Anna van der Breggen will not, after all, defend the Amgen Tour of California empowered by SRAM title she won in controversial circumstances last year. Not only that, her Boels-Dolmans team will not even line up for the tenth event of the 2018 Women’s World Tour.
Citing calendar clashes and a lack of human resources, the Dutch powerhouse squad declined their invitation to take part. They’re not the only ones; of the top 15 World Tour-ranked squads Michelton-Scott, Cervélo-Bigla, Waowdeals, Cylance, FDJ Nouvelle Aquitaine Futuroscope, Hitec Products-Birk Sport, Team Virtu Cycling, BTC City Ljubljana and Alé Cipollini won’t be riding either. So, two-thirds of the world’s top-ranked teams won’t show up.
Boels-Dolmans stated that Lizzie Deignan’s hiatus as she prepares to have her first child has left them under-staffed, with only ten riders on the roster. There is also the calendar clash between California (17-19 May) and the rescheduled Emakumeen Bira in Spain (19-22 May).
Such an overlap between high-profile events highlights a fundamental weakness within women’s cycling today. Generally, the teams are not big enough or well enough resourced to handle competing programmes. If men’s teams occasionally struggle to fulfil commitments with 25 or 28 riders, then it is no surprise that a group of ten or twelve (with such back-room staff as can be employed) can’t be in two places at once.
The key challenges the women’s sport faces at the elite level relate to the need to grow the sport, but in as sustainable a manner as possible. Wage issues are most commonly cited, with half of ‘professionals’ making nowhere near a living wage. However, the UCI, the teams, the race organisers and the recently-constituted Cyclists Alliance have to face the fact that current resource levels don’t match ambitions; how can the World Tour truly be a ‘world tour’ if almost 70% of teams can’t or won’t travel to California, far less Australia? The Tour of Qatar had a different financial model which attracted a top field, but belts are tighter in 2018.
There is also the issue of the calendar. Right now, the sport can’t afford to have clashing events. So, if the organisers of Emakumeen Bira, one of the longest-running and most established races in Europe, have felt pressured to reschedule their event away from their traditional early June date (to avoid bumping up against the Women’s Tour), this creates knock-on effects. and races shift in the calendar, which sets off a chain reaction.
Thuringen Rundfahrt has also moved to a late May/early June slot, almost two months ahead of its traditional mid-July position which left it vulnerable to the Giro d’Italia Femminile and La Course in France.
Less often talked about is the pressure faced by race organisers to be part of the World Tour – races may get moved up to World Tour classification before they’re ready, or when they don’t necessarily want to make that leap. This means that a baptism of fire for younger, or amateur/semi-pro, riders if they are forced to jump in with the big guns rather than test themselves at a sensible level in regional or 2.2 category races.
Innovation, and well-planned, well-resourced new events, are vital, of course. But they have to fit a sensible and logical season-long plan. March and April are generally packed with races; May has an overlap of events, including a big prize pot at the Tour of Yorkshire. June has to fit in the (European) national championship races; July has the prestige of the Giro and La Course; August has the European championships for national teams to consider.
The logical slots to consider are early season – February in Setmana Valenciana, for example – and September/October. So, a carefully-planned expansion of the Madrid Challenge would work as world championship preparation.
There are three weeks between the world championships at the end of September and the currently-planned Tour of Guangxi. But, will teams and riders have the physical and financial energy to face an nine-month season?
[And where do you fit in a ‘proper’ women’s Tour de France?]