Trek professional women's team

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

Above The Cows wrote:

Still I'm happy to see some weight being thrown behind women's racing.

Same here. The casual "will this do?" attitude to La Course really winds me up at the moment, as anyone reading the LR thread may be able to detect...

underlayunderlay wrote:

Above The Cows wrote:

Still I'm happy to see some weight being thrown behind women's racing.

Same here. The casual "will this do?" attitude to La Course really winds me up at the moment, as anyone reading the LR thread may be able to detect...

Women's Cycling looking to France for their future is a lost cause I feel. It's virtually non-existent there now. The FdJ team is the only French team ranked in the top 50 on CQ Ranking.

In 2009, the year Lappartient became president of the French Federation, France had seven UCI stage races in France and three national stage races. In 2017 they had one. And there are only four UCI one day races on the calendar (two in the World Tour)

Someone needs to undo Lappartient's damage before they start thinking about a Women's Tour.

RichN95 wrote:

underlayunderlay wrote:

Above The Cows wrote:

Still I'm happy to see some weight being thrown behind women's racing.

Same here. The casual "will this do?" attitude to La Course really winds me up at the moment, as anyone reading the LR thread may be able to detect...

Women's Cycling looking to France for their future is a lost cause I feel. It's virtually non-existent there now. The FdJ team is the only French team ranked in the top 50 on CQ Ranking.

In 2009, the year Lappartient became president of the French Federation, France had seven UCI stage races in France and three national stage races. In 2017 they had one. And there are only four UCI one day races on the calendar (two in the World Tour)

Agree about France. Still think that the UK has a genuine chance of nabbing the reputation for 'most prestigious' women's race given the effort put into Yorkshire and the Women's Tour, at least in terms of coverage. And that coverage is essential to make it worthwhile sponsoring teams.

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.

I completely disagree. Women's cycling needs teams to be run by people who are passionate about it, not those that are forced to as a type of taxation.

For women's cycling to thrive it needs to find it's own market (and I think it's there) rather than looking to the men.

I have sympathy with both views. If there were to be enforced buy-in then there'd have to be a quid pro quo in ensuring that media resources were dedicated to women's racing, to ensure that sponsors got their money's worth. Presumably that would mean packaging the rights with men's races.

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.

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'.

I'm not sure forcing WT teams to have a women's team could work - plenty of the lower ranked teams are run on a shoestring compared to the big teams already. That said, utilising the WT teams social media power is definitely the way forward. The Giro Rosa was on the Zoncolan the other day, while the TdF was meandering along a flat sprint stage, and the only way I knew about it was because Sunweb and a few others were tweeting about it. Women's cycling needs to borrow the reach.

On a side note, the Giro Rosa is the biggest women's stage race out there, wtf are they running it during the tour?

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.

bobmcstuff wrote:

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.

This is a fair challenge. I watched the first couple of stages then drifted away from it (seem to recall I had something going on at the time that didn't help, but have forgotten what) but do remember feeling that I didn't have anything to add to the thread, which probably left you ploughing a lonely furrow. I appreciated having someone taking the effort though.

I do try and boost women's cycling generally - I dropped a line directly to Will Fotheringham for the Guardian's coverage of TdY - but I'm not as invested in the sport as many here - I don't watch anywhere enough racing to really know about the men's scene properly, let alone the women.

bobmcstuff wrote:

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.

Same when I've started women's racing threads in previous years. I've really not had time to follow the classic events this year due to a change at work and I don't find the women's TOB that exciting although I did watch it on TV. I did go to watch the Giro Rosa again this year though.



Maybe a Women's UCI would be a good idea? As Rich said above I can't see women's cycling going anywhere with David "5 jobs" Lappartient in charge. The Route de France (aka women's TDF) couldn't run again this year.

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.