Freewheeling: Is women's professional cycle racing in a good place?

Demi Vollering wins Liege-Bastogne-Liege @GettySport

Phew, it's been breathtaking watching how the races have unfolded during this year's Spring Classics races - those tough one-day races in northern France, Belgium and the Netherlands over windswept, sometimes cobbled, sometimes undulating terrain, often in the rain. No one must be more out of breath than SD Worx rider Demi Vollering, who completed the Ardennes Classics triple in scintillating style by winning the Amstel Gold, Flèche-Wallone, and Liège-Bastogne-Liege - a feat last achieved by her mentor and team Sports Director, Anna van der Breggen in 2017.

As women's professional cycling continues to grow and more is being done to achieve parity with men's cycle racing, it is worth doing a stop and check, and asking if women's professional cycle racing really is in a good place?

Vive Le Tour de France Femmes

It has been great to see that sports event organiser Amaury Sports Organisation (ASO) continue to add to its sports portfolio by staging the Paris-Roubaix Femmes and a Tour de France Femmes. Last year's renaissance competition caught the eye of millions as the women raced around the streets of Paris on that hot Sunday afternoon during Stage 1 in the last week of July, right before the men raced the traditional finale. For many, it was an emotional day to see a women's peloton starting the stage race using the infrastructure of the iconic cycle race - something for which the likes of former professional cyclist Kathryn Bertine, and others including multiple World Champion Marianne Vos have campaigned for decades.

ASO were very happy with the viewing figures in France, with 20 million viewers on France 2 and France 3 free-to-air television channels across the whole race. There were on average 2.25 million viewers per day, making an audience share of 26.4%, and notably 5.1 million during the showdown between Vollering and Annemiek Van Vleuten on the final stage, on La Super Planche des Belles Filles. Across Europe 14 million viewers in seven countries tuned into fee-paying Eurosport. Naturally ratings were solid in the Netherlands with audience share of its national TV station, NOS being 45% as fans tuned in to watch their compatriot heroes race their way onto the podium and don the winning jerseys - Van Vleuten in yellow, Vollering in polka dots, Vos in green, and Shirin Van Anrooij in white. 

British hopes would normally have been placed on the top road racer, Lizzie Deignan, who won the inaugural Paris-Roubaix Femmes, but she was away on maternity leave. That will have impacted on viewing figures on this side of the English Channel.

Stage 1 of 2022 revived Tour de France Femmes

Meanwhile in France, crowds came out in force along the road sides for key stages in Paris, on the gravel roads into Bar-sur-Aube during Stage Four, and at the finale on the slopes of the Vosgian mountain passes. But even Tour Director, Marion Rousse said that there were questions to be asked around the lack of roadside spectators on other stages.

In some cycle races, local schools get the children to come out of their classrooms to watch the race, and make some noise. That generally makes for good viewing to see crowds of young, excited faces and their high pitched cheers ring out loudly as the television cameras pan through the town centres. But with the Tour de France Femmes being in late July, many schools are already closed for the holidays. 

Growth is in the eyeballs of the beholder

Very importantly, the number of eyeballs on a race is a key factor in the growth of any sport. It's important to have the viewing figures, and it also looks good for viewers when they watch images of competitors battling it out in front of enthusiastic crowds. 

While sports fans avidly watch their athletic heroes performing well, they also like the stories and the characters behind the sport - the professional who was just a weekend warrior barely a year previously; the outspoken activist; the rivalries - between teams or even within a team; the bad boy/girl; the athlete making a come-back following a serious injury or illness.

The highly successful Netflix Formula 1 docusoap Drive to Survive has consistently attracted the same comment - "I don't follow F1; I don't know anything about motorsport; but I am fascinated by the characters and the stories."

Personally, I think we need a bit of that in cycling, and particularly in women's professional cycling. Cycling fans marvel on social media over who they believe to be the GOAT (greatest of all time) - be it Marianne Vos or Annemiek Van Vleuten in the modern era, Beryl Burton from the vintage times, or Jeannie Longo if they want to go for a controversial choice. Whoever your don't want athletes who when they are interviewed are just a bit too.....I dare say, "ordinary"! Many of these athletes just talk about their racing, their calendar, their strategy, and they will have been media-prepped to not stray off that line. That's all well and good for the purist fan. But a sport cannot live on purists alone. There needs to be an extra dimension that can attract a wider audience and give a wow factor - or at least a story that chimes with observers.

