Originally Posted by
ptempel
It may sound blasphemous, but why not have men and women racing together? I know and have read about women pros training with men and I think they can easily hold their own in the peloton. Just award the same jerseys to both men and women (lowest overall time, most points, best hill climber, best new pro, etc).
I would have no problem with that. However, I wonder how many women will be racing at the elite professional level. And those that will be racing professional, will they be the team leaders that get all the spotlights, or some of the secondary team members, "domestiques"?
I'd love to see a "Team Pink" that would sign up for a grand tour right alongside of the men. I'd hope they'd get some spotlight even if they weren't winning every stage.
There are likely quite a few women that could compete at cat 2/3/4 level alongside the men, but are they handicapped, in the sense that a woman racing at Cat 3 men's level might well be racing Cat 1, or even pro women's level?
Are there M/F Tandem races?
I think there are TT Team events where the whole team, or most of the team is required to cross the finish line. In which case, one could mandate mixed teams. The Grand Tours have a few of the team TT events scattered into the mix, but most are not in that format.
Originally Posted by
Maelochs
Re: Grands Tours
The issue is marketing. Someone has to pay those women, pay the teams … those are sponsors. And mixing the Tours might create more sponsorship but it might just be crazy confusion. And once the men caught up … where would the cameras go? On some stages, particularly climbing stages, there are so many groups of riders it is hard to follow already.
First of all, I think pros are a good way to prototype new equipment. Why not hire someone to ride 20K miles or more a year to test the new developments before they hit the market.
The Specialized Ruby, Specialized Dolce, and Trek WSD bikes may still be a large, relatively untapped market. What better thing to do than to market to the half of the world that everyone else is ignoring. In fact, I think the bike companies are having troubles propping up the prices on their new Carbon Fiber wonderbikes with so many used ones flooding the market, and well built women's bikes have a solid market niche.
Somehow we seem to be caught up with marketing the "racing bikes" to men, and the "beach cruisers" to women.
