You are reading a single comment by @ioreka and its replies.
Click here to read the full conversation.
London Fixed Gear and Single-Speed is a community of predominantly fixed gear and single-speed cyclists in and around London, UK.
This site is supported almost exclusively by donations. Please consider donating a small amount regularly.
@ioreka
(apols for cross-posting)
despite oleg tinkov's delightful views on women in racing it'd be great to see more girls & women have the opportunity to race - youth girls is a total dearth where that's concerned. if you have a spare minute, could you sign this please?
note from the poster:
Hi all! I know that most of you this doesn't concern personally, but I'd like you to all listen up for a few seconds. As you may know, the British Cycling youth structure is incredible, with a huge range of local, regional, and national races throughout the year. Even better is that in recent years the female half of this structure has been improving too, not just with opportunites, but also with the quality and level of riding itself. Currently, there is a youth road national series which consists of seven races throughout the year at venues all around the country. This means that for girls aged 11-16, there's a multitude of nationals road races throughout the racing season. However, when it comes to junior, this opportunity completely disappears. There is a pretty impressive national series for junior boys, with several races around the country, many two or three day events and many on closed roads, however nothing for the girls. This has always struck me as odd, seeing as the girls race at national levels from 11 years of age, then as soon as they start becoming very serious, this opportunity stops. Now, you may be asking 'what has this to do with me?'. One thing that this lack of races does is that it drives many young girls out of the sport as they slowly lose interest without any races in their calendar for them specially. This therefore isolates senior women's racing as there is no solid bridge between the youth and senior sections for girls and women and in turn vastly reduces the number of women racing. Which, I know, is not what any of us want.
So if you have a spare second, please sign my friend's petition to create a national road series for junior girls. It may not seem to affect you personally, but in the long run could be the difference between having 7 women show up for a race and having 35 women show up for a race. Sorry that this was so long winded, you may be able to tell that this is something close to my heart. Thanks a lot everyone for your time, it's very muchly appreciated.
thank you!