Marianne Vos, for many the GOAT

Recently, a camera crew on the famous Koppenberg climb on the route of the Tour of Flanders, asked a group of women riders to move out of the way so that they could film one of the top men's teams doing their training ride over the cobbles. 

The camera crew failed to recognise that among the women they budged out was a certain Lotte Kopecky - defending champion of the race, a native of Flanders (voted Flandrian of the Year) as well as being winner of other classics like Het Nieuwsblad and Strade Bianche, plus a multiple World and European Track cycling champion. 

I previously wrote an article in Rouleur magazine about a big sporting rivalry in the 1980s - not Borg and McEnroe, but Longo and Canins. Two of the best women riders of that era, who dominated the erstwhile Tour de France Feminin. Jeannie Longo was a former Alpine skier from the French Alps, while Maria Canins was a former cross country skier from the Italian Dolomites. A young firebrand demoiselle against la mamma volante (on account of her juggling her racing with being a mother). This rivalry filled column inches of the sports pages and garnered curious as well as dedicated fans to support team Longo or team Canins. Both women have reminisced whimsically about those days when they had their faces plastered on the front of popular sports newspapers like Gazzetto dello Sport or L'Equipe. Longo also appeared on sports shows on French television. 

Everybody loves a story - where is it? We need it! 

Among the sea of women's teams today, a couple of frontrunners have emerged in the race for World Tour supremacy, with both teams having a clutch of World and National Champions in their fold. I'm talking about Trek-Segafredo and SD Worx. Wouldn't things be spiced up if we had a Manchester City v Arsenal type rivalry going on?

While there are quite a few riders who have shown true grit on the road, there don't seem to be any real characters that do acts that go beyond sport. Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig's trademark effusive post-race interviews attract interest and have brought her a significant following, and a comparatively less well-known Canadian, Alison Jackson - the surprise winner of Paris-Roubaix Femmes - got people talking as much about her sporting achievement as for her post-race dances on social media. But it seems to be limited to that. Let's hope Alison wins a few more races.

In short, we see some great racing in the women's game and there are some outstanding riders. But we could do with more characters and back-stories to make the sport. That's what garners a wider interest than just pure sport, and what brings more eyeballs, and hence increasing TV deals, and sponsorship. We all want to see our favourite sport on television, but clearly given the costs of televising a sport event, there needs to be something in it for the organisers who would sell the rights, and the broadcast companies who purchase the rights, and ultimately the sponsors and advertisers who are hoping to get the visibility and the returns. 

There needs to be solid evidence that loads of people will watch the event on TV. The Tour de France Femmes last year was deemed a success in terms of viewing figures which is great, but that scenario needs to be replicated again and again across the collection of big races in the racing calendar. As annoying as it may be that a women's cycle race isn't shown on terrestrial TV, it has to be kept in mind that it's an ambitious expectation to see a race televised if viewing figures are measured in the thousands - which is not uncommon for some World Tour races -  rather than in the millions.  

Sadly, sponsorship was lacking when it came to the Women's Tour of Britain race. The week-long stage competition had been running since 2014, attracting the best riders in the world, and was a paragon of parity in sport, with the race being televised on terrestrial free-to-air TV in the UK, and offering over a 90,000-euro prize fund - equal to the men's Tour of Britain, and more generous than other World Tour races apart from the Ride London Classique, and the later revived Tour de France Femmes.

But the organisers, Sweetspot, could not sustain this model and find a company willing to become the headline sponsor once the OVO Energy sponsorship ended after 2019. The event took place in 2022 but without a headline sponsor, but this could not continue for 2023. With funds desperately needed following the departure of other sponsors of the winners' jerseys and a vehicle sponsor, crowd funding was set up to try to make up the £500,000 shortfall. Sadly, there was no light at the end of the tunnel for this year.

