A TREATISE ON DEVELOPING INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S RACING: PART 2

Having talked about re-structuring women’s pro teams yesterday, I’m going to take a sharp right hander today and talk about the single thing that drives me the most bonkers when people discuss promoting women’s cycling. And by “promote” they mean try and tart it up.

This is the same sort of logic that has led the head of FIFA to call for skimpier outfits in Women’s soccer, rather than say, refs that can call handballs correctly.

 

2) Don’t Bring Sexy Back.  Leave Sexy Alone

Philippe Gilbert is not sexy; he does not need to be. No one expects him to be.  They just expect him to smash fields under his heel in major one day races. (Disclaimer: If you have a pirate fetish Gilbert might turn your crank)

  Similarly no one says “Hey Mark Renshaw - you know how you can get over the whole ‘can’t sprint for yourself’ career hurdle? Turn up the dial on your sex appeal!”

I stand corrected. In that helmet, the dial is already at 11.

Yet when people talk about promoting women’s cycling there is always a demographic that jumps up and down with their hands in the air talking about capitalizing on women athlete’s feminine wiles.  They may mean well, but what they are proposing is a recipe to undermine the sport. So to those people I say:

Please put your hands down and sit in your chair.

When you try and market sex appeal first and foremost you any gains in exposure and sponsorship dollars come at the loss of long term credibility.   

And when you try to market a women’s team or the sport as a whole – you are going to face the exact same trade off.  Rock Racing tried- and not surprisingly their women’s team was taken even less serious than their men’s team (which they built with the more conventional formula of heaps of cash and dodgy foreign riders).  Not only is the broader industry and general public not really engaged with women’s cycling, no matter how hard you try and hot it up, but the best women rider’s have no interest in riding for a team where that is the marketing hook.

You need some sprinting skills to back up hair like that.

This isn’t to say that riders can’t be more marketable because of their looks- this is a reality of celebrity, and one riders like Boonen and Cippollini have traded rather heavily on in their careers.  Emma Johannson is a rider that balances being both blazing fast and a stone cold fox.  But she is first and foremost one of the best riders in the world.  That she is attractive is just an addendum, her ability stands on its own (Note: At this point my wedding ring began to glow a faint red colour and burn with an angry heat).

You don’t get the World Cup Leader’s jersey for being a hottie. Or even the novelty flower bouquet.

At the end of the day a rider like Ina Teutenberg might be just as marketable because she represents the opposite. One can admire her for the exact reasons one admires her male counterparts, she is simply an excellent bike racer.  She can win field-sprints, ride breakaways, and is the consummate team player. She is a brick solid-trucker cap wearing-mullet sporting-beer swilling-ass kicker. 

And that is way more awesome than a picture in Maxim.

note: In yesterday's post I failed to mention the Infinit Women's Team which is another great Ottawa region women's team working hard to promote the sport. Apologies for the oversight!