Trek professional women's team

The Nodder

If you want men’s cycling to subsidise women’s cycling (and I appreciate many don’t want this) then the suggested tax might not the best way to do it.

Instead, focus on incentives. For example, why not award UCI World Tour points for women’s races and then rank teams based on their total points across women’s and men’s racing? The smaller teams which need WT points will choose to invest in women’s racing, because the WT points return on investment will be higher in women’s racing. Over time, increase the overall number of WT points awarded in women’s racing until it is equal with men’s racing (whether or not there are still fewer women’s races). Eventually, all professional teams will need to have a women’s team or forgo half the points on offer.

I appreciate that obtaining a WT licence is often not a goal of continental teams, but equally there is a value in WT points and it is a factor in some transfers.

above_the_cows

bobmcstuff wrote:

Above The Cows wrote:

RichN95 wrote:

Above The Cows wrote:

The real issue is races and money from TV rights.

Exposure is where the real problem is. Getting the races on TV.

Absolutely.

Sorry, what money from tv rights? Unless I'm much mistaken no cash goes to the teams. It's just visibility no?

I was happy to have the women's tour on itv this year.
However I would suggest lot of posters here need to take a look at yourselves, I made an effort to watch the stages and then come on here and post about it every day, the thread got about 3 replies. It probably got fewer replies than this thread which is just everyone whingeing about the lack of women's racing and coverage. Riddle me that! Of course, it didn't help that the coverage was poor and the course bland.

The way I see it the women's tour has a real chance to create the premier women's race and they squandered it this year through terrible route choice. There was a daily highlights package but that just showed up how hardly anything happened, it could have been 5 reruns of this year's super dull TdF sprint stages 6 and 7 (and I would point out that those each got more posts than the whole women's tour thread...)

TV rights was the wrong term for teams, I was meaning TV coverage more generally. TV exposure is what is necessary to get sponsors. I don't live in the UK so don't get the UK coverage. I live in NL who are leading the world in women's cycling teams, it is still woefully inadequate but at least we have some teams, what we don't have though is consistent TV coverage. That is the problem. You can have the best female cyclists in the world - which we do - and as long as no one gets to see their jerseys with the sponsors name on companies like Boels are only going to throw so much money behind it. Although I do now know where to go if I need to hire a portaloo or skip for my building site so sponsorship works.

awavey

TakeTheHighRoad wrote:

I'm working from home today, which means I will have ITV4 on all day.

I will be able to compare directly between the men and women, who are on (largely) the same course.

I don't know enough about the women's scene to be able to say whether or not it's a surprise that Annemiek van Vleuten won the Giro Rosa

well I didnt think so with 3 stage wins, and the Giro Rosa title, van Vleuten is definitely the rider in form at the moment and with the confidence those results give you, even if Anna Van der Breggen is still leading the UCI world tour rankings and had gone off to do some MTB to prepare instead of riding the Giro Rosa, so had expected to be the fresher legs rider, especially as the Giro Rosa riders not only went up the Zoncolan on Saturday (which van Vleuten won), but had an uphill time trial (46mins for 15km, which van Vleuten absolutely hammered, 2nd place was over 2 and a half mins slower) and then only had 36hours to transit to Annecy, hence why the idea about doing the stage "properly" on the TdF rest day was a total non starter,

and fwiw may well have translated into the time gaps for the rest of the riders as I dont think many teams did much more than double up both races and bring maybe one or two new riders in as everyone was roughly in the right part of Europe, Ive not checked the starting list but the main riders it seemed had all had 10 days riding around Italy as prep.

but a stage with a climb profile like that, with van Vleuten in that kind of form, and she showed last year too shes probably the strongest climber in the womens peloton, van der Breggen needed to be on top of her ride to win, and you could argue she was with only metres left to go it was near enough, but just not quite enough.

awavey

bobmcstuff wrote:

No tA Doctor wrote:

Quite a few of the regular spoiler thread posters don't actually live in Britain or have access to British broadcasts. We don't get ITV4 or whatever the WTOB was on. I couldn't even find any highlights packages broadcast in Denmark. There's a limit to how much work I'm going to do to try and follow a race.

And this is the standard for most of the women's calendar. How on earth are we going to develop the understanding and relationship with the riders that makes watching cycling interesting if we can only see five minutes here and there? I can tell you more about most domestiques on middle ranking teams at the TdF than I can about the top women. Watching cycling requires investment if you want to get anything out of it - without that it's just people going fast on bicycles.