The organisers, hope to hold the race in 2024, but that remains to be seen. The Vårgårda one-day race in Sweden has been stopped altogether due to economic reasons. Meanwhile, the women's Vuelta a España race, which had been held over one or two days in the September (and known as the Challenge Madrid) has been brought forward to May and will be a week-long stage race. The inaugural women's United Arab Emirates Tour took place in February over four days, and two newish stage races - the Tour de Suisse and the Tour de Romandie continue to establish themselves in the women's racing calendar. The women's calendar is busier than ever with 27 races (including 13 stage races) on the calendar, up from 23 in 2022. This is a far cry from the 17 races (including four stage races) when the calendar was established in 2016.

On paper professional women appear to have significantly less racing to do than their male counterparts who have 20 one-day races and 15 stage races (of which three are three weeks long) on their calendar. But in fact a men's team has around 30 riders in its squad, with an average of 12 sports directors/associate sports directors, so they can run dual squads in parallel. Women's teams don't have the resources to do that, especially as many teams will have just one or two sports directors, and 15 riders to fill the calendar. It is not uncommon for teams to run overlapping squads, and some also have a development squad too, but still, athletes can quickly become maxed out in racing if there are any injury or illness issues. This was a problem for Trek-Segafredo, which led to Lizzie Deignan returning to racing slightly earlier than planned. 

Some of the smaller World Tour Teams have said that the changes in structure and conditions in women's professional racing - increased minimum wages, greater prize money, television coverage, maternity pay - are very welcome, even long overdue. However, this can only be sustained with more cash, which can be challenging to find and sustain.

In the words of a UK Prime Minister, "There is no magic money tree".

Hoping for a great future

As well as the unfortunate absence of a few races from the 2023, in the last couple of years teams have spectacularly folded, among them Team Virtu Cycling, Paule Ka, and B&B Hotels - which led to Chloe Hosking unexpectedly facing the prospect of an early retirement from racing. Lifeplus-Wahoo had previously been a World Tour team (when sponsored Trek), but sponsorship issues led to the outfit dropping down to a Continental team status. As for Zaaf Cycling Team, this has been a catastrophe with several riders leaving, including French National Champion Audrey Cordon-Ragot (who had also been a casualty of the B&B Hotels fall-out) after there were reports of riders and staff not being paid.

Development in women's professional sport is always a good thing. But it is also important that any growth be sustainable. This apparent boom in women's professional cycle racing will do wonders for the future of the sport - for athletes, businesses, media, and inspiring more girls and women to get on a bicycle. But the proportionate financial support needs to be there to keep things going, and there needs to be an incentive for corporations to want to pour money into the sport. 

Serena Williams 

In my opinion, the incentive comes down to eyeballs - maybe a Megan Rapinoe moment, which raised the profile of women's football during the 2019 Fifa Football World Cup, or a Serena (Williams) Slam, circa 2003 and with the matching flamboyance and character - or is it sacrilege if I mention a Lance Armstrong moment - but without the industrial scale doping programme and bullying.

Megan Rapinoe at the 2019 football World Cup

Putting women's professional cycling properly on the map like sports such as football or tennis is easier said than done, at a time when professional women's cycle racing is finding its climbing legs. But I think the gains for the sport would be significant, and can move it from it's current reasonably good place, to a great place.

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Tiffany Cromwell's tips on training for your first 100km bike ride

Tiffany Cromwell in the Rapha Women's 100 kit (photo: @wmncyling)

Now that the weather is getting nicer we can turn our heads to fun summer events. One established event on the women’s cycling calendar is the Rapha Women’s 100 on September 14^th, where women all around the world cycle 100km.

You can ride as part of an organised group, with friends, or just on your own – on your local roads, through a challenging mountain range, or out to your favourite café stop. Wherever you ride, you will be part of a global celebration of women’s cycling.

While a few women may find this distance fairly standard and can ride around it quite comfortably, many of us may find it a challenge. Professional rider Tiffany Cromwell, of Canyon//SRAM shares her tips on how to prepare to cycle 100km.

