Women's Tour de France?

by dwilson on Jun 19, 2008 10:42 AM EDT Comment 16 comments

La Grande Boucle Feminine Internationale (GBFI)… I know that women's pro cycling barely gets a mention here, but I'm surprised that no one has even mentioned the woman’s Tour de France that started on Tuesday in Gent . For anyone interested, www.cyclingfans.com has a great story about the event including some pretty “racy” (pardon the pun) publicity stunts the organizers (ASO) have used in the past to get the race noticed. LOL!

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It would be great if C.TV covered the womens races too!

I can’t imagine the broadcast rights costing anything, and I am sure more people then just me would love to watch the ladies go all out.

by Ryan_Liles on Jun 19, 2008 11:52 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

si

the elite womens races rock. i’ve seen the womens road worlds the past few years and it’s a really fab race – often better than the men. the classics would be supah cool to have footage. i’m not sure they even film them, actually, european teevee doesn’t show anything, at least.

by gavia on Jun 19, 2008 6:15 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

+1 - I would love to see the women's Spring Classics.

A bicycle ride is a flight from sadness. -James E. Starrs, "The Literary Cyclist" (1997)

by Ruthann on Jun 19, 2008 12:53 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Wasn' t there some dispute

a few years back that led to two different races claiming to be the real womens’ Tour. As a result they both ended up with half the riders and half the sponsors each, but neither race was particularly good.

+1 on the Spring Classics. And as most races are run on the same course and the same day it can’t be that much more expensive to get cameras on both races.

by Monty. on Jun 19, 2008 1:02 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Interesting about the two races...

...according to the article on cyclingfans.com, the race was known as ” Le Tour de France Feminin” until 1992. Could that have been there was the despute?

I agree about the spring classics. It would be great to give the women some well deserved attention by having cycling.tv or others show their races. Think about how little money some of the men in the peloton get paid, can you imagine how little the women get???

Diane

by dwilson on Jun 19, 2008 1:32 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Le Tour Feminin

From Wikipedia:

The organizers had to scramble for sponsorship money nearly every year and were forced to schedule the individual stages in those cities which contributed sponsorship money, regardless of their geographical location. As a result, there were often very long auto transfers between the finish of one stage and the start of the next stage – sometimes involving several hours driving after a long, hard day of racing.

Another problem which cropped up in the mid-1990s involved the name of the race itself. Until 1997, the race took place under the name Tour Cycliste Féminin (TCF), when the race was billed as the “Women’s Tour de France”, or just the Women’s Tour, patterned after the (men’s) Tour de France which was known as Le Tour. The organizing committee of that latter race objected on trademark grounds to the use of the word “Tour” or the billing of the women’s event as a women’s Tour de France and in 1998 the TCF organizers changed the name.
Official website!
I’m going to start posting results in the sidebar.

"If writing too much about the Classics is wrong, I don't want to be right."

by Chris... on Jun 19, 2008 1:39 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Wikipedia seems to be wrong

Googled it and the term “Tour Cycliste Feminin” seems to usually refer to another race altogether. More hits found for Tour de France Feminin which seems to usually refer to the old women’s Tour.

by dwilson on Jun 19, 2008 2:33 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

then fix it ;)

Hit Wikipedia’s edit button and do it some justice. :)

-Greg

by gregm on Jun 19, 2008 3:16 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

That sounds like

what I was half remembering. Losing the right to call itself “Tour” made it harder to raise sponsorship which has in turn pretty much killed off the race.

And I don’t expect that there will be a lot of footage knocking around. That daily segment on Sport+ is only 15 minutes long, so once you knock off the credits, music, presenters, podium, replays etc. there ain’t a lot of time left. Still it has to be better than that Belgian race earlier this year (was it the women’s RVV?) which showed absolutely everything that a single camera stuck on the finishing line could capture.

But things could be improving in the future. During the non-racing coverage of the Giro, RAI made a big effort to showcase the women’s races. They usually had one of the top domestic women on the morning programme every day previewing the course on a trainer, and would ask them about their racing programme. We’ll just have to see how it develops.

by Monty. on Jun 19, 2008 3:11 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Not always meaningful to make comparisons

between men’s and women’s races. Both the womens Giro and the Tour de l’Aude are bigger races than the GBFI. Just look at the startlist and you will find most of the big names missing, Team Columbia/High Road aren’t even there.

by Jens on Jun 19, 2008 2:00 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

May be bigger today

but they don’t enjoy the prestige of the past women’s Tours.

I think we can assume teams are going where the money is.

Ultimately a race should be judged by who it counts as past winners and the women’s Tours win hands down.

by Toyota on Jun 19, 2008 3:13 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

and who's winning?

lol, you can’t tease me like this. i was expecting some race blah blah. i think actually ziliute is winning, with cooke not far behind, but i could be wrong.

me, i haven’t written anything because i haven’t stumbled across any interesting coverage worth passing along. admittedly, i haven’t had time to dig too deeply for it. i was planning to write a post or two on the giro – it starts in july – because i know it will be easy to find info in the italian press and on some of the forums there. tour de l’aude is also usually easy to follow – and if i have the time i’ll try to write something there too. unless someone else does it first :-)

here’s the official webby for la grand boucle fem. the final stage ends on the sestriere in italy. someone on a french-language forum (i was there looking for some infos) was complaining that the race is pretty anonymous. and quite honestly, they’re right.

by gavia on Jun 19, 2008 6:23 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

okay

quicky from the italian press. no time to trans all. but ziliute has won three straight stages. also, tomorrow is a time trial of 39.9 km from Chalain a Clairvaux les Lacs. loes markerink of the netherlands is 14 seconds back on the lithuanian.

basically, so far ziliute is killing everyone.

by gavia on Jun 19, 2008 6:26 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs