Page 2 | Apparently, women aren't allowed to enter the Tour de France.

MirandaGoshawk · 2019-03-17T21:21:15+00:00

My immediate thought was why the hell not, in this day and age. My second thought was that if it was a women's race I'd be pretty pissed off if it was opened to all and blokes kept winning. Thoughts?

Unescorted · 17/03/2019 21:55

Katy there was - it is one that the men's team send their second rank riders to and the women's teams send their best. Just because the prize money for men & women is not that different. There are many more races for the men's team to choose from on the calendar.

KatyMac · 17/03/2019 21:55

I think that's appallingly bad organisation and quite insulting!

And would not have happened if the men had gone second!

LarryGreysonsDoor · 17/03/2019 21:55

I’ve never understood why darts and snooker is segregated by sex. Is it because women can’t drink as many pints?

I heard about the women’s snooker champion who is doing a tour with a male player, Jimmy White I think, and she wasn’t allowed in some of the snooker halls because she’s female.

Unescorted · 17/03/2019 21:56

Normally they do. It is an honour in cycling to be the last starter. they should have left more of a gap.

ILuvBirdsEye · 17/03/2019 21:58

I remember that on the news too KatyMac
Shocking but no longer surprising.

Neighneigh · 17/03/2019 22:00

@katymac yes there was a ten minute gap between the men's Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and the women's. The mens race is longer so tbh they tend to not really go for it in the first 30km too much. The women's race was shorter, as women's races are (there are regulations on the length of one day and stage races) so the women tend to race full pelt from the off. One rider broke away and managed to a) get a decent gap between her chasers and b) caught sight of the mens race. So rather bizarrely the women were halted for a few minutes I believe.

And no, women can't enter the tdf. Nor can individuals, as pp have said. It's a professional bike race for professional teams. There are calls for women to race each stage on the morning of the same day but logistically this is a nightmare for organisers and prohibitively expensive - (think two rounds of police, TV crews, support cars etc etc). And to be fair it deserves to have its own major platform, not tag on to the men's event.

IStillMissBlockbuster · 17/03/2019 22:01

Cycling is really tactical so the fact that the women's race caught up with the men's doesn't mean much. The men's race was going really slow that day. Speed is only the most important factor in velodromes, and even then it's about beating your opponent, not necessarily cycling as fast as you can.

KatyMac · 17/03/2019 22:05

"Doesn't mean much" well to be honest it yet again means men are more important than women and that women are just allowed to tag along afterwards as long as it doesn't interfere with the much more important mens race

Unescorted · 17/03/2019 22:05

the men could have been slower than expected for a number of reasons - the wind direction with the shape of the peleton. If for any reason it became splintered it slows by about 20%. The women may have ridden in a bunch for longer. There may have been a crash in the men's race requiring it to be neutralised while they scraped skin off the road. The race leader may have had a wheel touched by a rider and his bike was damaged.... the whole peleton will sit up and wait for the race leader in those circumstances.

With having public road closures they like to keep the race as compact as possible.

Having said that good on the women for making the gap - it has earnt them a lot of kudos in the cycling community & has raised the profile. Maybe we will see a 3 week TdF for women as a result

2rebecca · 17/03/2019 22:06

Miranda is obviously not a cyclist if she thinks a female cyclist would have a hope of being selected for a Tour team. It's v competitive even for elite males.
Males are faster and stronger than females for various reasons which is why males shouldn't be allowed to identify as women for sports competitions as otherwise the women's teams would be composed of males too.
I agree that the women's tours are short in comparison which makes no sense when women are good at endurance events. I wonder if sponsors would fork out the money for a female tour though as women's sports are undertelevised, underwatched and under-reported and underfunded.

Unescorted · 17/03/2019 22:11

Katy - you are making an argument that does not exist. The women were set off last because it was the more important race on the day. It was an honour. Normally the women's race set's off first.

AssassinatedBeauty · 17/03/2019 22:12

The Tour is a men's event. It wouldn't make sense to have a women's team in the same race. It would make sense to have a women's tour, with the same level of organisation and financing.