We only had the 1hr ITV highlights package - which initially sounded brilliant as I really rate their packages for the GTs.

But in the event, the commentators weren't great and there were no on screen graphics at all so it was very difficult to actually follow. It's really hard to keep track of what is going on when the footage cuts forward 20km with no visual cue that this has happened and the commentator doesn't break from droning on in monotone.

And then there's the route, which has been discussed a lot but was a total waste. The race was won by a sprinter and the gap 1st to 10th was 34 seconds (IIRC), and a lot of that was time bonus. If your GC is that close after 5 stages you know it's been pretty uneventful, which was depressing as there is so much potential to do interesting routes in the UK. I know the men's TOB often has to pick it's route with other factors in mind due to timetable clashes with the Vuelta and other things (e.g. trying to attract all the big name sprinters to prep for the WCs), but surely the women's event doesn't have those constraints. There are plenty of climbers and rouleurs in the women's peloton who want a bit more variety I am sure.

yes but I dont want to sound like Im stuck on repeat about the womens tour, but the route is constrained because it follows the money, and the money gets split 3 ways, ToB,Womens Tour and Tour Series, maybe 3 and bit ways if you include the UK race calendar too for which Id include TdY, so all the super exciting routes they could pick to make what some might call an exciting race,and they dont set out to plan boring races, firstly theyve got to coincide with those areas or near enough areas wanting the race in the first place and be willing to stump up the cash for it, plus have all the logistics and so on to match it

now thats alot easier said than done frankly IMO, others may disagree, but the race can only go where its wanted is my point.

and yeah this year did feel uneventful,and the highlights package wasnt great, so it was very difficult to follow, maybe dimension data need to be asked to help as I dont think the womens teams use those gps tracker things, the only way anyone was following who was where in that Roubaix stage was knowing which people were in which group, else it was just people riding bikes fast in dust clouds on cobbles and falling off alot and you had no idea where anyone was..

FWIW I saw most of that Roubaix stage live and then rewatched the highlights later and the highlights were as jumpy and hard to follow as the womens tour highlights, as actually were the Tour Series highlights thinking about it. But then you are thinking TdF have only got 1hr post stage to edit something together before they pack up and move on so maybe its more understandable its a bit show you most bits from the live coverage but theres no stitching it together in the way I think cricket highlights do, and remember they can sometimes be transmitting highlights whilst the game is still in play for ODI matches but still present a proper narrative of the game.

also very little press coverage, the telegraph had some bits, and Ive not got round to listening to all the cycling podcasts from each stage yet, but you know you go on any main cycling web site during it, and theres nothing, they all claim the excuse for the Giro Rosa lack of coverage is it clashes with the TdF, so what did the womens tour clash with ? then theyll say its advertisers click revenues/page impressions. Lizzies new team announcement is a footnote on most sites, Peter Sagan riding his bike against a grandma probably gets more views, I dont know.

I posted all the results from the stages last year daily and tried to highlight the stages as they came along, nothing as good as the TdF spoiler stage previews for sure,but I didnt bother this year as no-one had seemed that fussed, and Id agree theres a limit to how much work I'm going to do to try and follow a race or enthuse others about it happening for sure.

DeVlaeminck

underlayunderlay wrote:

Slim Boy Fat wrote:

DeVlaeminck wrote:

Slim Boy Fat wrote:

I've always been of the opinion that the rule makers could easily help women's sport by making it a requirement that to have a men's team in the big league you must also invest in a women's team. Premier league football teams for example, can't think of any reason why any premier league football team could not easily afford to run a women's team. I realise in less well funded sports this becomes harder but it would show proper intent from the rule makers rather than the lip service they seem to pay the issue at the moment.

So what happens when the premier league team get relegated, and do their women's team get parachuted into the top divisions as the lowest divisions in women's footy are actually still in the pyramid.

I have said a couple of times that it's a simplistic view. And with some thought and effort these things could be worked through. It would be great if there was a perfect solution but I don't see one.

I think the best we can hope for right now is a better solution than we currently have. And please don't feel the need to be defensive - talking through the drawbacks is how we get to a better solution (the internet is marvellous for polarising discussions, and at least we agree what the problem actually is for once!)