Tiffany (centre) at the Women's Tour alongside Lizzie Deignan (in blue)

Tiffany Cromwell was in the UK recently to race in the Women’s Tour alongside Hannah and Alice Barnes. Racing in the limited edition Women’s 100 kit, the team celebrated Kasia Niewiadoma’s second place finish, behind Lizzie Deignan (Trek-Segafredo).

Here are Tiffany’s top tips for those tackling their first 100km-cycle ride

1. Build up gradually to the distance.

Don’t just think you can go out and do 100km without having done anything beforehand. Riding 100km is a long way for anyone, even for us. In our pre-season training they say you need to build the foundations before you can build the house. It’s about starting with a 20km- or 30km-ride, do a few of those, build up to 50km, 80km and then you know that you are ready to ride 100km.

2. Ride indoors if the weather is too bad

These days indoor turbo trainers are much more interactive and much more easier than in old-school days when you had to do turbo sessions for one, two or three hours staring at a brick wall.  Something like Zwift is an awesome platform. Even if you only have an hour, do an hour and challenge yourself with the sprint points and high intensity, because that’s also going to help build you up to take on 100km.

If it’s really bad weather all week, then sure a few turbo sessions are good to keep things ticking over and keep your muscles working and understanding that level of loading. Then when the weather gets good again you can do your longer rides out on the road.

3. Ride indoors if you don’t have time to ride outdoors

Cycling is more about consistency than being able to do these one-off long rides. Even if you have the chance to do two sessions a day, that would help build that endurance, say if you had an hour in the morning before work. Just get on the trainer, do an easy ride and then an hour after work and maybe stretch that to two hours, and add interval training in there as well. Because you are spending time on the bike and getting your muscles used to cycling and then you’re getting on the bike day after day, it’s a way to build up strength consistently.

4. Balance long rides with short high intensity sessions

You can do 100km quite aerobically but you can also get quite fit by doing short, high-intensity efforts as well. It’s about balancing things out. I don’t actually use the trainer so much but when I do use it it’s for short specific sessions of high intensity, and short recovery. It’s always a fantastic tool to use when you want that extra little edge for racing.

5. Fuel your body correctly

That is super important. When you are training, if you have never used gels or bars I’d say get your body used to those.

During the 100km-ride ideally I would have a piece of food for every thirty minutes on the ride. I’ll start eating thirty minutes to an hour into the ride and then every thirty minutes after that. Then I drink about a bottle every hour. If it’s hot then you definitely need to take on more liquids, and a mixture of water and electrolytes.

6. Dress appropriately

Check the weather. If you know it’s going to be a sunny day all day, great! Then you need just a jersey and shorts. But if the weather’s maybe changeable, or if you’re going into the mountains where perhaps the weather can change very quickly I always throw in either a vest [gilet] or a rain jacket, because having something that can cover your chest is really important. When you get to the top of the mountain and it’s a little bit colder then you have that vest [gilet] to put on for when you’re going back down again.

7. Don’t forget the coffee shops!

I’m all for stopping and finding a good coffee shop, and having a light lunch along the way and really enjoying the ride. Don’t have anything too heavy when you have a proper food stop or it can be a bit hard on your stomach.

Tiffany (right) with her Canyon-SRAM team-mates

8. Enjoy the ride

The best thing about cycling is really enjoying being outside, enjoying the scenery, riding with friends, and having a good little rest along the way.

If you are mentally prepared for the 100km ride, you will get through it.

Remember:

Check your bike is roadworthy and carry basic tools with you like a spare inner tube, tyre levers, pump and a multi-tool.

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Fortune and misfortune for Marianne Vos at the Women's Tour

This week one of the key events in women's professional cycle racing has been taking place, the OVO Energy Women's Tour. The event, which first started in 2014, has grown over its six-year history, and many professional riders have called out the Women's Tour as one of the top races on the international racing calendar.

The World's best women racers at the Cyclopark

So its good for us as it means we get the top racers gracing our shores for a week. For the first time, one of the stages was held at the Cyclopark, near Gravesend. 

Earlier this year the Cyclopark was the setting for the top cyclocross racers in the country for the National Championships, and on Tuesday it hosted the top women racers in the world.

