Ella Harris pictured during Women’s Elite Brabantse Pijl, 2021
Women’s Cycling Weekly: Issue 21
Amy Jones is back with the news of the week in women's cycling.
Amy Jones is back with the news of the week in women's cycling.
Happy Friday! Welcome to Women’s Cycling Weekly issue 21 🚴♀️
I don’t know about you but I was at a bit of a loss last weekend without any racing to watch, it didn’t help that the weather was uncharacteristically torrential 🌧️ here in Girona. In the absence of watching other people exert themselves some friends and I made a (veggie) Sunday roast (a big deal as a Brit living in Spain) — the jury is still out as to whether the copious glasses of red wine I consumed along with it were worth the groggy feeling (I won’t call it a hangover) the next day.
Anyway, thankfully the short-lived racing drought — and my ‘hangover’ — has come to an end and we’re back to regular programming (at least for the next week or two). Get the snacks in, the Ardennes are coming!
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Ruth Winder of Trek-Segafredo won Brabantse Pijl 1.1 by a gnat’s whisker and a Boss Bike Throw, leaving Demi Vollering of SD Worx in second after she celebrated what she thought was a victory. Elisa Balsamo of Valcar Travel and Service took third. If you missed the race you can catch up with highlights here.
Freewheeling is here again with a new segment (that IMO should become a thing) ‘cyclists in cars en route to the airport, this time featuring Abby in conversation with Tayler Wiles. Plus loads of other chat about racing and whatnot.
Not so much ‘names you should know’ as a whole race that flies in the face of the arbitrary limitations set for women’s cycling that we nowadays consider ‘normal’. Sure, we all know that the pro-women would be capable of riding longer distances over more stages, especially with the growing depth of the women’s peloton — but did you know that there used to be myriad races for women that took place over two weeks or more?
In this article, Isabel Best —author of the brilliant book Queens of Pain— details one of the toughest stage races ever contested by women, the Ore Ida. Held in Idaho and run by an ex-Marine, the race was so hard that the UCI refused to ratify it (not much has changed, then). While the piece centres around the Ore Ida it captures a moment in time where women’s cycling was thriving and begs the question of where we might be now had the trajectory continued. The race —and the others like it— lost sponsorship and UCI did as the UCI does and — for reasons known only to them — set a limit of six days for the women in multi-day races during the 2000s (the Giro Rosa being the only exception). As Isabel writes:
This crisis and its causes, from which women’s racing is only starting to recover, have never been adequately scrutinised. We talk of growing the women’s sport, but we should also talk about what’s been lost. And we might ask how it was possible that Messrs Verbruggen and McQuaid, in their roles as presidents of the UCI from 1991 to 2013, allowed such a flourishing scene to die out on their watch.
If the story itself hasn’t piqued your interest, then can I recommend reading it for the images alone?
More info on the race here.
The first ever all-female bike race in Iraq took place through the war-ravaged streets of Mosul this week. Thirty-five women took part in the event with the aim of changing attitudes in conservative Iraqi society about women and girls riding bicycles, as well as the need for regeneration in the area after damage from the war.
More images here.
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Have a great weekend.
Until next time,
Amy x