Football's an interesting discussion because the current moves there seem destined to destroy some of the more established clubs, whereas others (Man Utd) seem to have been more or less embarrassed into signing up to have a team. There's a lot of angry discussion - as ever with football - about the right way to do things.

Football has decided to tap into the money of big Premiership teams because the FA realised there isn't enough money to fund a fully professional women's league without it. As you say the downside is the effect this has had on clubs like Doncaster Belles and Yeovil (though they seem to have cobbled some solution together in the short term) who don't have a big Premiership club backing them.

In effect the women's game is being locked into being a mirror image of the top of the men's game and both Manchester clubs, Chelsea and Arsenal will likely dominate. Whether that is a bad thing is another debate, I think if I were a female footballer I'd be quite glad of the chance to be paid rather than it costing me money and holidays to play although as the opportunities will be greatest here so we've already started to see an influx of foreign talent displacing British players from the top sides.

I think the model works better in cycling because you don't have the complication of a fanbase and volunteers to consider.

bobmcstuff

awavey wrote:

bobmcstuff wrote:

No tA Doctor wrote:

Quite a few of the regular spoiler thread posters don't actually live in Britain or have access to British broadcasts. We don't get ITV4 or whatever the WTOB was on. I couldn't even find any highlights packages broadcast in Denmark. There's a limit to how much work I'm going to do to try and follow a race.

And this is the standard for most of the women's calendar. How on earth are we going to develop the understanding and relationship with the riders that makes watching cycling interesting if we can only see five minutes here and there? I can tell you more about most domestiques on middle ranking teams at the TdF than I can about the top women. Watching cycling requires investment if you want to get anything out of it - without that it's just people going fast on bicycles.

We only had the 1hr ITV highlights package - which initially sounded brilliant as I really rate their packages for the GTs.

But in the event, the commentators weren't great and there were no on screen graphics at all so it was very difficult to actually follow. It's really hard to keep track of what is going on when the footage cuts forward 20km with no visual cue that this has happened and the commentator doesn't break from droning on in monotone.

And then there's the route, which has been discussed a lot but was a total waste. The race was won by a sprinter and the gap 1st to 10th was 34 seconds (IIRC), and a lot of that was time bonus. If your GC is that close after 5 stages you know it's been pretty uneventful, which was depressing as there is so much potential to do interesting routes in the UK. I know the men's TOB often has to pick it's route with other factors in mind due to timetable clashes with the Vuelta and other things (e.g. trying to attract all the big name sprinters to prep for the WCs), but surely the women's event doesn't have those constraints. There are plenty of climbers and rouleurs in the women's peloton who want a bit more variety I am sure.

yes but I dont want to sound like Im stuck on repeat about the womens tour, but the route is constrained because it follows the money, and the money gets split 3 ways, ToB,Womens Tour and Tour Series, maybe 3 and bit ways if you include the UK race calendar too for which Id include TdY, so all the super exciting routes they could pick to make what some might call an exciting race,and they dont set out to plan boring races, firstly theyve got to coincide with those areas or near enough areas wanting the race in the first place and be willing to stump up the cash for it, plus have all the logistics and so on to match it

now thats alot easier said than done frankly IMO, others may disagree, but the race can only go where its wanted is my point.

and yeah this year did feel uneventful,and the highlights package wasnt great, so it was very difficult to follow, maybe dimension data need to be asked to help as I dont think the womens teams use those gps tracker things, the only way anyone was following who was where in that Roubaix stage was knowing which people were in which group, else it was just people riding bikes fast in dust clouds on cobbles and falling off alot and you had no idea where anyone was..

also very little press coverage, the telegraph had some bits, and Ive not got round to listening to all the cycling podcasts from each stage yet, but you know you go on any main cycling web site during it, and theres nothing, they all claim the excuse for the Giro Rosa lack of coverage is it clashes with the TdF, so what did the womens tour clash with ?

Yeah but I kind of expect the tour series to have half arsed coverage, it is pretty low down on the cycling hierarchy (wouldn't even be a chipper on the infamous chart) - no offence to the riders and I have enjoyed watching it in the past, partly because I know the places... The women's tour is supposed to be one of the premier races in women's cycling. If I want to follow the top men's races it's quite easy, if I want to follow the top women's races it is very difficult.

The cycling podcast coverage was alright but at the end of the day they are constrained by the events they're discussing and if the race is boring the podcast is a bit flat too.

