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Lesser Known Road Racing for Women Thread

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awavey

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Libertine Seguros said:
It's kind of funny how the one race that survives in Britain is the one that should be the most prohibitive cost-wise, closing down part of central London.
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Strangely its cheaper precisely because of that :)

London through TfL/Mayors office has a special budget to promote tourism and facilitate holding "world class" events to attract more people to visit London. Parts of central London get closed nearly every weekend for some event or other that TfL/Mayor has facilitated

Whereas Essex County Council will have had to dig into some budget to promote health & wellbeing, tourism, education and maybe some government grants and rely on major sponsors to fund their stages, which are also more expensive to host.

Consequently race organisers almost get a London stage for free as they're literally paying you to be there, plus then you get all the fringe benefits of tourist sights in the backdrop, not having to worry about police roadblocks, tv coverage is simpler etc etc.

The only downside is they're really really boring as stages.
 
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awavey

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Samu Cuenca said:
The BC Women's Tour is not officially dead yet. However if they do manage to save the race for this year, the route probably won't be very exciting either.
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Unless it's 3 stages around London or 1 at that Kent cyclopark. I just can't see it happening with just over 100 days to go., no stages, no routes, no sponsors, bills from Sweetspots demise building up.

I think Ride Londons team list confirms the thinking among WWT at least as well.
 
Samu Cuenca

Samu Cuenca

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awavey said:
Unless it's 3 stages around London or 1 at that Kent cyclopark. I just can't see it happening with just over 100 days to go., no stages, no routes, no sponsors, bills from Sweetspots demise building up.

I think Ride Londons team list confirms the thinking among WWT at least as well.
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Since SDW skipped RideLondon last year, I wasn't sure they would bother to travel over for just the one race, but it seems they will.
 
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awavey

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Samu Cuenca said:
Since SDW skipped RideLondon last year, I wasn't sure they would bother to travel over for just the one race, but it seems they will.
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Last year it clashed with Lotto Thuringen, which this year is a month later, they did do the 2022 race.

I know there's an article on Wielerflits, claiming its happening, but it literally just repeats stuff BC said a few weeks back, nothing notable seems to have changed.

and no one imo more importantly from the UCI has said sure you can arrange a completely different race just roughly in the same timeslot with different organisation, different name & over a different number of stages and we'll still automatically give you that full WWT ranking because that's how our race calendar hangs together on the fly.

If BC do conjure something out of nothing, it surely can't be more than conti level, at which point why would wwt teams prepping for TdFF/olympics be interested?

Edit Serves me right for not checking first but somehow BC have got UCI dates and it's on the calendar at its original WWT level, how the flying heck have they done that ?
 
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Libertine Seguros

Libertine Seguros

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Kind of funny to see BC step in to play saviour when they never supported it in the first place and that was a large part of why it couldn't be called the Tour of Britain. SweetSpot played nice with them until late in the day about that. I mean, given the issues with hosting that the races have had in recent times we can probably expect some pretty poor, thrown together "join-the-dots" designs based on whoever is willing to have them, and with little attention paid to what might make an interesting race in that locale, but then, plus ça change, right?
 
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Samu Cuenca

Samu Cuenca

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Wyndbrook

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Libertine Seguros said:
Kind of funny to see BC step in to play saviour when they never supported it in the first place and that was a large part of why it couldn't be called the Tour of Britain. SweetSpot played nice with them until late in the day about that. I mean, given the issues with hosting that the races have had in recent times we can probably expect some pretty poor, thrown together "join-the-dots" designs based on whoever is willing to have them, and with little attention paid to what might make an interesting race in that locale, but then, plus ça change, right?
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BC have already said the the route will be limited this year, just keep the race going, and build next year.
Sounds reasonable to me.
 
Libertine Seguros

Libertine Seguros

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Wyndbrook said:
BC have already said the the route will be limited this year, just keep the race going, and build next year.
Sounds reasonable to me.
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It does, I'm just highlighting that they were not supportive of SweetSpot in respect of the women's race and in fact it was alleged that they prevented them using any of the Tour of Britain nomenclature and support/funding etc. that they did for the men's race - so the fact that they are now called upon to step in to save it is kind of amusing to me.
 
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awavey

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Libertine Seguros said:
It does, I'm just highlighting that they were not supportive of SweetSpot in respect of the women's race and in fact it was alleged that they prevented them using any of the Tour of Britain nomenclature and support/funding etc. that they did for the men's race - so the fact that they are now called upon to step in to save it is kind of amusing to me.
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Theres no allegedly about it, Sweetspot weren't allowed to use the Tour of Britain naming for it and BC did very little to help the race continue in its prior form, when it was clear it was in trouble without a major sponsor. Why on earth didn't it become the HSBC Women's Tour, or the Shell Women's Tour ?

They could have insisted tv coverage of track cycling went hand in hand with guaranteed tv coverage for it, they could have directed their riders on their elite road rosta to you know turn up and ride it once in a while.

So yes I find it ironic BC have decided now they want to help out.

Fwiw I'd prefer they parked this years race and spent the next year working on producing the best race possible. Because I don't think some kind of half arsed interim race will help anybody.

Do it properly or don't do it at all.
 
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