Cerberus said:
Some of them are pretty stupid yeah, supply and demand is legitimate enough though.
How do we know the demand isn't there? Some of us are very interested in women's cycling, or perhaps would be if we ever got the chance to WATCH IT. Apart from the Worlds, RAI's half-hour Giro Donne summaries, and Eurosport broadcasting a Liggett-commentated highlights package of the Ronde van Vlaanderen, three weeks after the fact, the only way to watch women's cycling is with incredible persistence, perseverence and hard work to find regional broadcasters and the like. The Ronde van Drenthe was televised on a local channel and provided some very exciting racing, with repeated attacking, and carnage from the group. A lot of the rules about women's racing (stage average not over 100km, 10 days race maximum etc.) are purely arbitrary limits placed there by the UCI. The women are capable of putting on entertainment; last year's Worlds were more entertaining than the men's event if you judged it purely on a sporting principle. The problem is that, with fewer events riders are less specialised in terms of sprinter/climber/time trial specialist and so on, meaning that the same names crop up at the top almost regardless of event. That doesn't mean the racing is any less interesting. But if you don't know who to cheer for, or you don't care who wins, it doesn't matter. This is the problem facing women's cycling. If you suport Cavendish, you'll get excited and fascinated by a men's event in which NOTHING HAPPENS. You could then watch a women's event (say for the sake of an argument there actually is one to watch) and see people pinging off the front repeatedly, solo digs, group digs, and all manner of things happening, but you don't know who the riders are, you don't care who wins, so it becomes irrelevant to you. It becomes like watching NFL Europe, or for the Europeans here, watching MLS - it could be exciting as anything, but because the presentation and the standard
seems lower, you only focus on that.
Women's cycling is a niche market, certainly. But frankly, I'm pretty sure that there's at least as many people out there that care about the Giro del Trentino, one of the major events on the women's circuit, as a minor 2.2 race in an obscure region of Poland. Maybe if more of the racing was able to be seen some people might pay attention. Until then it's easier to just dismiss it as being somehow lesser without even knowing what it is you speak of.
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