Women's Cyclocross Racing - An Appeal

*Posting this here on behalf of both my wife and my friend Lynn Bland who are trying to push British Cycling to do more to help develop cyclocross racing for women on a national level. They would appreciate any support, either from direct contact by women who race cyclocross or by any help in spreading the word to those that do.

This is as posted on facebook;*

Cyclo-cross ladies and men who might know cyclo-cross ladies...

Please take a read through the following two emails and make any comments you feel appropriate. We're trying to get a ladies' vets national champs up and running, possibly with Junior element to take away the ridiculous outcomes where only 10 riders are left in the race with a field of 35 starters.

It won't prevent plebby seniors like me (just) from getting pulled out but we hope it will encourage more vet women to enter the nationals every year.

If we raise the profile and entry numbers of the women's vets champs, then there would be grounds to prove that the crazy lap rules also prevent seniors from entering.

You can email Brian Furness with your own comments at: brianfurness@britishcycling.org.uk

From Lynn Bland to Brian Furness, head of Cyclocross at British Cycling

Hi Brian

Just thought I would contact you while all this is fresh in my mind.

Pretty disappointed about the way the ladies race unfolded yesterday. When only 1 veteran rider doesn’t get pulled out there is clearly a problem with the format of the race.

I realise that actually recognizing veteran women is a step forward from the first time I raced the nationals but at the moment it is a bit of a token gesture as the commissaries were totally oblivious to the veteran and junior element of the competition. I was stopped at the bottom of the hill before Nikki and Helen were even in sight and was made to wait there long enough for another 2 vet women to catch me up. I was then told that once they had gone through we could carry on and contest the sprint on the finish line. I could easily have lost my 3rd place.

Pulling us out when we are racing with 2 of the best riders in the world is the male equivalent to making the males vets race with Niels Albert and pulling them when he passed!

We have Helen Wyman commenting on how great Britain’s women are doing at cyclo cross and we have a national champs which is just putting a lot of them off competing at this level.

For me the solution would be a separate vets race, perhaps with juniors as well, and then recognise the U23 category in the main women’s race. If this was on Saturday any vets/juns who wanted to contest the main race could still do this as well. I imagine this would attract more vet riders as they wouldn’t need a silver licence to ride, they wouldn’t get pulled out and they wouldn’t feel intimidated and as if they were in the way. Also a lot of vet women come with vet men so they would race the same day. I imagine it would also be less intimidating for young riders coming up from the youth category.

Since racing doesn’t start until 11.30 on Saturday I imagine this would be possible before the V50 race. Alternatively could the junior and U23 men ride together since there weren’t many entries in these categories. This must surely be possible if women from 16 – 70 are expected to all race together. This would free some time to have the youth races early on Sunday leaving time on Saturday for vet women.

I could of course just retire gracefully from dong the national champs and accept that I am to slow! However having made several podium appearances over the years and really enjoyed the opportunity to race against women from other areas I think it would be a great shame if I and many other women felt unable to compete. It also seems pretty unfair that there are 5 separate men’s races. Of course there are massively more men racing but it will stay that way if the women’s race remains as it is.

It may be that there isn’t enough interest to warrant a separate vet/jun women’s race but I think it would be great if there was an opportunity to give it a try next year. I would certainly do my best to promote it and encourage as many women as possible to take part.

I must admit If it remains as it is I doubt I will bother entering next year, I was made to feel I was just getting in the way and £18 for 3 laps isn’t very good value for money!

It was a shame as I really enjoyed the weekend and the short time I spent racing. Much better than the grass track at Ipswich last year!

Regards

Lynn Bland

The response from Brian Furness

Dear Lynn, Marie

Thanks for your e-mails on this issue, which has been discussed by the Cyclo-Cross Commission on several occasions over the last 10 years or so, and it's a difficult one to resolve. It's an issue not unique to cyclo-cross, and despite your concerns, I reckon that there are more veteran women competing in cyclo-cross than in any other discipline, possibly even road. The problem is getting them to commit to being in the same place at the same time.

