Shame on Cyclingnews.com

[online-rider]

That may be a geographic thing. At the tour series here recently they had loads of junior and amatuer races before hand and one of the noticable things was just how many girls were racing, especially in the 14-18 age range (and riding some **** hot bikes). Talking to a few of the organisers of the clubs, and approximately 30% of their club riders at junior/u20 level are girls and its starting to filter up slowly. The under 16 races, and U13 races, the girls whupped the boys butts. At least One girl had to collect the race prize, and the seperate "girls" prize..

I remember the shame of getting beaaten by a few stronng girls and women as a junior. I got over it. Its sad most of those girls will end up quiting cos the prospects for a female pro up til now just havent been as bright

I like the money that the CERVELO team has put into the womans team

 

[mastercat]

Ok I have 2 daughters love 'em to death but figure skating and gymnastics are girl sports that are more popular then the men. I'm sure that men involved in those sports whine about coverage.
Also back in the day I use to date a pro mountain biker chick she was fast but not that fast Back then I raced sport class and could always stay in front of her.

I think she got the free bikes more because she was "Hot" looking and not her speed

 

[Anonymous]

Ok I have 2 daughters love 'em to death but figure skating and gymnastics are girl sports that are more popular then the men. I'm sure that men involved in those sports whine about coverage.
Also back in the day I use to date a pro mountain biker chick she was fast but not that fast Back then I raced sport class and could always stay in front of her.

I think she got the free bikes more because she was "Hot" looking and not her speed

every occur to you that she was taking it easy so you didnt have the humiliation of being whupped by a girl?

 

[online-rider]

Ok I have 2 daughters love 'em to death but figure skating and gymnastics are girl sports that are more popular then the men. I'm sure that men involved in those sports whine about coverage.
Also back in the day I use to date a pro mountain biker chick she was fast but not that fast Back then I raced sport class and could always stay in front of her.

I think she got the free bikes more because she was "Hot" looking and not her speed

No doubt there are some sponsors who do that for hot chicks, I mean all sports people look good. Thats part of what sells sport. The mens peloton would have a differant kind of following if all the riders looked like Charlie Gaul.
but just cos the chicks dont race as fast doesnt mean its not interesting to watch imo. I mean the Giro is raced slower than the Tour but its still a superior race.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

I'd watch the Giro del Trentino if it was televised in my country, I don't find it any less intersting than the mens races. But as it is, I didn't even know that was a womans race.The only time the woman get to race on the same 'platform' as the men is in those inner city criteriums or maybe Nationals RR once a year.
we're not asking for massive TV coverage , I mean as it is, the womans calendar only has about one tenth the races as the mens so, just, a good 1 hour coverage of some of those big races, and in it's own time slot not just tacked on to the mens coverage as then its always going to seem like an hors d'oeuvre or a dessert.

But this is my point. It isn't less interesting than the men's races if you know enough about the racing to follow it. I went to the trouble of digging up Dutch regional channels to follow the Ronde van Drenthe. But for many people, the amount of effort required to find the coverage means the rewards are too little. What we need is to reduce the amount of effort required to find the coverage.

Maybe people will still dismiss it. But at least they'll be dismissing it from a position of knowledge, not out of ignorance.

 

[L'arriviste]

I follow the ladies' racing scene on CN and I find it very interesting, especially after I saw them fight it out for the Ronde on the Muur. It's great that there are some big sponsors (HTC, Cervelo) in it.

It's Cyclingnews.com, after all, not Menscyclingnews.com, isn't it? If you're not interested in reading about women's racing, don't read the articles, like I don't with MTB. How on earth do you people know what the demand is? Do you have open access to CN's stats software?

By the same feeble logic, you should be lobbying the IOC to ban women's Olympic events. Why not just take one on the chin for human development.

 

[Cerberus]

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. [...]

Obviously some of the lack of interest is because of the lack of coverage, but the lack of coverage is also because of the lack of interest. With relatively few exceptions mens sports always have bigger audiences and more money

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.

I haven't done any market surveys to asses whether Giro Deltino has a bigger a smaller potential audience than major womens races, but then neither have you. My instinct is to trust cycling news assessment more than yours since they've got money at stake. I don't see any reason why they'd deliberately diss Womans races despite believing that there's a significant audience. certainly they could be wrong, but so could you and I think they've put more thought into it.

 

[online-rider]

Yeah because the Tour de Beauce, Tour of Utah and Nature Valley GP draw in a really huge readership too.

Mind you, if CN were to cover women's racing seriously it would mean they'd have to take resources from transcribing fawning interviews with Uniballer, Hog and Frodo.

Mrs John Murphy you are easily the most sardonic, saturnine person on this site.
Have you ever considered commenting more than the standard two line sentence, or does that interfere with your rolling your next cigarette?

