A Treatise on Developing International Women’s Racing

There has been considerable discussion recently on how to best develop and promote women’s cycling at the international level.  Because I have absolutely no lever to affect actual change, I’ve decided to write a series of blog posts about it.

Obviously the first step is to have healthy grass roots and junior programs at the local level to feed into the national scene.  In my own backyard there are groups trying to do just this: the Ottawa Bicycle Club is one example of a great junior program trying to engage young girls.  And the Stevens p/b the Cyclery Team I’m involved with is a fantastic women’s team trying to bridge the gap from the junior and provincial ranks to the North American level.

However that’s not where I’m going to focus my attention on.  I’m going to look at the top elite racing scene.  Because oddly enough, I’m kind of an expert on women’s racing, albeit a self declared one.

I don’t declare it lightly.  I have followed it on a daily basis at a provincial, national and international level with a possibly obsessively compulsive level of interest for over a decade. I have DS’d teams at World Cup and UCI events, and have watched literally hundreds of women’s races from the local to NRC level.

Now I want to put forth the disclaimer that my experiences are someone mitigated by the obvious fact that I’m a dude (astute readers will have already noticed this).

I don’t claim to understand all of the adversities and double standards that women racers live with.  But I do claim to have witnessed most of them.

So if you can forgive a guy going on about what he thinks needs to be done to promote girls racing bikes we’ll begin.

1) The Structure of Women’s Pro Teams

One argument that is often put forth is that the women’s infrastructure should simply be grafted onto the men’s – both in terms of team and racing.  This idea certainly has some real benefits, but it also brings with it shortcomings. Let’s discuss the team aspect first and revisit the racing component at a later date.

Just look how well these Canuck teamates were getting along in 2003!

Actually this picture is kinda creepy. Manon wins in not having to give a dude a piggy back.

Joint Teams

There are big pluses to running a pro women’s team in conjunction with an established World Tour or Pro Continental Men’s program.  One of these is cost savings, the women’s team benefits from access to vehicles, team bases and facilities and behind the scenes staff that can all be shared amongst the team.  Additionally the women’s team benefits from being exposed to a more established professional environment in terms of expectations and behaviour- this was commented heavily by riders in interviews during the HTC team’s lifespan.

Also it is relatively cheap to do so in terms of a big team’s budget.  For example the entire women’s Garmin program ran on less than the cost of the men’s team anti-doping program.  In recent days Willier has been tossed aside as the bike sponsor of the Lampre team because their current commitment of €1.5 million and 130 bikes annually was out bid by Merida.  For frame of reference a few years ago Canada’s only female UCI team operated on roughly a fifth of that amount of money and a tiny fraction of the material support.

HOWEVER- the catch is that history has shown over and over again, that if the men’s team encounters any kind of financial difficulty, that the women’s team is gutted to keep the men’s program afloat.  It happened with Garmin, it happened with the Autotrader.com women’s team which allegedly saw almost their entire budget injected into Mercury.

 Hey ladies, Jonathon called- yeah you need to give that money back.

The bottom line is that in the current environment a women’s program run in conjunction with a men’s team will not be the priority and is likely to suffer because of it.  That said I don’t know anything about the nuts and bolts of how the current Green Edge set up is run- maybe it is a sign that they are moving past this barrier and onto more equitable footing.

A Proposal for 3 Categories of UCI Women’s Team

Part of the biggest challenge facing women racers looking to take steps towards being full time professionalism is the massive uncertainty surrounding the current team structures.  At the moment there is one classification of Women’s UCI team- and this runs the spectrum from well run and funded operations like Green Edge and Specialized-Lululemon to what are essentially club teams that are just struggling to get riders on the start line for a full racing calendar.

This is muddied even further because some well run set ups (especially in North America) don’t register with the UCI.  Optum is an example of a team that is thriving without any UCI registration. (As a side benefit it means that riders on non UCI teams are free to race for their national federations at major UCI events).

There has been calls from some top riders that the UCI needs to mandate a minimum wage for women.  And one one hand this makes sense, and the best women in the world undoubtedly deserve that level of support and security.

But the truth is that this measure would bankrupt many (if not most) of the current UCI team set ups.  And while these teams may just be scrapping by and many are not paying their riders- they are still playing an important role in developing women’s cycling.  The UCI simply can’t adopt a measure that would force even more women out of the top level of the sport.

What is needed it a two tier set up- the lower level would essentially be the status quo.  All of the same standards and fees as imposed today.  Essentially it would function like the men’s Continental class of UCI team.

The higher tier would be akin to a World Tour level, and with it would come the minimum wage, as well as calendar incentives, and other organisational guarantees.  This second tier would give reassurance to the top women when they signed contracts that they would be paid a living wage and could expect a certain increased level of professionalism from the team.

Now you notice I have proposed 3 categories and only two tiers? The third category would be teams affiliated with major men’s teams (Pro-Continental or World Tour) and would functionally be the same as the higher tier I proposed earlier.  The difference would be solely to the organisation of the team. 

There must be some mechanism that would allow the UCI to show preference or give registration breaks to World Tour teams that had twinned men and women’s programs to create an incentive for having a women’s team.

The best one I have come up with is a ranking incentive.

The women’s team should count as a fixed number of UCI points towards the Mens team’s World Tour status.  This might make a lot of financial sense for some teams- as the cost of a big name rider is often more than the entire budgets of top female teams. 

Heck - it beats hiring and then firing an Iranian; which was Lotto’s strategy to get into the World Tour last year.