A bit of history: we established the first National Women's Championship in 1994. I think we were the first country to do so, although Holland may have been pretty close. We worked with Isla Rowntree to identify and encourage women riders to enter. we had about 40 entries but half of them didn't actually turn up. Nevertheless we continued to promote a National Women's Championship, and a few years later we added a Women's National Trophy. At some events, with a top ten prize list, the entry was down to single figures, however this has picked up in recent years and the numbers are now regularly between 20 and 30. That first initiative played no small part in persuading the UCI to agree to establish a World Championship for women, which they did in 2000.

However within that national entry is a wide range of ages and abilities, and the challenge is to cater for them all and still produce a meaningful race. In the wider scheme of things, participation in cyclo-cross continues to grow, and some venues struggle on with huge fields which are often beyond the capacity of the course to cope with. We've floated on several occasions the idea of dividing riders by ability categories, or suggesting that every cyclo-cross event does not necessarily need to cater for every age and category. However the roots and traditions are deep, and the feedback we get from the grass roots is that riders rather like being in the same race as Nick Craig or Paul Oldham, even if they are lapped on more than one occasion. We don't dictate how regional leagues manage their events but growing numbers suggest that they are going to have to tackle this at some stage.

Back to National events. 13 years ago we amalgamated the Youth and Veteran men's Championships with the Men's, Women's and Junior Men's Championships into a two day Championship weekend, and I think that all categories have benefited from this. We had occasional calls from Veteran men to split their events out into separate age-band races, but that simply wouldn't fit into the timetable, so the only way forward would have been to take the Vet races out of the Championship weekend and run them elsewhere. I think there was a general acceptance that the existing format was preferred.

We've listened to representations on how to encourage more veteran women over the years. But when we have agreed the riders have not responded, including, in more than one case, those riders who had put the proposals forward! For a number of Championships we split the start, and gridded the veteran women separately. However we had several veteran women who were competitive in the overall (Louise Robinson, Isla Rowntree, Louise Day) who wanted to be part of the same race so we agreed to move it back to the current format. We've also floated the idea that we run the Veteran Women behind the Vet 50+ Men I think that this year has brought the matter into focus again, as we had a tough course and two riders whose performance level has moved forward dramatically.

We are commited to promoting the Sunday races - those categories for which there are UCI World Championships - to UCI regulations, and will continue to do so. Lynn, with reference to your point of amalgamating existing categories, we can't run junior and U23 men together because they are separate categories and the races are on the UCI calendar under UCI regs. (We can run the U23s within the senior race, and have done so in the past, but the numbers are now higher). Likewise, we won't split off junior women from the women's race, or create a separate U23 women's category because both are eligible within the UCI women's category. Marianne Vos won the World Championships as a junior and Nicole Cooke was 6th for GB as a first year junior. You may not place too much weight upon UCI regs, but whatever you think of them, World Governing Bodies are there to define a sport. We can relax that at regional level, but if we don't adhere to this framework at national level then we don't have that progression pathway from grass roots to podium, and we cease to be a sport, but merely a pastime.

So it's down to critical mass. This year we had - off the top of my head - 180 Vet men and 7 Vet women. I'm sure you will argue that if we had a separate Vet women race then the numbers would be higher. I'm equally sure that's right, but would it reach critical mass and make for a meaningful race, and is there time within the weekend to run it? We already start at 11:00 am on the Saturday, and are looking at bringing this forward to 10:30 am to stretch the gaps between races, as the current timetable makes the transitions for processing results and medal ceremonies very tight. We also have to leave slots for all riders to train on the course. Would you want a seperate Vet women's race run as a separate wave within the Vet Men's 50+, or one of the Youth categories? Probably not.

I'm not sure what the solution is, but it needs a critical mass to make it viable. In 1993 we agreed to instigate the first Women's Championship if there was a minimum of 20 entries. If you can generate a minimum of 20 entries for a Vet women's race, then that would generate a good argument for change.

Regards

Brian Furness