Racing was fast - at times, in excess of 30 miles per hour. So I guess that for local fast amateur riders they're going to be a little gutted that their Strava QOMs have been annihilated!

The race was won by the most successful women's racer in history, Marianne Vos (CCC-Liv), ahead of Lizzie Deignan (Trek-Segafredo) and Sarah Roy (Mitchelton-Scott).

Although a win for Lizzie would have made a good news story for the home girl, I was so pleased to Marianne Vos's win. This win subsequently put her in the lead in the general classification.

Marianne is such a brilliant racer to watch in action, even down to the smooth slick way she effected her bike change when she got a puncture.

Marianne Vos wins Stage 2 of the Women's Tour (only to crash out on Stage 3)

As someone who has interviewed Marianne Vos several times over the last few years, I think she is such a lovely friendly woman, who is a great ambassador for women's cycling, and who always has time for the fans, and for journalists too!

Sadly, the following day Marianne crashed out of the Women's Tour following a cut to the head after a crashing heavily. The crash looked like the stuff of nightmares - the sort of thing that scares me when I used to be in a peloton.

The riders were in full speed contesting an intermediate sprint near Didcot, Oxfordshire when one of Marianne Vos's lead-out riders, Jeanne Korevaar, lost her handlebars when she went over a pot-hole.

Marianne had no where to go and crashed into a verge, and collided with a post in the process. A domino effect ensued and a massive chunk of the peloton went down, with riders scattered across the width of the road.

At the Stage 2  press conference looking to the rest of the race 

As well as Vos and her two of her team-mates being out of the race there were around 10 other DNF's among them big names like Barbara Guarischi (Virtu Cycling) and Elena Cecchini (Canyon-SRAM). 

Thankfully, Marianne was not badly injured in the crash and just needed stitches for the cuts to her head. However, she says her face looks like she's just been in a boxing match. I also imagine that her morale would have taken more of a hit than the physical wounds as the Women's Tour had been a target race for her, and she probably would have been wanting to go one better than her second place achievement last year.
The crash did put a downer on the event, especially after having had a great time at the Cyclopark the day before. I know crashes are part of cycle racing, but it's still sad to see, particularly when it's the race leader who crashes out. Lisa Brennauer (WNT-ROTOR) the new race leader at the end of the Oxfordshire stage, had mixed emotions and was not especially joyous at taking the leader's jersey in those circumstances.

Wishing all the best and speedy recovery to all the riders and looking forward to seeing them back racing soon.

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Marianne Vos (CCC-Liv) was the winner of the 62.5km-second stage of the OVO Energy Women’s Tour yesterday, putting her into the overall lead. The race saw 96 of the world's top cyclists race in Kent for the first time, at the Mecca for cycling, the Cyclopark.

After the victory in stage one of Jolien d'Hoore, the Boels Dolmans rider automatically took the overall lead, but only by a couple of seconds from last year's winner, Coryn Rivera. Marianne Vos, the most decorated female cyclist in history, and also a previous winner of the Women's Tour was not far behind d'Hoore either.

The riders setting off for Stage 2 of the Women's Tour

Racing around the 2.5-km circuit was fast and furious, with no chance for any lasting breakaway to form, despite a gallant effort by Elena Cecchini (Canyon//SRAM Racing). Various teams contributed towards driving the high pace, notably Trek-Segafredo, Team Sunweb, Alé Cipollini, Team VIRTU Cycling, Canyon//SRAM Racing, and CCC-Liv).

Circuit map of Stage 2 of the Women's Tour

Eventually, with three laps to go, Ellen van Dijk led a well-drilled Trek-Segafredo train, to set up Lizzie Deignan for the sprint to the finish line. In the melée of various contenders hanging on, Marianne Vos managed to power past the train and take the win from Deignan and Sarah Roy (Mitchelton-SCOTT).

The peloton racing around the circuit at approximately 45km/hour

Speaking to 2wheel chick after the race a delighted Henk Vos said of his daughter’s fifth stage win at the Women’s Tour, “She [Marianne] had a problem on the road and had to change her bike when she had a flat tyre, and then to win is marvellous. We follow Marianne everywhere. I can’t find enough words to say how much we are so proud. It’s unbelievable.”

