I know. I didn't say it was bad actually. It's just really imbalanced when one mountain stage dwarfs out the rest. But the Vuelta has actually done best in that regard.
I do like the idea of the women doing the legendary climbs the men do, but I actually think a one day race format is better for that.
Au contraire, I like the idea of having at least one "iconic" stage each year. The Giro did something like that in the late 2000s early 2010s. However, what was also cool was having San Domenico di Varzo several consecutive years, I don't really want the same climb every year but having a climb like that (or Monte Serra from the 90s) that has iconic status specifically in relation to women's cycling rather than just being conferred value from the men's races is a nice step.
However, they can't just go one really tough stage and call it a day. Stages like
Stage 7 and
Stage 8 in the 2022 Giro Donne spring to mind for what I'd like.
Perhaps if you're going with the 'icon' being an MTF, the 2022 Giro Donne format is best actually - have a Unipuerto MTF at the 'icon', then a couple of other mountain stages with less renowned climbs to follow. Unfortunately the loss of race days hits that hard.
They should organize for women at least one 2-week race, which would be a proper GT for them. It's probably a matter of time, when there's more popularity and $$$ in women's tour.
They should, and in the medium-term it's a good goal. I like the idea of the Volta a Portugal format in the short term - start Wednesday, end the following Sunday, 11 stages with one rest day. However...
It seems to me they wanna do the absolute minimum to be a women's GT and call it a day
TBH I think it's more that the Tour de France is setting the rules. The Giro had been up much longer but settled on a 10 stage no rest day format since the early 2000s. This had been running for a while, but the loss of status that came from the attempt to scramble a race together in 2020 served badly in two ways. Firstly, the Giro should have just not bothered - the Women's Tour elected not to run, failed to meet the same coverage criteria as the Giro a year later, but the Giro got demoted and the Women's Tour didn't. Secondly, the Tour used a very replicable format; they start on the final day of the Tour, on the Champs Elysées, and therefore running 8 stages in order to finish on Sunday, the most convenient day to finish, just fits together very neatly. With ASO also owning La Vuelta, they've replicated that format when the Ceratizit Challenge has grown into a proper race, and the Giro, with its budget cut and its tail between its legs, has followed suit.
ASO I certainly think have an element of wanting to do the minimum, but the 8 stage format like this is, at least in the Tour's infancy, something of a no-brainer. I'm not going to fault it, it's actually almost exactly what I was asking for of them for years, but there is an element of ASO essentially only stepping in once the Giro was being demoted so that they could be
the race; though they had a women's Tour back in the 80s, having a 30 year deficit in history to the Giro would have had them in a position of weakness; in the men's péloton the Tour is very much
the race, but in the women's, they may have prioritised the Giro... so ASO were not going to step in until the Giro was weakened enough that they could be perceived as the leaders, not the followers, despite their having resisted doing even the bare minimum for years beforehand (some of the finest coverage of La Flèche Wallonne Féminine came from a commentator sticking their mobile phone out of the window to capture the women arriving at the final corner, because God forbid we miss any of the exciting action the men provide 110km from the finish at Flèche, which we know is renowned for its successful, meaningful speculative long range attacks).
I observed the development of women skijumping world cup. What started as 13-15 event competition is now a proper WC with around 25 events. When there are richer sponsors and more interest then voices of making a 2-week stage race will have a bigger impact. I think it will happen within 10 years max.
Interestingly, Jernej Damjan on Eurosport this season noted that women's ski jumping is in fact the
only FIS discipline that has shown audience and sponsorship growth in the last decade. Exempting women's NoCo which didn't exist prior to that, of course, but is very much still in its infancy.
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