Lady Victoria on sexism in cycling

LangerDan

This could all be resolved by reducing the number of mens track events to 3, thus removing accusations of gender bias and allowing the return of that bastion of lunacy, the 100km Team Time Trial.

iainf72

LangerDan wrote:

This could all be resolved by reducing the number of mens track events to 3, thus removing accusations of gender bias and allowing the return of that bastion of lunacy, the 100km Team Time Trial.

I second this motion

RichN95.

OffTheBackAdam wrote:

Last time I noticed, there weren't seperate disciplines for Stallions & Mares.

Yes there are. For example 1000 Guineas and The Oaks are for fillies only. Girl horses also get weight advantages in most races.

Aggieboy

[ (As I taunt my wife with) "Just sit on top and bounce around a bit".

Sexist!

aurelio_-_banned

BeaconRuth wrote:

I can't work out whether you are a wind-up merchant or just stupid. If you really can't see the difference between a woman contesting a mixed event and a 3rd cat bloke contesting a mixed category RR then it's really not worth having a discussion with you.

Of course I can see the difference. One group of competitors has boobs and the other does not. However, I had thought that the central argument of the feminist agenda was that it was wrong to regard or treat people differently on the basis of such differences!

lmrt

Hi Blonde, I think we have met briefly in 2007 on some of the Yorkshire Audaxes.
If I may add my views and corrections to this debate:

Blonde wrote:

I'm currently training for track accreditation and will be trying the derny paced training sessions once I've passed. I wonder how many other women will be doing those? At the moment there is no derny paced event for women at all. I know that Chris Hoy had 'his event' (500m) removed from the list so had to train for the longer distance of the kilometre at the last olympics..

Good luck with the track accreditation, track racing is great fun.

The (mens) Kilometre time trial was in fact the event dropped from the Olympics. Hoy had to re-focus his training etc to the other 3 mens sprint disciplines.


The Kilometre time trial was dropped at the expense of introducing BMX as a full Olympic Sport.

As GB had the existing 1KM TT Olympic champion in Hoy, the British Cycling Federation complained in very stong terms to both the UCI and IOC. As I understand it, the UCI made approaches to the IOC to get the event reinstated but the IOC didn't want to know. I can't fully recall the chronology but I think all this happened under Verbruggen's presidency, not McQuaid. Regardless of who was president of the UCI, it seems that the IOC were determined not to reverse their decision, consequently I don't understand why some correspondents are so critical of the UCI in this matter.

"Yes they are putting off women from getting on the track - most people training for accreditation want to race. That is why they are there."

Strictly speaking one doesn't have to have accreditation to race in the Friday night MRTL events, not sure about Monday ACT league, however my club recommends accreditation before racing as one gets taught how to ride safely.

Aurelio
After all, it could be argued that as soon as you have separate events for men and women you are doing little more than reinforcing the idea that women can`t compete on equal terms and need to be catered for in `soft` versions of the `mens` events which as a consequence are never taken as seriously.

It's a recognised scientific fact that there are differences in strength between genders. There's a whole topic in Sport & Exercise Science that deals with this matter, I suggest that's the reason there are different events for male & female.

6288
If i were any of the GB cycling squad i'd get out while i was ahead ... 2012 is a disaster waiting to happen

Why is 2012 a disaster waiting to happen?

Beacon Ruth
I agree, a win is as valued by either gender, it's just that TT organisers ( I assume it's TTs you are referring to) are still somewhat stuck in the past in their outlook.

Adam
So the differencies in strength between males & females isn't an issue, thus no need to seperate them.
There are fewer track disciplines for women, because fewer race, full stop.

Totally spurious to compare racehorses to humans. I think perhaps the answer to the latter is that there used to be fewer women racing, however numbers are now much higher across all track disciplines. The UCI has recognised this by providing World championships for many disciplines, however with the inertia of th IOC I'm not optimistic we'll see an increase any time soon.

Interesting that the media made much of Wimbledon Tennis equality in prize money, for both the male and female competitions, for the first time this year. Would that there were equality in the number of Olympic cycling disciplines.

Tim Farr

There's a photo of the backup team for team GB in the programme for the Track World Cup at the Velodrome; presumably the coaches, mechanics, masseurs and others. That gender imbalance can't be right; could be a bit intimidating for young girls in the squad.

oldwelshman

Tim Farr wrote:

There's a photo of the backup team for team GB in the programme for the Track World Cup at the Velodrome; presumably the coaches, mechanics, masseurs and others. That gender imbalance can't be right; could be a bit intimidating for young girls in the squad.

Why intimidating? The best coaches are the best irrespective of their gender and the girls will have been coached with them for a while and they will almost certainly been coached by other males previously.
I used to coach both boys and girls form 8 to 18 and never split girls from boys, we only formed groups on ability. We never had women squash coaches but none of the girls had any issues with us.
I personally do not see the point of sticking women in there unless they are best at their job. Maybe there are women cycle coaches support staff I don't know but fail to see why there needs to be a gender balance.
What will be next? An ethnic imbalance? Lets get some ethnic coaches as we don't have enough ethnic cyclists?

stagehopper

There were at least two women support staff on the Biritish Cycling team as they were very prominent in the background on Sunday as Jill Douglas was interviewing one of the many winning cyclists.

BaildonBob

But doesn't Vicky P benefit from a touch of sexism, or at least lechery? 2 sport star Romero and the perennial success that is Nicole Cooke don't get feted nearly so much.