The Problem With Women’s Cycling: Part 2
After a lot of thought and numerous discussions with a variety of people, I’d like to delve into some of the idiosyncracies of women’s cycling and the sport in general.
In my first post, I pointed the finger at the women racers themselves as being partly to blame for our issues. However, the cycling media certainly doesn’t do a whole lot to help our situation. I’m not saying it’s the mainstream media either – in the States our primary source of cycling coverage on TV is Versus (the network formerly know as OLN), and their coverage is rather Lance-centric (as noted by their coverage of all 3 Grand Tours back in the early part of the last decade, when Lance was King, which has since dwindled to combined coverage of stage races and spring classics in a one hour broadcast, which is frequently interrupted with updates on what Lance is doing at that moment). No, I don’t blame VS – but I do blame media outlets whose primary focus is cycling, such as oh, I don’t know, cyclingnews.com, who could certainly do a better job at women’s racing coverage.
Take, for example, this recent headline involving cycling’s latest doping scandal:
Riccò’s partner positive for CERA
OK, honest truth here – my first reaction upon reading that headline was “Ricardo Ricco is gay? And his partner is his supplier? Who knew.”
Seriously, that’s what I thought. Then I thought maybe his partner was a business partner, or a soigneur or a team doctor, his coach, someone who had a connection to him and was somehow involved in doping. The thought never crossed my mind that “partner” was his girlfriend and that said girlfriend was a professional cyclist.
How sad is that – Vania Rossi, a pro woman cyclist, a member of the Italian national cyclocross team, tests positive for CERA and her cycling career (however tainted it might be) doesn’t merit a mention in the headline. Sure, she won a silver medal at her national championships and was prepping for worlds, but as far as Cyclingnews.com was concerned, she’s just another pro male rider’s girlfriend.
The treatment of this story by Cyclingnews was atrocious – they continually referred to Rossi as “Ricco’s partner” in all subsequent coverage of the alleged doping offense, which does no favors to anyone involved. Ricco is already serving a suspension for doping – mentioning his name in another rider’s investigation is not exactly fair to Ricco. And, by linking Rossi to Ricco prior to analysis of her B sample, she’s being tried in the media and found guilty by association.
I won’t pass judgement on Rossi until her B sample is tested – if she did dope, then she deserves a suspension, if she didn’t, then leave her alone. I really don’t care what the outcome is. But for crying out loud Cyclingnews, how hard is it to recognize that female riders are athletes in their own right with their own careers, capable of using EPO independently, and not simply the arm candy of the men in the peloton?
I find it ironic that Cyclingnews continues to post blog entries from female riders lamenting the loss of opportunity in the sport for women, then turns around and refuses to acknowledge the accomplishments and subsequent doping offense of another.
Then, there’s CN’s coverage of race results. Without fail, if an event features both a men’s and women’s pro race, the men’s results and report are always reported first in the associated article – regardless of which race occurred first. I don’t get this – in cyclocross, for example, the pro women always race before the men. In fact, with today’s high speed communications systems like Twitter and social networking and smart phones, there is no reason a reporter covering the race cannot get the entire women’s results posted while the men are still racing. And yet, every race report on CN features a report, full results, and photos for the men’s race within an hour or so of the race finish, and if we’re lucky we get the top 3 finishers for the women listed – no complete result, no report. The full results eventually make the website about 3 days later, but by then the race has been bumped by 72 hours of news feed and people have forgotten about the race and moved on to reading about the latest doping scandal or who Lance is currently dating or what Lance had for dinner.
Stay tuned for my next edition of The Problem with Women’s Cycling (I guess that would be Part 4), where we investigate The Myth of Employment’s Impact on Results.
Cyclingnews covers a very small percentage of women’s cycling. It’s not even remotely important to them. They do cover what they do, cause otherwise they would get too many complaints like in the past when Bill was Chairman over there in the land of OZ. Problem is that kind of news is not bankable to CN for increased viewership, so they don’t spend any money on it. They only do enough to keep that fanbase from getting rabid. Otherwise, they don’t care.
The problem with CN is this. Often they don’t even cover the biggest women’s races like the Tour of Germany or the Tour of Italy. In many years, they didn’t get any photos and didn’t even write race reports. All they did was write the results. Some years, about the only thing they did well was the world championships and the games for women. They don’t send photographers to even the biggest women’s races most of the time. They sent reporters to various races but they have a groupie mentality and are not serious reporters or journalists. They don’t take photos usually but mostly just the race report, and its usually just by asking one rider they are used to seeing at the races, and not always the winner. How pathetic is that instead of going to other teams and building different points of view. This is groupie mentality, click off with certain riders, and that’s it. I don’t like that.
CN doesn’t send crews to its races. They send usually like one person, and rarely does that person get both photos and race reports. Others like CJ in the land of OZ, works the races in Europe and she does both the photos and the report. CN doesn’t care much about American events either, IMO, since it caters to Australian, UK and Europe. It was originally a Ausse site that moved to the UK after being bought by Future Publishing, which is a company that doesn’t care a rats ass about cycling. I am afraid CN will always give women’s racing only a token of their attention.
Also CN spends way too much time covering doping, and everything related. I think that’s bad way to cover cycling, IMO.
Cyclingnews.com is, however, 100% better at covering women’s races than Velonews.com. Take a race like the Tour de Grand Montreal (the 3-day stage race that followed the Montreal World Cup). Cyclingnews – an Australian publication – covered it, while Velonews – an American publication – did not, even though there were usually quite a number of American racers. Velonews even had photographers and reporters in the city for the WC – but they went home instead of sticking around for an extra few days and, you know, doing some reporting.
Cyclingnews did get noticeably worse after being bought out, unfortunately.
Again the nail is hit. Some excellent writing.
Coverage is poor both in terms of editorial quality when it does show up and the infrequency of showing up. You can never get a story going to generate long term interest.
Now changing that is going to take some doing. Criticize the reporters who do show? No way, at least they are doing the best they can. Some are quite good. OK some are there under sufferance and deliberately seem to do a job they can easily better when covering a men’s event. Hit the Editor in Chief ? He is the target, the guy in the seat, calling the shots. Tell him he a female fearing guy who cannot see the whole picture ? A whole untapped market out there for his advertisers. Entirely true, that is why he went into sports journalism for a “men only” sport. He really does not want women to be competing. Somehow it takes away from his heroic image of himself. Will he like being confronted with that fact ? All my experience tells me that somehow he is not going to change. He hasn’t spent years working up to this seat for someone to tell him what he is doing wrong. While he is in charge it is his way.
Will the corporate owners of his title with their shareholder friendly policies on fairness and gender equality, want to whip him into shape, when you point out that “Velocyclenews” is actually “men only velocyclenews” ? How about, how can I get you off my back with as little trouble as possible ?
It should be note that the mainstream North American cycling photographers are contract shooters. They shoot what they’re paid for and then have to move on to the next paying gig, which may be a wedding. This is no excuse for the complete dearth of coverage of women’s racing, just the cold reality. Depending upon the level of the race both CN and Velonews will send a writer and a photographer. For what it’s worth I’m working my shooting schedule around as many women’s races as I can reach. It won’t be many however since I’m not paid at all.