(I snipped some of the quoted replies to try and make it a bit cleaner...)

awavey

bobmcstuff wrote:

Yeah but I kind of expect the tour series to have half arsed coverage, it is pretty low down on the cycling hierarchy (wouldn't even be a chipper on the infamous chart) - no offence to the riders and I have enjoyed watching it in the past, partly because I know the places... The women's tour is supposed to be one of the premier races in women's cycling. If I want to follow the top men's races it's quite easy, if I want to follow the top women's races it is very difficult.

The cycling podcast coverage was alright but at the end of the day they are constrained by the events they're discussing and if the race is boring the podcast is a bit flat too.

but I wondered if part of the issue with the highlights, was its the same production company, Century TV, doing the Tour Series and the Womens Tour (they also do Ride London and I know people complain about that coverage alot too), whilst for the TdF, ITV coverage is produced by Vsquared TV, who (and yeah I know they would say this but...) are a "specialist producer and distributor of road and track cycling", so just because its on the same channel with some of the same faces involved, doesnt mean its to the same production quality necessarily...and then that comes back to money again no doubt I know part of the issue with getting live coverage of the stages is cost based to pay for the planes to uplink signals.

so it all comes down to money in the end and there isnt a great deal of it in most womens sports, even if Gary Neville thinks 70million is a pittance in footballing terms.

I dont know its so weird seeing so much coverage for La Course across all the media this past 24 hours, it even ended up on Newsnight !? and the poor old Womens Tour are stuck there sort of saying hey guys remember us we had all these riders racing in the UK only a month ago.

MKmamil

awavey wrote:

seems like the deal to create the new team, means Trek Drops will have to find a new bike & sponsor which hopefully they can do as it would be a shame to lose them as a team, especially if the rumours are true that Wiggle are struggling to keep going

Don’t worry about Drops. They are secured for next year but I cannot give out any details.

ddraver

Above The Cows wrote:

Although I do now know where to go if I need to hire a portaloo or skip for my building site so sponsorship works.

About to buy some gas and electicity from Eneco with zero price comparison work...

proto

Looks like Drops will carry on without Trek. New main sponsor and new bike supplier lined up for at least a season.

You've got to admire Bob Varney, he's built something from the ground up. Hope he does well.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/drops-womens-team-to-continue-in-2019-without-trek/

Vino'sGhost

RichN95 wrote:

Slim Boy Fat wrote:

There is absolutely no reason Sky should not have a women's team. They could do wonders for women's cycling if they did it properly. They aren't going to do it by themselves so why not make it a requirement.

But here's the thing. Sky (the company) aren't a secretive organisation. They're based in Isleworth. There's nothing stopping someone going there and pitching a plan to start a women's team. Instead a lot of people demand that Brailsford does it, when he clearly has no interest.

There's lots of people saying 'there should be a Sky women's team' and absolutely nobody saying 'I want to run a Sky women's team'.

Thats because its not a viable expenditure. It would be an altruistic benevolent activity and there arent enough people like that around to make it feasible

Vino'sGhost

proto wrote:

Looks like Drops will carry on without Trek. New main sponsor and new bike supplier lined up for at least a season.

You've got to admire Bob Varney, he's built something from the ground up. Hope he does well.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/drops-womens-team-to-continue-in-2019-without-trek/

He's done a really good job, very impressive we need more people like him.

slim_boy_fat

Vino'sGhost wrote:

proto wrote:

Looks like Drops will carry on without Trek. New main sponsor and new bike supplier lined up for at least a season.

You've got to admire Bob Varney, he's built something from the ground up. Hope he does well.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/drops-womens-team-to-continue-in-2019-without-trek/

He's done a really good job, very impressive we need more people like him.

Agreed. He came across really well in the recent Cycling Podcast Feminin episode where Orla spent a day in the team car.

awavey

though Drops will lose Eva Buurman to Boels next season,which Im assuming if that weird way the UCI points work is still in place, Drops lose her points to Boels, which currently at least would see them fall outside the top 20 ranked teams, and I think thats the point at which you arent guaranteed automatic invites to any race be that one day or stage anymore. so they need to sign a rider with a good stack of points and get into the top 15.

thegreatdivide

I wonder if the new bikes will come from Colnago and Campagnolo now that Wiggle High-5 are no more?