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I don't know. It's just sport. Maybe no sports people should have a minimum wage and we should increase the min. wage for nurses and teachers and software engineers and stuff.
Maybe we should, but I can't see that happening any time soon, so how about the UCI not treating women like funny little pet creatures instead of professional athletes?
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Minimum wage is treating professional athletes as "funny little pet creatures"; they aren't worth that money individually, but our show would be diminished if they left to get proper jobs, so we'll cut the pay of the stars to make the show better. It's exactly like Equity rates for the chorus. It probably has to be that way, because without supporting actors the show would be shit, but the end point of that kind of thinking is US-style franchise sports, where the League operates as a cartel, dictating the terms on which players are engaged, and even to a large extent which players can go to which teams by the use of the draft.
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Minimum wage is treating professional athletes as "funny little pet creatures"; they aren't worth that money individually, but our show would be diminished if they left to get proper jobs, so we'll cut the pay of the stars to make the show better.
Or just not bother to guarantee that some of them get any minimum amount of money at all.
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...seeing as I can't get sponsorship from Omega Pharma Quickstep to sit around wanking myself silly all day every day I have to stick to the day job.
You've clearly not trained hard enough, nor developed your talents to their peak.
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I'm really surprised to read here that the Tour was a success commercially,
it never was on its own,
relying heavily on newspapers when they were influential and very profitable.Nowadays the Tour is a franchise indirectly subsidized to the hilt,
with a 20% margin after tax.
I bet running a female race would dent their profits.If only pro cycling wasn't a white heterosexual male only affair.
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Why do MTBers and BMXers earn less than road racers?
I think at the peak of their respective initial booms, top riders in both classes were out-earning road racers. Huge earnings for roadies are a relatively recent thing. Going back even further, track was the discipline for the avaricious. Notwithstanding that, it seems natural that road racing should rise to the top, since it is the sporting discipline with the greatest connection to what the vast majority of cyclists do, i.e. ride on paved roads from one place to another. Every commutenger can relate to it, which is not the case with MTB or BMX or even track for most non-competitive cyclists.
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I'm really surprised to read here that the Tour was a success commercially,
it never was on its own,
relying heavily on newspapers when they were influential and very profitable.It was a success insofar as it promoted increased newspaper sales; road cycling is not much of a saleable good in its own right, but it is an attraction which can draw attention to advertisements for unrelated goods and services.
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If only pro cycling wasn't a white heterosexual male only affair.
You're right, nobody black¹, or female², or queer³, has ever been a professional cyclist.
Except...
¹ Ever heard of Marshall "Major" Taylor? Cycling had black global superstars way before it was cool
² Far too many to list, not sure who was first but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marguerite_Wilson turned pro before the war so you should have heard about it by now
³ Graeme Obree, Judith Arndt, and doubtless many others -
OK, let's take this at face value and see where we get:
Women should be on the starting line of the 101st Tour de France in 2014
Clearly the idea that they will actually be on the same starting line at the same time as the real race is laughable. If we send them off on the same parcours on the same day, as has been mooted, we're looking at a start time about two to three hours ahead of the men to ensure that the women's autobus is out of the showers before the leading men get there. Out on the road, this might work; punters who have the whole day free get a matinee show, then have time to eat their picnics before the main event comes past. On television, not so much. The trend, no doubt demand driven, is for more extensive coverage of the race, so the women would have to be on their own channel. Not technically difficult, but really who is going to switch over from the exciting last 50km of the Open event to see the finish of the support race? And that will be the peak viewing; a few hardy souls will catch the first hour of the women's race before switching to the men, but I suspect that precious few will stick with it up against the competition on the other side. Just in terms of viewer-hours, I can't see the women getting more than 25% of what the men get if they are broadcast concurrently, it could easily be much, much less.
As a sporting proposition, making the women ride the same course on the same day is perfect if you want equality (the same equality which already exists in most professional marathon running races) - and we can make women play 5-set tennis and drive off the proper tees while we're at it. As a commercial proposition aimed at making as much money for the women as the men get, it looks like a non-starter. This is why I think it's a misguided initiative, and that novel thinking is required to put women's road racing as a spectacle in competition with anything but Open road racing. Most cycling fans will switch over from pretty much any other sports coverage to pretty much any kind of cycling, but there's no way they're going to miss a single minute of the Tour de France to watch a pale imitation of it.
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You're right, nobody black¹, or female², or queer³, has ever been a professional cyclist.
Except...
¹ Ever heard of Marshall "Major" Taylor? Cycling had black global superstars way before it was cool
² Far too many to list, not sure who was first but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marguerite_Wilson turned pro before the war so you should have heard about it by now
³ Graeme Obree, Judith Arndt, and doubtless many othersThe athletes you mention are exceptions,
each time I think of Marshall Taylor I wonder how he made it.Please look at the line up of pro teams,
they do not reflect the diversity of our socities.
The most numerous ghosts in the picture are female.
Let's put them back in the picture. -
they do not reflect the diversity of our socities.
They reflect the diversity of people who are both willing and able to ride at that level. The fact that those people are not just admitted, but welcomed and adored, in the cycling family should tell anybody with lingering concerns about meeting prejudice that cycling is at least as open to everybody as any occupation.
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Graeme Obree isnt black
He's not female either. What's your point?
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each time I think of Marshall Taylor I wonder how he made it
He made it by leaving his aggressively racist home nation and proving himself on the bike, cycling fans only care about what you can do on a bike.
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I see the petition has reached 70,000
'tis a shame the 70,000 can't sign a bloody petition for safer roads so women could ride in the first place, rather than a bike race in France.
note: I see the Tour de France every year in France and I would like to see a women's Tour as I like female wobbly bits on bikes.
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Not happening then.......does sound reasonably complex the whole, organising a tour thing...
http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/prudhomme-dismisses-calls-for-a-parallel-womens-tour-de-france
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Why on earth have I been nerged and called ridiculous for something I said in this thread? So childish.
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Signed and shared.
FYI to whoever said men and women do not compete in sports together. I know it's not the same but men and women compete together in hardcourt bike polo. It is a contact sport. There were several women in the top ten teams at the UK Champs this year and female players bossed male players in the European Champs. Not that it matters in a sport as open as ours but we have resisted segregation from the very beginning and yes speed and physicality do affect the game, very much so.
For this? What a twat, whoever they are. This is an interesting, well-informed post. Especially for someone like me[I][/I] who doesn't know much about polo. Repped.
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About
Women in the Tour de France
Posted by
@Bobbo
It'd be nice if female professional cyclists also had some kind of minimum wage. You know, like the men do.