Marianne Vos wins Stage 2 of the OVO Energy Women's Tour ahead of Lizzie Deignan

Here’s how Marianne Vos recalled Stage two in the post-race conference:

"Our strategy was to stay in front as much as possibl because if you’re in the back you are doing intervals all the time so it’s better to be in front and in the race and keep that focus, but Ashleigh [Moolman-Pasio] did a great job to stay in front. I mean it’s not easy to stay in front. She had a good race and she felt comfortable, and she was there also to go with the attacks and stay in control.

"For myself, I was trying to save a little more, and the other riders were kind of delivering me to the front, so it is really good when your team mates are there in front. It really motivates you to stay there as well.

"If the bunch is doing 50 km per hour and dropping to 45 and going to 55 again there’s no option to stay away. Cecchini did a great job to try, but she’s a really good rider, and it’s so hard to stay away for a couple of laps, especially during the final when the pace was so high. On such a circuit you really need a strong breakaway with a couple of riders that can keep going.

Marianne Vos at the post-stage press conference

"There was a lot of action, in the bunch. You needed to get to the front all the time so I think from the side line it might have been a little boring, one bunch going around but in the group you were constantly trying to get a position, get to the front, stay in the front. It was actually interesting for us to do such a thing.  

"If it had rained this [race] would have been totally different. It was quite safe in the bunch I have to say. It’s a very experienced bunch, people were really good at bike handling, it’s not a really big bunch. Everybody was fighting for each centimetre, it was safe but if it’s wet….once you get into the grass then you have a big problem. Today [when on the grass] it was possible to save it and get back on the road again. That happened on nearly every corner. You didn’t see all the action, but we did!

"I had a flat tyre. I didn’t worry at all. I was like, “it happens”. Let’s change bike and see if I can get in. It happened with 11 laps to go so there was sort of plenty of time. But yeah, I’ve had less good places to have a flat tyre this year. [For example, at Paterberg, in the Tour of Flanders].

"I was quite surprised at the gap I had when I won. I saw a gap opening at 200m to go. I came from the back so I thought “okay if I don’t go now I will be late, so I will have to go and see if I can open up a gap”, and then I did, but I felt okay now the legs are going to burn so I just kept going and I saw no wheels coming, so that was of course a great feeling.

"It’s always nice to have more riders in front, and Ashleigh [Moolman-Pasio] is a great climber, so going to the next days it’s really helpful. She’s a great climber and she can do crits as well, and time trials as well. Having her in the team is very important – valuable – but not just Ashleigh. I have to say Jeanne Korevaar did a really good job today and also the other riders. So the team is going to be more important in the next days, so we are going to try our best.

"Lizzie’s [Deignan’s] form is great. No doubt. I’ve seen her in the first races coming back [after maternity leave], and of course she hasn’t won yet, but I think she’s close to her top shape and definitely she was really good in [Tour de] Yorkshire. She’s in great form, she’s always one to watch for GC and the team is strong as well. They have a very strong team. We don’t fear anyone, but Trek [-Segafredo] is one of the teams that you want to watch."

For Lizzie Deignan, who placed second in the race she was pleased with the result, considering that she had not been targeting a win in this stage. The Yorkshire-born rider said:
"On paper this is the least suited [stage] to our team. It was just about riding as a team and that’s what we did. Ellen [van Dijk] and Trixi [Worrack] did an amazing job. I really have to thank them for that."

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52 Cycling Voices - 17: Rochelle Gilmore

Rochelle Gilmore is big in cycling. If you haven't seen her you’ll have definitely heard her extremely knowledgeable punditry on the BBC, ITV, or on Eurosport. 

After a successful career as a professional road and track cyclist (including a Commonwealth Games title on the road) she set up the Wiggle High5 team (then known as Wiggle Honda) in 2013. The team is replete with some of the world's best women racers with a number of world champions. I first met Rochelle a few years ago when they were doing the team presentation in Ghent, Belgium. She came across as driven, motivated, and entrepreneurial, but was still kind, gentle and clearly had the wellbeing of her riders at the forefront of her mind.

Oh, and Rochelle is a successful business woman, and is pretty damn good on the rollers!

Rochelle Gilmore, aged 35

From: Sutherland, New South Wales, Australia

Lives: San Martino di Castrozza, Trento, Italy

Occupation: Manager of Wiggle High5, Businesswoman, Broadcaster/Commentator

I got into cycling when I was three years old. My two older brothers were racing BMX and I just nagged my mum and dad, because I wanted to get out and race with them. So I started BMX racing, and competed with the under-5 boys. At that time and during my early high school days BMX was not an Olympic sport but I really loved just pedalling my bike - getting out of the gates, sprinting, and all the technical aspects of BMX.

Later I was identified through a programme at school where they came and asked if anyone wanted to go and be tested for Olympic potential, as an athlete. There was power testing, short sprints, four-kilometre runs, tests to see how high I could jump, long jump, all that stuff. 

My results were in the top 1% of Australian olympic potentials around the age of 13, and so I got a letter from the government saying they would financially support me for the next three years if I chose one of the sports on the list. There was a choice of rowing, mountain biking, cycling, and triathlon. Because I had done BMX for so long I was keen to do other types of cycling, so I got into track and road cycling through the local Institute of Sport. I was living in a very small country town out in the bush, to the South of Sydney, and they would pick me up from my home and take me to the races. 

Within 3 months I had won an under-15s national title, moved to the New South Wales Institute of Sport and then on to the Australian Institute of Sport. It all happened pretty quick, and was really exciting, especially as I was doing an olympic sport.

Emotionally, My strongest memory from my career was winning a Road World Cup in Australia in 2005. It was a very satisfying moment because I had just transferred from track to road. So for me to win a World Cup in my home country was massive.

Then obviously getting gold at the 2010 Commonwealth Games was a high point for me too, because I’d got silver four years before that, and four years before that, so after twelve years I wanted to go there and win. I did not want to come home from the Commonwealth Games with another silver medal. It just feels really great to have won gold now, particularly because the silver medallist in the race was Lizzie Armitstead (Deignan). So it makes it even more special seeing that she has really established herself as one of the world’s absolute best as an all-round cyclist.

I raced alongside Nicole Cooke on the same team, and shared a house with her for seven years. When I think about Nicole Cooke's career I remember those moments when she was just so happy whether a teammate won or she won. I remember the staff would really try to go that extra mile to support her within the pro teams that I rode on with her. There were people who really wanted the best for her. I recall some really beautiful moments in Nicole’s career and I think she took a lot of positive experiences from the sport. 

I don’t have memories of mistreatment or abuse or anything of that. I tend to remember those special moments that we had, travelling around the world together, and the fantastic time we had when we raced in San Francisco. It was just great that our teams were able to take us to those races. Unfortunately we are not hearing those stories from Nicole these days.

I try and keep in touch with the pro cyclists I used to race with. I keep in touch with nearly all of the girls I was with when I went through the Australian teams in AIS and the pro teams I was with. With social media you always know where people are and what they’re up to so even if you don’t speak, much. We are all still involved in cycle sport in some way, and as I was racing for many years, I am not just going to walk away from it. So I do bump into different girls I raced with and love catching up with them.  

This year while in Australia I bumped into was Mari Holden, an American who raced for T-mobile and was World Time trial champion in 2000. She was out there working as a director. I also caught up with Rahna Demarte (now Gerrans) a girl I went to the junior world championships with in 1998, who I hadn’t seen for 15 years. She’s now married to Simon Gerrans. Catching up with her was fantastic as well. Then there are other people like Vic Pendleton and Chris Hoy who I’ll see around the place and catch up with.

The key to the success of Team Wiggle High5 has been in maintaining a decent quality of life for the riders and making sure that rider well-being is at the top of the agenda.

At Wiggle High5 we have an atmosphere where quality of life is the priority so we don’t want unhappy athletes or unhappy staff. You can’t expect riders to get results if they are unhappy. We really look after recovery and the personal interests of the riders. One unique thing about this team is that riders all have some buy-in in the decisions, and the riders really feel like they are important to the team.

