Amongst the commentary on the Tour de France, Emma MacDonald has used the opportunity to draw out a theme that appears periodically in the press - why aren’t there women competing some particular elite sporting event, in this case the tour?
“Women do not get a fair shake in our industry and this has got to change,” Jet Tanner, owner of JET Cycling, told the US Women’s Cycling Challenge in May. Notwithstanding the obvious physical advantage many men have over women, shouldn’t a world proud of its equal rights allow women to try out for any event if they want to?
Doesn’t anyone wonder how far women could go, since, according to cycling.com, “experienced female riders have been known to kick the backsides of good male racers”. This month a female cycling team — the BRADAGirls — competed for the first time against men in the gruelling one-week Tour of Jamaica, all hardened road racers who have won the respect of their male counterparts.
MacDonald has something of a point on some of her other examples; in the world of American motor racing, Danica Patrick is a solid competitor at the highest level, though not a world-beater. But the idea that elite female cyclists just need the chance to compete against men is a nonsense, as a bit of hard data will show. They do so regularly, and the gap is very considerable.
The Mount Baw Baw Classic is probably the toughest cycling climb in Australia. While there’s no pro teams on the race, it does attract many of Australia’s best amateur cyclists. Simon Gerrans won the race in 2003, for instance, just before turning professional; you might have seen him winning a mountain stage of the Tour de France recently. The women’s field is also high-quality. Last year’s women’s winner, Peta Mullens, is on the AIS cycling team. While these things are never perfect, we’ve got very good cyclists of roughly similar relative standing competing over an identical (and very tough) course at the same time. So what kind of gap separates the male and female competitors? Quite a lot, actually. The men’s overall winner, Peter McDonald, completed the ride in 3 hours, ten minutes, and twenty seconds. Mullens took 3 hours, 56 minutes, and 50 seconds.
None of this means to imply that Mullens, or any other elite female cyclist, isn’t a superb athlete. Furthermore, her capabilities are so far beyond the average bloke (read - me) it’s not funny. But the idea that with the push of competing against men (which she’s clearly already doing) that she, or any other female cyclist, will be making the world’s best male cyclists’ life difficult up the Alpe d’Huez any time soon is just not going to happen. Indeed, the gap is sufficient that she’d be eliminated on the mountain stages for not going fast enough to beat the cutoff time.
From this bloke’s perspective, Emma MacDonald’s argument completely misses the point about elite female sport. Competing directly against male athletes would completely distract from the effort, determination, and amazing skills elite female athletes bring to their respective sports. I appreciate Serena Williams for the athleticism she’s brought to women’s tennis. I admire Lauren Jackson for her determination, Layne Beachley for her sublime balance, Nikki Hudson for her uncanny goal sense, Cathy Freeman for coping with the weight of a nation, and the Australian netball team for the incredible fierceness of their rivalry with New Zealand. Sporting organizations, governments, and media organization, should be seeking to help women athletes get equal recognition for the above, and the dozens of other great stories of elite women’s sport. Not go chasing after utterly counterproductive windmills.
Na, its too easy to detect added steroids in women riders - they’ll never be able to compete at the top level of cycling.
Yep, sure they cannot compete with the men physically and it’s the wrong question. Gymnastics anyone? Now that’s some lady toughness!
Not golf though, even for men it’s not a real sport.
And the women cyclists? Yep, just as tough as the men.
For the record there used to be a womens TdF of sorts, it has had a checkered history but is on the way back.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Grande_Boucle_F%C3%A9minine_Internationale
And there is a womens Giro d’Italia, recently completed and won by Fabiana Luperini.
http://www.cyclingnews.com/road/2008/jul08/womensgiro08/?id=results/womensgiro088
Women potentially faster over longer distances
There’s a series of articles there which explore issues like the depth of talent being accessed in women vs. men. Basically, if women had the same opportunities as men for sporting careers over the ultra-long distance events, they might have a slight advantage.
I think it would be very interesting to see a womens team entered at the TdF, especially if the last week included alpe d’huez. Most of the teams rely on riding in the bunch over the longer distances where their specialities aren’t required, which female athletes can do just as well as men. It’s a long mountain stage where endurance rather than power is important that I’d like to see a direct comparison before making such a judgment. Baw Baw is just one day, TdF is three weeks and you can see the effect it has even on elite male athletes like Evans.
Comfort stops could be a problem but so it is too for the men it seems to me. All that leg shaving to beat wind resistance would seem to be taken care of.
David Rubie @ 3: the post you link to doesn’t really argue that. It argues that if a particular man and a particular woman are doing the same times over shorter distances, that one woman will tend to beat that one man over longer distances. But that precondition does not exist for extremely high level men: women equal to the very top men over middle distances do not exist and therefore can’t beat them on the longer distances.
The inequality of opportunity point might be made elsewhere in the series, but doesn’t seem to be the focus of that post.
Luperini could probably get over the climbs better than most of the male sprinters. But she is so tiny she would find it very difficult to hold on to the peloton on the flat - especially if its windy.
The “Tour Feminine” was only about 10 days, (with shorter stages as well), that’s not the same as three weeks.
Some of our international women,(Woods, Carrigan etc) might be able to ride local A Grade events - but I am yet to actually see a woman ride A Grade. There is a big difference between A Grade and the TDF.
“A female cycling team”, sounds sound.