Women's Tour (UK)

[fd3]

My only experience of watching women's cycling is the "Women's Tour" on ITV4*.  Sadly, it's not very good, but I don't really understand why.
In lots of sports there is a difference in skill levels and pace between men and women's sports - based on more money for men, therefore more likely to be full-time and therefore higher fitness and skill levels.
But in cycle racing I would have thought that this would even out, and you would still get attacks, breakaways, riders cracking in the mountains, etc.
Is it that simply the Women's Tour has (in the years I watched it) selected a number of very boring stages (almost all sprint finish)?

And why can't they get a decent commentator team in?

*also one stage "La Course" and the two stage version, which did feature a hill climb but it was a grid start which I don't think worked.

[LittleWheelsandBig]

First answer is ‘yes’. Second is ‘money’.

[DuncanM]

If you look at the reporting from the Giro Donna, you can hear about attacks, breaks, riders cracking in the mountains and so on. Sadly, you can't watch it because there was almost no TV coverage. The Women's Tour has had some of that in the past (remember the year Kasia Niewiadoma won after a solo breakaway on day 1 got her 2 minutes?), and there have been one or two hilltop finishes with cracking racing ( https://www.womenstour.co.uk/kasia-niewiadoma-wins-first-ever-ovo-energy-womens-tour-hill-top-finish/ ), but the majority of the stages aren't hard enough, and so it tends to be a race where the teams can hold it together for a sprint most days. These exist in on the men's side too (eg Belgian Tour), but they don't receive as much attention because they don't rank as highly in the season.

The TV coverage is among the best for women's World tour racing, but I agree about the commentators.  I suspect it's hard though - typically the men's races tend to be done by a select few ex-pro racers, and I don't think there's enough work covering women's racing for ex-pro women to be able to make a career behind the mike (and very few of them have made enough money during their career to do it as an occasional gig). Maybe the best avenue would be to commentate on both men's and women's races. I'd love to hear Nicole Cooke on analysis - everything I've read from her about racing has been enlightening.

[mrcharly-YHT]

Cookie for commentator!

[L CC]

Katey Bates does some commentating for the Australians.

[LittleWheelsandBig]

She was a smart rider in her day and I imagine her commentary would be good.

[MattH]

There is something different about women's racing. I'm not sure if it is that there are fewer races so (at a non-pro level) they have less experience and are less confident in taking risks to attack. It's noticeably less aggressive, less likely to splinter. When I'm riding them I expect it to pretty much stay together or maybe have a single small breakaway group, whereas the men will have riders up the road, maybe two or three sets of chasers, then the main bunch - and it'll be more dynamic, with people being chased down, coming back together, then breaking up again. A race information update that came over the radio on a recent women's event was on the lines of  "All together, they're riding like it's a family club run", which can be how many are mid-race. That's not to say it's worse - I enjoy riding the women's races - just noticeably different dynamics and tactics.

[Andrew Br]

I've often wondered if women's racing is less tactical (usually) than men's because of the shorter distances ? The men seem to race an extra 100km or so and that gives more scope for a breakaway to be allowed 10-15 minutes at times before it's hauled back in. I can't remember many women's breakaways of more than a few minutes; the only one that springs to mind was when van Vleuten* won the World Championship when it was in Yorkshire.
I don't know why women's races are shorter since, as I understand it, the performance difference between men and women reduces as endurance becomes more of a factor. I know that there was a great deal of disappointment** that the respective Olympic courses were so different although, I think, that was down to missing the climb up Mt. Fuji as much as anything.
I could hazard a guess that women's races are shorter due to the greater difficulty of "bathroom breaks" but I'd be speculating from a place of ignorance

*Here's hoping she wins gold tomorrow.
**Other expressions are available.

[yoav]

Women’s races are shorter because the UCI says they have to be.

However, that’s not the real problem. There is no doubt that the top women riders could complete longer races and even a three week Tour de France. But there are fewer women cycle racers than men so in order to get a enough riders, the spread of abilities has to be much wider than for men’s races. For example, most women’s races in the U.K. are open to 1,2,3,4 cats and juniors in order to get a field of reasonable size. If you had a women’s race the length and difficulty of a men’s world tour race, a handful of women would finish and the majority wouldn’t.

It’s a similar situation in men’s world championships and Olympic road races. Because these races are open to riders from all over the world, there is a huge range of abilities and most riders do not get to the finish. As seen earlier today, the finish was contested by a dozen or so top world tour riders, the rest were nowhere.

[Mr Larrington]

IIRC the men and women used the same course in Rio, save that the men did more laps of the main loop.

[MattH]

But there are fewer women cycle racers than men so in order to get a enough riders, the spread of abilities has to be much wider than for men’s races. For example, most women’s races in the U.K. are open to 1,2,3,4 cats and juniors in order to get a field of reasonable size. If you had a women’s race the length and difficulty of a men’s world tour race, a handful of women would finish and the majority wouldn’t.

That is an issue. In our region pre-covid it wasn't unusual for a women's race to be cancelled due to too few entrants and hence not financially viable to run. Sometimes they are run alongside men's races, which at least means getting officials there and hall hire etc. are covered.
But then, having races cancelled could lead to a bit of a death spiral - why enter a race, organise your life and family around it, train for it, only to have it cancelled. That must be demoralising and reduce the number of entrants.

Post covid it has been encouraging to see full, or close to full, fields on the women's events. I don't think I've seen a women's race with a reserve list before!

[DuncanM]

We seem to have moved from discussing The Women's Tour, to discussing women's racing, both at the pro level worldwide and the amateur level in the UK.

I reckon that at the pro level the racing is as attacking (or more so) than the equivalent race for the pro men, but the number of really strong teams (and riders) is much smaller. This (coupled with the smaller size of the teams) has a huge impact on race dynamics. The reduced number of races also means that the teams are more likely to be at full strength in any one race, so it feels like you often end up with the same group of favourites at the head of any of the really hard races.

I've not watched many amateur UK races at all, but the little I have seen seems to have more attacking on the men's side. I would suspect that's because the group is more consistent in ability, so there are more racers who feel like they can go off the front and win, but who might not be that fast in a sprint, and if the course isn't super hard, attacks are the only way to thin the bunch.  On the women's side, the disparity in ability means the fastest riders are able to win from a bunch, and so don't want to risk burning their matches in a break. This is just speculation (on both sides of the coin), so...

[giropaul]

There are a fair few good British women. However, most of them usually race in Europe, and one only sees them in Belgian and Netherlands results.

[fd3]

Seems counterintuitive to me that a shorter race would mean less breaks - I would have thought that a racer might back themselves to beat the pelican for 30 miles but not 130, so shorter races would have more breakaways.
(Shows what I know).

[DuncanM]

Seems counterintuitive to me that a shorter race would mean less breaks - I would have thought that a racer might back themselves to beat the pelican for 30 miles but not 130, so shorter races would have more breakaways.
(Shows what I know).

They might, but it also might mean that the peloton won't let them go. If you look at the attack at the start of the women's Olympic road race, you can see the main bunch just soft pedalling and letting them go up the road. They won't do that with 30km to go.