Womens race distances

iainf72

Rick Chasey wrote:

With regard to highlights:

You can't honestly say Paris-Roubaix or the Ronde are better watched as highlights?

C'mon!

No. of course not. But a lot of races could be dealt with as highlights. The problem is now we've got so much access to information you can find out the results very easy. I remember when I first started watching cycling I could see the results of the Classics on "Transworld Sport" on the telly 4-5 days after they happened and be surprised.

The Ronde and P-R can be watched for hours. Milan-San Remo you only need to watch the last 20 minutes.

Pross

I'm not sure how much this adds to the debate but I had a look at the results of the first stage of the Profile Tour (UCI 2.1 women's event in Holland) that has just started and checked on the progress of the Welsh women's team. The team is made up of riders who generally hold their own in local races against 2, 3 and 4 cat men. 3 of the team finished the stage in the main bunch 10 seconds down, another finished just under a minute down in a further group and the final team member was over 11 minutes down and second last (not sure if she had any problems but is a first year cyclist so would be the equivalent of a first year male cyclist getting to second cat and riding in the Tour of Britain!). The stage was just over 100km and seems to have been split into several groups despite a flat course so to answer the OP I guess that shows that making the race longer is unnecessary. There's an argument that a race of this length would be more watchable and could easily fit into a TV sports schedule in its entirity. Maybe make some mens races shorter?

thegibdog

BikingBernie wrote:

However, to claim that women's racing (or other restricted entry events) should get the same coverage, have the same kudos and so on as 'open' (i.e elite male) racing does seems to be a case of 'wanting things both ways'.

Why not open these events up to anything that walks the earth, then they would truly be 'open'? Or would only allowing animals that come from this planet make the event 'restricted entry'?

It's a tough call.

phreak

Pross wrote:

I'm not sure how much this adds to the debate but I had a look at the results of the first stage of the Profile Tour (UCI 2.1 women's event in Holland) that has just started and checked on the progress of the Welsh women's team. The team is made up of riders who generally hold their own in local races against 2, 3 and 4 cat men. 3 of the team finished the stage in the main bunch 10 seconds down, another finished just under a minute down in a further group and the final team member was over 11 minutes down and second last (not sure if she had any problems but is a first year cyclist so would be the equivalent of a first year male cyclist getting to second cat and riding in the Tour of Britain!). The stage was just over 100km and seems to have been split into several groups despite a flat course so to answer the OP I guess that shows that making the race longer is unnecessary. There's an argument that a race of this length would be more watchable and could easily fit into a TV sports schedule in its entirity. Maybe make some mens races shorter?

Aye, that's possible. Guess I was going off a couple of things, firstly that the Tour was initially designed to be so brutish that only one would finish, and second that quite a few women seem to finish 100mile sportives quite comfortably, so presumably the pro ladies could do likewise but considerably faster than the amateurs, yet pro races seldom seem that far.