It's also the way that British Cycling are moving with the British National Championships - setting up a "Festival of Cycling" with a sportive and various family events, which not only generate cash to support the elite races, but also makes the event as a whole more attractive to any potential host towns because more people/visitors will be likely to attend...
Just as long as they follow the template of the National Championships, and not RideLondon, Innsbruck, Tokyo or others where the generating of cash clearly only applies to the men's event, because the opening up of the course to the everyman takes place
while the women's race is going on, relegating them to a crappy crit course while the men get to do the full race. No amount of equal prize money and income generated from the everyman ride while the women get an hour-long pan-flat circuit race can make me think that that isn't counter-productive and disrespectful.
At least while one of the women's Tour of California stages
was like that, the rest of the time, shorter race though it may be, they got to at least do some decently tough racing, aping the Lake Tahoe and Mount Baldy stages the last couple of years.
I totally get the - especially in less established pro cycling markets, which apart from a couple of boom periods coinciding with high profile Americans in the pro péloton, the USA has been - interest in maintaining interest and income from doing an everyman race, maybe even at the same time, along similar lines to Visma Ski Classics or high profile marathons (though obviously that would preclude circuit races), but we shouldn't be left with a situation - as we sometimes are, and continue to be in London - where the amateur women are able to ride a tougher course than the pros are allowed to. That's just absurd.
Maybe there could be a revival of the old 'Open' days with something akin to the Coors Classic with the pro péloton setting off a short period before the everyman. Set the elite men off, then the elite women a few minutes later, then the amateurs. À la Vasaloppet. Bring back the Morgul-Bismark Loop and the Tour of the Moon. Those were absolutely key to Colorado not achieving full buy-in imo. Those were among the very few truly iconic cycling sites and landmarks that America had that could give us photographs and images that buy into cycling tradition in a similar way as that with which we look at iconic images of places like the Casse Déserte, the Sottoguda gorge, the Santuário de Covadonga, the Trouée d'Arenberg, Mondim de Basto or La Porta per l'Inferno.