Women’s bike racing has seen the peaks and the valleys.
There used to be a full women’s event for the Tour de France called the Tour Cycliste Féminin. That race shut down after the 2009 edition, following a larger trend in women’s racing during that time.
“When I started exiting a few years ago, it seemed like every season there were fewer and fewer races,” said Marisa Asplund, a local cyclist and triathlete. “There’s not many left at all.”
Asplund herself switched to triathlons from strictly bike racing primarily because of financial reasons.
“It’s hard to commit a life to that when you’re not being supported financially,” she said.
Their sport may be on the upswing, however.
The 2014 Tour of California featured two days of racing in May, including a circuit race around the California capitol building and a time trial in Folsom, California.
There was a women’s criterium in Aspen in conjunction with the 2012 USA Pro Challenge, and the 2013 USA Pro Challenge held a women’s crit in Fort Collins, though there are no plans to have a women’s race associated with this year’s Pro Challenge.
There also will be a women’s event coinciding with the final stage of the 2014 Tour de France in July called La Course, which will follow the same route of the men’s Tour’s mostly ceremonial circuitous stage into Paris.
And at this year’s Iron Horse Bicycle Classic, the men and women will split the $18,700 total purse equally.
“In the last 10, eight years, with the help of events like the Tour of California, the Pro Challenge, some of the other big events that run parallel women’s events, it’s really raised the profile of women’s racing,” said first-year Iron Horse Bicycle Classic race director Jeff Frost, who also has worked with the National Mountain Bike Series and the Sea Otter Classic in California. “As much as USA Cycling has done for racing on the road side in general and for women’s racing ... women’s racing has started organically on the grassroots level.”
Few places know that better than Durango.
Durango’s developmental program has been building youth cyclists for the last eight years. It currently has roughly 400 members, and half of them are female, Durango DEVO co-founder and program manager Sarah Tescher said.
“There’s more women than there ever have been,” she said of the program. “The best female junior cyclists come out of Durango. I think it has a lot to do with this community and how strong female cyclists live in this community and how we can have female coaches work with female athletes. It’s super empowering.”
There may be more women and some more exposure at big events, but the support isn’t where it has been or where it is in Europe.
“It’s been a really difficult push,” said Mike Engleman, the former USA Cycling women’s developmental director. “The quality of racing has been there; it’s just a matter of getting promoters to see the value.”
Engleman has been working with others to bring more international racing to the United States in the form of more International Cycling Union sponsored events.
“With women’s racing, you want the big names to come. I think sponsors are starting to go, ‘Well, hey, the racing’s good, and the big names are gonna come.’” Engleman said. “It’s not an us vs. them thing, and it’s been that in the past. Everybody’s starting to see the struggle.”
kgrabowski@durangoherald.com
