For its second season, the UCI Women’s WorldTour (WWT) adds four new races, expanding its calendar to 21 events and 47 days of racing. The additions include the six-day Boels Rental Ladies Tour in the Netherlands and the four-day Ladies Tour of Norway. The series also adds a full Ardennes week, with the Amstel Gold Race and Liège-Bastogne-Liège joining La Flèche Wallonne, giving the series a long awaited degree of parity with men’s racing.
Still, the UCI has a long way to go in its quest to build equality with the men’s WorldTour.
The UCI has delayed its attempt to require all women’s WorldTour teams to participate in every WWT race — a core component of the men’s WorldTour — until at least 2018. In fact, other than the new races and some scheduling changes, the series is largely unchanged from 2016.
“I think it’s a step in the right direction,” says Mari Holden, director of the U.S.-based Twenty20 team. “[The WWT] definitely brings more media attention to the women, which will drive sponsorship in the long run. I think the difficult part is, how do we get the teams to be able to survive this transition? There are only a few teams that can actually afford to be a WorldTour team.”
Ensuring that top teams attend all of the WWT races, as they do in the men’s WorldTour, is a fundamental challenge. The top 20 teams receive automatic invitations to WWT events, but they are not yet obligated to attend. Transporting riders, support staff, and equipment to 18 WWT races in Europe, two in the United States, and one in China is expensive, even for European teams. For the four top teams based in the U.S. — Cylance, Rally, UnitedHealthcare, and Sho-Air Twenty20 — the costs are staggering and tough to predict.
“It’s a little bit troubling that you don’t really know how much it would cost to be able to do the whole WorldTour,” Holden says. “What are they perceiving that our budgets should be in order to do this? How much help can we get from the races? What does this whole package look like?”
Costly though it may be, mandatory attendance is crucial for races to recoup costs. Organizers already pay WWT fees, minimum prize lists, and huge media fees. If the sport’s stars decline to show up, the race must invite composite squads or national teams. That can make for inconsistent, dangerous, or just plain boring racing. It also upsets sponsors and spectators.
WWT races outside of Europe face the biggest risk. Fifteen of the top 20 women’s teams in 2016 were European. It makes financial sense for these teams to skip events in China or the United States, since the added costs outweigh the marketing value for sponsors.
“I do think that the teams that choose to be part of the WWT should be obligated to send a minimum number of riders to all of the WWT races,” says Robin Morton, organizer of the WWT Philadelphia International Cycling Classic, which recently was cancelled due to lack of funding. “Teams should not be permitted to turn down a WWT race invitation and choose to race closer to home, wherever that may be, because the logistics and finances are easier or better.”
While mandatory participation would help non-European races, it could also make life difficult for top U.S. teams that only make brief forays to Europe. Modest budgets make riding a full WWT calendar while still racing in the U.S. all but impossible. Rachel Heal, director of the UnitedHealthcare team, hopes the UCI finds a compromise that works for both teams and races.
“I guess from a selfish viewpoint, as a U.S. team, we’d like to see that when the requirement is brought in, that it’s for a percentage [of races], and that there is a requirement to do some of the non-European races,” she says. “For us as a U.S. team, it’s expensive every time we go over to Europe, but it’s an expense we know we have to deal with. When the European teams have to come over here to race in the U.S., they’re not so used to that sort of expense. I think there’s naturally going to be some pushback.”
“Everyone’s struggling for the same reason: They don’t have enough money.”
How should the UCI motivate teams to participate in the full calendar? The governing body could, of course, threaten to relegate teams out of the series. But threats are of little use when many women’s teams are one financial blow from extinction. Instead, the UCI could dangle a proverbial carrot in front of the women’s teams. In men’s racing, access to the Tour de France is the driver behind WorldTour participation — teams will pay to race the full calendar if it means guaranteed access to cycling’s biggest stage.
Women’s racing, however, lacks that make- or-break event that would make globetrotting to China and the U.S. worth the price of admission. The UCI could try to build some of its existing races into this marquee event. This season’s complete Ardennes week and ASO’s willingness to stretch slightly farther on La Course are both options. Perhaps the best option is a true women’s Tour de France, even if it is only a week long, that would run concurrently with the men’s race. Such an event would draw the coverage, and therefore sponsors, needed to make a true WWT viable. So far though, that goal feels both like a throwback to the 1980s and impossibly far in the future.
Until that balance-tipping event emerges, the heavy price of worldwide travel on shoe-string budgets will stifle the UCI’s attempts to mimic its men’s WorldTour model in women’s racing. Race organizers and teams that VeloNews spoke to agreed that the UCI’s emphasis on media for the WWT is well placed, and ultimately the way forward for women’s racing.
“[Race organizers] are struggling to be a WorldTour race, we’re struggling to be a WorldTour team,” Holden says. “Everyone’s struggling for the same reason: They don’t have enough money. I do think the requirements of having the media is going to help.
It’s driving the interest, and that’s what’s eventually going to get more money.”
To date, the media requirements are the best-defined aspect of the WWT. The UCI mandates that WWT races live broadcast or livestream their races, or provide footage for a UCI-produced highlights show. Each WWT race must have a website in French and/or English, as well as a Facebook page and a Twitter account providing live updates during racing. The UCI has stepped in to provide additional content and dissemination through its own channels, and reports that over 50 percent of last season’s races were broadcast live.
The increased exposure will help teams and races build a quantifiable media profile necessary to secure the sponsor funding that will let the WWT continue to progress, ideally towards other provisions of the men’s WorldTour, like a minimum wage. And of course, the extra racing coverage will also bring what’s needed most: fans.
“I think right now we’re — not we, but the media — is doing a good job of getting our personal stories out,” says Megan Guarnier (Boels-Dolmans), winner of the first WWT title. “But until people can read about the athlete and then watch the athlete in action, there’s only so much interest they can have. Because they can like you as a person, but unless they can watch you do your thing, watch you play that chess game, there’s nothing to keep them engaged and interested in it.”
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