CN won't need any more resources, they already do good reports on the womans races they need to make them more visible on the site. But its more the TV coverage that is lacking for the womans races.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Obviously some of the lack of interest is because of the lack of coverage, but the lack of coverage is also because of the lack of interest. With relatively few exceptions mens sports always have bigger audiences and more money

Yes, true, but the divide in cycling is pretty clear. Some sports, like athletics and tennis, see the women's events as on a par with the men's. Others, like golf, are doing a much better job of building up the women's events than cycling is,

I haven't done any market surveys to asses whether Giro Deltino has a bigger a smaller potential audience than major womens races, but then neither have you. My instinct is to trust cycling news assessment more than yours since they've got money at stake. I don't see any reason why they'd deliberately diss Womans races despite believing that there's a significant audience. certainly they could be wrong, but so could you and I think they've put more thought into it.

They're not deliberately dissing women's racing. They're just not promoting it. They don't have to promote it, since obviously the audience isn't huge. I'm not saying they should be promoting it above the Tour de Suisse or anything as drastic as that. But the Giro del Trentino is one of the bigger women's events, and it is being placed way down the priority list below unknown Polish 2.2 events, and how is a sport ever to develop if nobody knows it's going on? I have a hard time believing that the audience clamouring for knowledge of little-heralded Polish domestic news outweighs the interest in women's cycling full stop. Perhaps, because women's events are routinely classified 2.2, CyclingNews just has an automated system that places the events in some form of UCI-ranking-followed-by-chronological order, which would explain why, apart from the occasional 2.1 race like Emakumeen Bira or the Giro Donne, the races are miles down the priority list.

 

[Mellow Velo]

No I don't. People are obviously less interested in female cycling, but the reasons people provide in this thread are quite pathetic, TBH.

+1
Appalling. Especially as those making the disparaging comments are the ones usually found banging on about riding "clean".
(i.e. to physical limitations)
The women ride with as much passion and commitment as the men.
So what if they aren't as fast as men?
As for the ridiculous comment from ACF. I seriously hope he was joking.

I watched Emma Pooley steaming past all the clubmen, on the main climb of the UK championships, last year.
Many of the men's peloton made much harder work of it, later that day.

 

[scribe]

The babes on bikes thread is a runaway favorite on these boards. What more they want?

 

[Ryo Hazuki]

No doubt there are some sponsors who do that for hot chicks, I mean all sports people look good. Thats part of what sells sport. The mens peloton would have a differant kind of following if all the riders looked like Charlie Gaul.
but just cos the chicks dont race as fast doesnt mean its not interesting to watch imo. I mean the Giro is raced slower than the Tour but its still a superior race.

you are kidding right?? have you ever seen football players?? almost all of them are ugly just look up ribery

 

[online-rider]

But this is my point. It isn't less interesting than the men's races if you know enough about the racing to follow it. I went to the trouble of digging up Dutch regional channels to follow the Ronde van Drenthe. But for many people, the amount of effort required to find the coverage means the rewards are too little. What we need is to reduce the amount of effort required to find the coverage.

Maybe people will still dismiss it. But at least they'll be dismissing it from a position of knowledge, not out of ignorance.

That's right. There'd be alot of new and existing cycling fans tuning into the races if they were televised. I've always thought theres money to be made in womans cycling. Actually it seemed like pro mountain-biking had a niche going there before the before the whole MTB scene face-planted in the late 90's.
You know in some ways womans road racing hasn't been around that long. So maybe it is still developing as we speak with $$smash$ and sponsors and so forth.
But it needs better coverage to do so.

 

[online-rider]

you are kidding right?? have you ever seen football players?? almost all of them are ugly just look up ribery

Well true. We think so but the woman who follow football probably find them hot enough.
What I meant was sports people are fit and healthy and thats very attractive image that can be sold by the sponsors.

 

[Cobblestones]

I'd actually love to see coverage of women's races. It does not matter if they're a bit slower or maybe the races are a bit shorter. Cycling is a tactical sport, and that's what I love to watch.

Let's just pretend for the sake of the argument that men's cycling burns to the ground (maybe not so far fetched). No pro-tour, no more races, no teams, nothing. Say the only thing surviving was women's racing. Would you still watch it? I would, and probably with the same passion as I watch Bertie climb Alpe d'Huez in July.

It's sad that so little is done to popularized women's racing. If the people involved would spend as much money, time and effort to promote women's cycling as they try to popularize cycling outside of Europe, a lot would be gained.

 

[Anonymous]

How long before susan "moves this to the relevant forum"

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Not to mention that the new one-day ProTour races in Canada that failed already once in the World Cup days, and that nobody really cares about and are coterminous with the Vuelta, have been introduced at the cost of the popular and fairly well-attended women's event, famous for a lumpy, jagged parcours, and Emma Pooley disappearing at kilometre 0 last year and not being seen again by the péloton until over a minute after she crossed the line.

Shame she descends like Fränk Schleck.

 

[Hairy Wheels]

Women's racing is ok, but not as entertaining as men's. I'm not saying they're not good, they don't race hard and they don't deserve attention...it's just that a lot of women's racing I've seen just isn't that fun to watch. They tend to be a little more races of attrition. The women's WC in Montreal was the absolute worst thing I've ever watched...I just watched b/c I had friends in the race!

