah Carrigan
Kathryn Watt
And here’s a list of cyclists who never won a gold medal in the Olympics:
Lance Armstrong
Greg LeMond
Mario Cipollini
Bernard Hinault
——
Out of these two lists, which group do you think are better known around the world as both athletes and cyclists? Which group are the millionaires who sponsors seek?
So your Olympic dream is not what you think it is, nor will it give you the recognition you think it will even if in the unlikely case you were to win a gold medal.
You sound like Sarah Hammer. Now that the UCI eliminated the individual pursuit in the Olympics, what is she going to do?
You shouldn’t be basing your career on the Olympics. It’s fools gold. It’s not a good sponsorship model for the future of women’s cycling. Cycling isn’t gymnastics or figure skating and women shouldn’t be trying to turn it into either.
The richest woman in cycling is Sue Haywood and not Kristin Armstrong.