Re:
Zinoviev Letter said:
I can’t even begin to understand why they would set out to destroy any chance of the women’s race being exciting. Even taking sexist attitudes for granted, surely it is in the organisers interests that the race be watchable.
It's hard sometimes not to feel that the problem is that the women putting on races that people are interested in has necessitated a lot more work developing and administering women's cycling. After all, when they've been given equally interesting courses to the men they've typically delivered equally interesting races. At many recent World Championships and places like Beijing as well where circuits were the order of the day, meaning the women's and men's courses were essentially the same but with the women doing fewer laps, we've seen similar quality of races developed by those courses. But somehow, suddenly, there is a fad for excising the most interesting and selective part of the men's race from the women's race, and bizarrely it coincides with the introduction of a stronger, more developed women's cycling scene - which completely removes the potential argument about depth of péloton and professionalism, because the women have shown themselves to be more than capable of handling some of the toughest obstacles out there. Annemiek van Vleuten set a Zoncolan time that would have put her in the top 40 in the stage Froome won earlier this season, for example, and the women have long been handling the Koppenberg and the Mur de Huy. Hell, compare the rather tedious stage 10 of the Tour de France, with the men having two days' more racing in the Alps to save their legs for, to the women's standalone event going hell for leather over the Romme and Colombière and the epic chasedown with van Vleuten hunting van der Breggen right to the line.
But now, apparently, they can't do the same course as the men, despite being deigned able to do that at a point where the women's péloton was far less professional than it is now. World and Olympic courses are moving away from the circuits model toward point-to-point races with finishing circuits, and one-off obstacles designed to create special attraction intrigue. Except, invariably thus far, those one-off obstacles have been withheld from the women. They didn't get to race in the desert in Doha, the only part of the race that produced any selectivity. They just got a pan-flat city centre course of the same tedious type they're already given by Ride London (another race which gives the men an interesting, potentially selective course but the women a criterium), ASO at the time (thankfully La Course has branched out, though it's still somewhat insulting as a one-day race and how it's run roughshod over established races in the calendar) and Unipublic. They don't get to do Gramartboden in Innsbruck, so they miss out on the one thing that people are building up the hype to pre-race. They don't get to do any of the actually selective obstacles in Tokyo even though, plausibly, they could include the Mikuni Pass loop and still be under the 160km max if they didn't do bonus loops of the circuit around the Speedway.
So why is it that, when the professionalism of the women's péloton is increasing, the average and maximum distances they race are increasing (which, with the men's races tending toward shorter stages in recent years, means the gap between the average men's and women's race in distance is at the lowest it's ever been as of late) and more coverage of women's cycling is available than ever before, at those biggest races of the year, those special races where the casual fan who isn't dedicated enough (and I don't necessarily blame them, it often takes plenty of dedication to closely follow women's cycling) to seek out the live streams for the final day of the Emakumeen Bira or the GP Vårgårda, or the newcomer fan who hasn't been aware of the availability of women's cycling, can watch and be absorbed in the women's racing, are they actively being sabotaged? They've historically put on as good a show as the men when given equal opportunity to make the race, so why are they being denied that?
I really don't care to analyse the possibilities of the men's race. I don't care how good the parcours is. This is just absolute horse**** from both the route designers and whatever the authority that sanctioned it is, and every rider, every director, every journalist and every fan of women's cycling ought to be absolutely disgusted with them.
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