Oh, to the guy who talked about the woman doing 51 min for 40 km....that's faster than every Pro woman does. Clara Hughes, an amazing TT'er and 5 time Olympic medalist could barely break 54 on a dead flat course. Even Genevieve Jeanson, doped to the gills (admitted it too!) couldn't go near that fast, despite doing times that beat most Pro men in lots of TT's. Either she motorpaced to that time or she's on something. Bottom line.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Women's racing is ok, but not as entertaining as men's. I'm not saying they're not good, they don't race hard and they don't deserve attention...it's just that a lot of women's racing I've seen just isn't that fun to watch. They tend to be a little more races of attrition. The women's WC in Montreal was the absolute worst thing I've ever watched...I just watched b/c I had friends in the race!

And what of men's races that end in inevitable bunch sprints? With the smaller teams in women's races, these are less certain, and there's much more value in getting into the breaks, meaning you get a lot more big names trying to attack early. Almost any flat race without a massive amount of wind in the men's races at the élite level just end up being 'bunch of GC no-hopers from small team attack, get controlled, get brought back, sprint trains.'

In reality, I see the 2.2 and occasional 2.1 ratings for women's events matching the equivalent mens' racing; the style of racing is very similar to what you see in men's events of those levels.

 

[janus1969]

Funny thing...if there's a place where women and men *could* compete together, it's cycling...after all, the muscle deficiency is irrelevant in cycling, right?

 

[Hairy Wheels]

And what of men's races that end in inevitable bunch sprints? With the smaller teams in women's races, these are less certain, and there's much more value in getting into the breaks, meaning you get a lot more big names trying to attack early. Almost any flat race without a massive amount of wind in the men's races at the élite level just end up being 'bunch of GC no-hopers from small team attack, get controlled, get brought back, sprint trains.'

In reality, I see the 2.2 and occasional 2.1 ratings for women's events matching the equivalent mens' racing; the style of racing is very similar to what you see in men's events of those levels.

I don't like races that end in bunch sprints either....I despise most stages of the tour and don't watch if I get the sense they're going to be super controlled. You're right that some women's racing is ok to watch....I should have qualified my statements to reflect that. Having said that, I still stand by my original comments.

 

[Siriuscat]

hmmm 5 pages, got you talking about it.

I put this on for a reason, sproggy daughter (16) and I were watching the TDS yesterday and she asked was there such a thing as womens pro cycling so we got into a bit of a debate about that. She cycles a bit for fun but she feels there would be more interest if they knew of other girls/ladies involved as well.

We all sit and watch the mens pro racing, track racing etc etc but we fail miserably as a community to recognise the capabilities of some of our female riders. In the UK alone on the road you've got Nicole Cooke a World and Olympic Champ, Emma Pooley probably the best all rounder there is at the minute, Lizzie Armistead and the long list of ladies competing at that level. On the track Victoria Pendleton, Wendy Houvenagel, Rebecca Romero, Lizzie again, Jo Rowsell all World Champs with a raft of junior World Champs like Becky James pushing them hard.

As a sport we do not suitably recognise the efforts and achivements of these cyclists never mind their gender, maybe it's we started doing so and the best place to start is the cycling media!!

Wouldn't mind hearing what the CN Mods and Bods have to say

 

[BroDeal]

Funny thing...if there's a place where women and men *could* compete together, it's cycling...after all, the muscle deficiency is irrelevant in cycling, right?

Cycling is a weird sport. Usually muscle--err, raw top end power--does not matter much but then there are the times that it does. If you cannot put out the power during the times it does matter then you get dropped and burn yourself out trying to catch back on.

I think the excitement argument is bogus. Speed does not relate to excitement value. For whatever reason, women's cycing is nowhere near as popular as men's and that is just the way it is.

Don't force me to post the Family Guy clip about the WNBA.

 

[Hairy Wheels]

Cycling is a weird sport. Usually muscle--err, raw top end power--does not matter much but then there are the times that it does. If you cannot put out the power during the times it does matter then you get dropped and burn yourself out trying to catch back on.

I think the excitement argument is bogus. Speed does not relate to excitement value. For whatever reason, women's cycing is nowhere near as popular as men's and that is just the way it is.

Don't force me to post the Family Guy clip about the WNBA.

I certainly didn't mention speed in my argument...it's the way that most of their races play out. Bottom line. The most exciting races to watch are pro races from the 80's...which were definitely slower (if not in average speed, definitely in the top end, particularly at the end of the race).

 

[Roland Rat]

Oh, to the guy who talked about the woman doing 51 min for 40 km....that's faster than every Pro woman does. Clara Hughes, an amazing TT'er and 5 time Olympic medalist could barely break 54 on a dead flat course. Even Genevieve Jeanson, doped to the gills (admitted it too!) couldn't go near that fast, despite doing times that beat most Pro men in lots of TT's. Either she motorpaced to that time or she's on something. Bottom line.

If a man can do a 45 minute, why can't a woman do a 51?

And besides, you can't use an argument that "women must be doping" against it being covered otherwise men's cycling wouldn't exist.