However, it is a vicious circle in that people will say that it isn't popular enough and that women's events don't attract enough sponsorship etc. And so it goes on, unless someone is prepared to make a stand and promote the women's events. As an outsider, cycling seems a fairly sexist environment, so I doubt that there are enough male allies to really push for it.

KatyMac · 17/03/2019 22:13

Oh that's OK then, as long as they regularly stop the men if they catch up with the women I don't mind

somehow I don't think it happens that often

KatyMac · 17/03/2019 22:14

And even if the only reason it doesn't happen is because it is better organised my outrage still stands

Moralitym1n1 · 17/03/2019 22:15

@NicoAndTheNiners

I think they can drive farther as you use your whole body to drive and they're larger/longer/stronger on average.

Neighneigh · 17/03/2019 22:18

@katymac in this particular instance I think the women's race was the first of the UCI World tour for women of the 2019 season - it was an important race, women weren't there to "tag along", nobody who works in cycling (like I do) thinks that. On paper, it would have worked perfectly, as it does every year. However this year the men were particularly slow for several reasons and Nicole Hanselmann worked particularly hard to create a significant gap and break away.

There have been great strides made in the promotion and running of women's races across the world, particularly in the last five years, and change is coming. More races are being televised or live streamed, and more, new sponsors are coming on board. But people do honestly underestimate how much a race costs to put on, how much it costs to film and live stream to a quality that sponsors would need. There are an awful lot of people working very hard in cycling to make it better but it can't happen overnight

Unescorted · 17/03/2019 22:19

Races get stopped for all sorts of reasons - including catching up the race in front. Having to stop / sit up and wait is not that unusual for men's or women's races.

Level crossings splitting the race, cows, protests, crashes, catching up the race in front, car crashes, riders dying.... all reasons I know of

KatyMac · 17/03/2019 22:22

Well I Google "mens cycling race stopped because it caught up with women's" and after nine pages of Google saying that the women's race got stopped once I stopped looking

Original poster

MirandaGoshawk · 17/03/2019 22:26

No, I'm not a cyclist and am totally ignorant about sport. I posted on here because I was surprised to hear about a ban on women entering the TDF if they so desired. Thank you for educating me :)

OP posts:

deydododatdodontdeydo · 17/03/2019 22:27

Is it because women can’t drink as many pints?

They haven't been allowed to drink in snooker since the 80s. Darts the same I think.
There was a darts player who entered the male PDC circuit. Anastasia Dobromyslova was the top ranked female, and current women's champion.
She did ok, it took her a while to win her first match (although she won qualifying matches), and she beat a guy who later won the world championship twice.

LarryGreysonsDoor · 17/03/2019 23:03

What? They don’t drink? You’ll be telling me they aren’t allowed to smoke next.

deydododatdodontdeydo · 18/03/2019 06:42

Nope, it's indoors .
It's not that long ago that they used to sell cigarettes inside the Crucible, and the place was a thick fog of smoke.
Not any more.

Horsewithnopatience · 18/03/2019 08:38

Thoughts?

Okay then, my thoughts are that even if the race was opened up to include women it'd be a nice gesture but wouldn't make a blind bit of difference - ie. no women would ever win. Like if the women were racing against men in a marathon. What would be the point?

That's why we segregate by sex, duh...

I really can't work out what the OP is saying other than "bloody French do they hate women or what"..

And yes, I have heard of Doc McKinnon but the only connection there is bikes.

andyoldlabour · 18/03/2019 09:33

The UK Women's Tour is a 6 stage race in June this year.

www.cyclingweekly.com/news/racing/the-womens-tour-311559

hackmum · 18/03/2019 09:45

Okay then, my thoughts are that even if the race was opened up to include women it'd be a nice gesture but wouldn't make a blind bit of difference - ie. no women would ever win. Like if the women were racing against men in a marathon. What would be the point?

No, it wouldn't work like that. Take the London marathon - or any number of marathons. It is open to women, but although the women and men run concurrently, it is treated as if there are two separate races, the men's and women's. It's perfectly possible to do the same with the Tour de France, but they choose not to.