Clausfarre said:
Really? Women's football more exciting? Really?!?? No further comment needed.
You do a lot of senseless namecalling but you are not the holder of all things true. Women's tennis may be MORE exciting because it's not about just serving with 500 km/h. Things do not have to be equal. This is Earth, not Utopia.
And what is wrong with liking podium girls? Seriously, I can tell you have no sense of humour but is there really anything wrong with that? Sorry for my honesty, but I do not find women's cycling interesting just like women's snooker is boring. Sexist, mysoginistic.... Rubbish. Pure rubbish. Now please apologise.
Your choice of words in your original post was appalling. You have "immense respect" for the podium girls, the idea being the women who bust their asses racing are not worthy of respect, but pretty girls whose job is to stand there looking pretty on the other hand are worthy of "immense" respect.
That is why you're getting accused of being misogynistic.
Al-Jazeera are broadcasting the women's Tour of Qatar at the moment. Yesterday's stage wasn't a
great race or anything, but it was certainly no worse than most men's stages I've ever seen in Qatar.
In the wintersports, the women's events are just as popular as the men's, more people that I know could tell you the top female skiers than male (in Alpine at least), and the spectacle is certainly no worse (at times it's better, in different ways. In XC skiing the lack of depth in the women's distance mass start races means the same people win much of the time, but at least the race gets broken up early, rather than being a 48km group ski followed by a 2km race, just like any crappy men's cycling flat stage). The only exception is Ski Jumping and Nordic Combined, which have only introduced women's competitions very recently.
Women's cycling is underdeveloped, and as a result it struggles from a lack of depth and a lack of exposure. But do you
really enjoy watching all those repetitive men's races where the break is held at 3 minutes for two hours, then Cavendish wins? Is that
really more entertaining? A lot of the time women's cycling doesn't interest people because they haven't been given a reason to care about the participants (and the lack of fans detracts a lot from the atmosphere as well), meaning that unless you're really into the sport you don't have a reason to tense up or get excited when the moves are made.
To improve women's cycling, the desire to do so and hard work on the behalf of those with the power to do so is required. Women's golf has established itself pretty well over the last 20-30 years, thanks to the LPGA's tireless work to develop the sport. Elsewhere, it seems that established women's sports (skiing, biathlon, tennis, athletics) stay established, and underdeveloped women's sports stay underdeveloped. If anything, you could argue that slogging your guts out in a sport where there's pretty much no reward is even
more worthy of respect than doing so in a sport with greater benefits. Certainly more than for slogging your guts out standing around in a dress with a cheesy smile and giving the stage winner a kiss on the cheek, at least.
Note something about all of those established women's sports that I mentioned: with the exception of the golf, the women's events are coterminous with the men's. If you go to watch a weekend event on the biathlon World Cup, you go and watch both men and women race. It's only on the weekdays they'll do men on one day, women on the other. Go to a tennis tournament, and both women's and men's matches will get top billing at various times. With the possible exception of the Ronde van Drenthe, women's cycling is in no way whatsoever ready to share top billing with the men's equivalent race. However, most of the most successful women's races are ones like Plouay, RVV and Flèche, which sit alongside the men's races. These also benefit from having the fans out in force as, while they may be there solely for the men's race later on, the enthusiastic Flemish fans cheer anybody passing and lend an air of relevance to the event.