ASO announces women's race in Paris on day of Tour de France finale

FUCKING YES <3

A good idea. I wonder how this is going to be covered on TV. A separate channel, or interruptions during the parade into Paris?

I enjoyed watching the women's race before the London stage of the Tour of Britain. Women's racing needs to stand up on its own feet and it would be nice if decent coverage of events like this made it worthwhile for sponsors to invest more in them.

Bugga,

I said I was not going to go back to Pairs having been there last year. Now the sods not only run the longer route on the Champs, but also late on and now have women racing as well.

Better start saving up!

Without wanting to sound sexist, I do think women's road racing to a point needs to take a step back. The biggest problem with women's road racing is what does it want? Parity, to be able to run as a seperate highlight event, without the publicity of the men's event. Or the publicity that goes with an existing men's event and to play second fiddle. At the moment , sad to say, it can not have both due to logistics, spectators time and cash.

When they held the National Championships in Glasgow last year I went to watch the women's race that took place before the mens.

The spectator numbers weren't as high but they missed some great racing by the likes of Armistead and the Trott sisters.

Women's racing is just as exciting as men's racing and needs this exposure.

Not just Eurosport though, have a look at mags like Procycling, etc. How many women's races do they cover? On this website or bikeradar, how many of the bikes and news is from the women's races?

I think there has to be better coverage full stop. Eurosport rarely, if ever, covers women's cycling but even more than that, I live near an annual stage race for women which brings in top teams and I barely know it's happening.

Organisers as well as the UCI need to get onto promoting it more and including it as part of TV packages with the mens races. So the ASO is in a position to force broadcasters to take a package of women's races along with their big races (the Tour, Roubaix, Paris Nice, Fleche etc). That alone would bring more sponsors to the table for the women and increase the sport's profile.

Quote:

Would be better if they rode several of the mountain stages first, at least that way the girls could get a taste of what it is like to ride onto the famous Champs Elysee knackered after 3 weeks of riding your legs off.

An alternate view could be that, given they won't be exhausted from 3 weeks racing, we will get a really exciting race rather than a procession with a sprint at the end. Women's racing tends to be more explosive anyway because of the shorter stages so it should be fun.

So a really exciting race and then Vos wins.

Would be better if they rode several of the mountain stages first, at least that way the girls could get a taste of what it is like to ride onto the famous Champs Elysee knackered after 3 weeks of riding your legs off. But it's a start a welcome start although it's a pity it's been chosen that they start at the end rather than the beginning.

I guess you were replying to my post in which case, why not start in the mornings? I'd imagine a shorter stage for the women's Tour, so how about timing it so the women finish as the men set off - all they do for the first few km's is chat amongst themselves anyway,
That way you have some interest in actually watching the first 2 hours of coverage.

As for any complications, isn't that what the organisers are paid to do? The secret to making these changes last is in designing a new system that incorporates the changes, not shoehorning it into the existing status quo. And it's about time women had an equal foothold.

Why can't we just have women's teams go round the same course the day before or even earlier in the same day that the men's tour passes through? It seems to work well enough for the Olympics and I can't imagine it'll cost much at all to do.

But it's only part of the battle. Will they show the event on TV? Ideally live, but at least decent length highlights at a sensible time.