As we gear up for tomorrow’s bike clinic, I went on a specific hunt through my husband’s Velo News for women bike racers. THERE ARE WOMEN BIKE RACERS!! I’m annoyed. Women are so rarely even discussed in Velo News, it’s like they don’t exist. I went page by page and found 2 articles in (April 7th issue) one article on Dahle Flesja, Mountain Biker, and Emilie Fahlin, High Road’s youngest road racer. Invisibility of women in the magazines will not promote to the general public that racing bicycles is even a possibility. On any given Sunday, there are ten races for men and two races for women. Almost all of the mens races are PACKED with a minimum of 100 riders, the women’s races might have 100 racers total for both races. This is a nasty cycle: women underrepresented in magazines, lack of quality races for women, lack of even remotely equal prize money, as well lack of opportunity for women to start engaging in the sport of racing.
So, I’m annoyed, because of the TWO articles in the magazine regarding women, one of them is THIS. “Miss March High Road’s youngest rider is quickly becoming a household name” by Neal Rogers. Ugggggg. Emilie Fahlin “Miss March” is featured in the German Calender called Cyclopassion 2008.
So, what’s your opinion? How is this helping the sport? How many of you readers race bikes? How many know women who do? How many would try if given the opportunity?
5 responses so far ↓
1 Fitarella // May 31, 2008 at 5:59 pm
I don’t race (or ride really) but have always been fascinated by the sport. It wasn’t until reading this that I realized that I’ve only watched/seen all male races! crazy!
Are there women racing organizations? Are there active discussions among that community on how to make it better and get women’s racing out there? Why not a racing mag just for women?
2 Ron // May 31, 2008 at 9:31 pm
Same thoughts here.
Woman Cyclist : Not in Vogue?
Certainly, the media is not head over heels about female bike racers. Fact of the matter is that they do exist, for example the Vanderkitten’s cycling team.
There are so many world famous men’s races every year on the calender that just raving about one including teams,tactics, bikes,climbs etc takes pages. And remember that all those spring classics are packed together. If there were women’s classics along the same lines, it’d be nice. I don’t know if something like that exists. There are several more factors to consider but I think I may have covered some of it in my post.
3 Josh Gorman // Jun 1, 2008 at 3:02 am
Hey, make your husband take up cyclocross and have him pick up Embrocation Magazine (http://www.embrocationmagazine.com). Half of the articles were by or about women and it is one of the finest cycling publications you will find.
4 Ally in the trenches // Jun 5, 2008 at 3:28 am
[...] reference to my post “Where are the women at“, I posted a question to the Velo Bella boards asking for resources for women cyclists. The [...]
5 Ivy Luhrs // Jun 6, 2008 at 2:43 pm
I had raced around 19 years ago………..
But because of time & financial constraints and lack of support from my family I never got very far along. But since 2006 I’ve pretty much committed myself to racing. The sad fact is, like one poster mentioned, is that the media is certainly not head over heels in love with female bike racers. And the fact also is it hasn’t changed that much as long as I’ve been around the sport. It has gotten ’somewhat’ more media attention, but some of it I feel seems rather token which almost makes me feel like someone said in whatever office “That if we don’t put something up about women they are going to start complaining again”.
Someone mentioned if I had seen the recent “huge section” about women in Bicycling magazine, yes I did, and I thought it was very well done. But then there is the cynical side of me that is saying “I wonder how long it will be before we see something of the same caliber in said magazine again?”
It always seems token, brief, they do it to please us women who are in the minority as their readership is concerned. Next month it will be status quo you can bet.
Another poster mentioned…..It would be nice if women had their own classic races like the men do, well they have that in that they do ride shorter versions of a few of the classic races……
Omloop Het Volk >
http://www.cyclingnews.com/road.php?id=road/2008/mar08/hetvolkwomen08
Tour of Flanders >
http://www.cyclingnews.com/road/2007/apr07/rvv_w07/?id=results
La Fleche Wallone >
http://www.cyclingnews.com/road/2008/apr08/flechewallonne_w08/?id=results
Rhonde Van Drenth
http://www.cyclingnews.com/road.php?id=road/2008/apr08/novilondrenthe08
You get my point. But there are few women that know about these races unless you are at a very high level in racing, have the time to read your USA Cycling email thoroughly, live in Europe, or unless you find yourself lucky enough to be on team that does these events. So where is the coverage unless you know about looking them up online? The female competitors who ride these events are invisible to most women & men at least in the USA. I can’t comment on how it all pans out in Europe because I don’t live there. But I have a sneaking suspicion the coverage is probably better. The women that do these races are the cream of the crop and certainly are heroes in their own right, imho they deserve to be endowed with all the things men benefit from in publications & media and financially.
I don’t know how I feel about the cheesecake photo of Emillie Fahlin. I’m one that finds the human body a work of art and photos like that don’t always upset me as long as they are tastefully done. I know that over in Europe you can find similar pictures of male racers in some of the cycling publications. I’ve seen them on different websites & European MySpace profiles. I have to be honest and say given the chance if I had a great body I would go for doing a photo shoot like that as well as long as I was properly compensated for it. So do I think a photo like Emillie’s is good for cycling or female cyclists, well, yes and no, but everything about our existence in this life unfortunately is to grow up, make money and contribute to society.
So you do what you have to in order to make a living. Mario Cipollini did some interesting photo shoots for Northwave in his career so I don’t look at it as exploitation. Emillie is just in a Bikini and Cycling shoes. I’ve seen nude photos of Cipollini and Lance Armstrong. All I see when I look as these pictures is someone who is proud of their body after all the hard work they have put into cycling.
The photo question I’m really going leave up to each individual and their own moral concerns.
The bottom line is, If you want to see more women participating in racing……”Show me the money”…..The glory of winning a race is short lived otherwise.
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