Also, all the athletes are really good friends. They have chosen the riders that they like to be around. We make it a priority that everyone is happy with the composition of the team and the personalities we have, and everybody really has each other’s back. That’s one of the mottos within our team, that we have our staff and our team-mates’ back all the time.

For Wiggle High5, results in races are only one part of the team’s aims. Wiggle High5 has always had a strategy to increase publicity for the team through social media campaigns as a way of bringing positive returns for their sponsors.

The money side of things only comes with exposure. So what I did when I started Wiggle High5 (at the time Wiggle Honda) was to have a really strong PR team to create ideas to give our sponsors return on investments. So we have a strong focus on social media.

It is hard to accept, but if you analyse it there is way more history in men’s cycling than in women's, and way more spectators watching men’s cycling. The business side of the sport is the men that are generating the majority of the money because of their history. For that reason it’s hard for women to walk onto the stage and demand exactly the salaries and prize money that the men are getting. 

Women work just as hard, and in some ways the women are more professional than the men, but our sport – women’s cycling –  is relatively new compared with male cycling. It’s not rocket science though, that there are challenges. We can’t just say £50k for the men, £50k for the women at every race, if there’s only 1% of the viewers watching the women. Organisers want to do a great job for women's cycling, but there's a difference between what they can do and what they can justify.

Conditions are definitely much better than they were ten years ago, for sure! We are progressing every year with the prize money, and women can now make a career out of cycle racing. The TV coverage has been the biggest advance. Obviously things like Ride London, Tour of Britain, Tour de Yorkshire and Le Tour by the Tour de France have TV coverage and that makes a huge difference to our sport.

As women’s cycle racing grows, the calendar has become very intense. Sadly, some races like the Route de France ended up being removed from the calendar this year.

Women's racing has a very busy and difficult schedule because we want those monumental races. We want to have Tour of California, Tour of Britain, and these big races that give us the opportunity to race alongside the men’s races or within the same week, and have all the publicity that the men get. But as a result, we have a very heavy programme and we have to travel a lot. The UCI obviously don’t want to turn race organisers down but now that we have a Women’s World Tour, with TV coverage, that’s distinctively the pinnacle of women’s cycling so they are the races that the top riders and top teams will focus on. So that makes it difficult to fit in all the races.  

A Tour de France for women would be great, though perhaps not three weeks. Women’s teams are a lot smaller than the men’s teams, so if you want your best riders to prepare for a two- or three-week Tour de France the other races would definitely suffer.

During my racing career I did commentary for a lot of Australian networks when I wasn’t racing.  I had started TV commentating with Phil Liggett back in 1997, so Eurosport asked if I could commentate with Sean Kelly for the women’s road race at the London 2012 Olympics. I was available to commentate because injury had put me out of the Olympics.

So from that, I did the World Championships for the BBC, and have done that every year, plus Ride London and the Tour de Yorkshire, then the Tour de France stuff.

It’s still very emotional when my girls are in a race, and you have to hide that when commentating. The hardest race I had to commentate on was the first Ride London women’s criterium in 2013 when Laura Trott won, while she was riding for Wiggle Honda. The team was fresh and new and it was exciting, there were so many people watching, it was live on television and I remember the last lap, how my heart nearly jumped out of my chest. It was really hard the commentating and keeping a neutral tone.

When Chloe Hosking won Le Tour by the Tour de France on the Champs Elysees in 2016 I did express some emotion and I was really, really happy about that.

There have been other tough moments like the Rio Olympics, commentating when Annemiek van Vleuten had her crash. That was a really sick feeling to the point where I couldn’t speak for the next five minutes. When commentating we have to stare at the screen and watch things really closely and at that point we are glued three or four centimetres from the screen and to see the crash, it was really devastating. This is someone that I know personally, as I know a lot of the girls in the peloton, and not having the information about whether she was moving was a hard moment.

As well as commentating I run a few businesses. I am the High5 distributor in Australia and that’s given me a lot of insight into business that’s orientated around numbers, whereas cycling success is more orientated around victories and leveraging that through media exposure.

I also run a company, GoExPro, an Australian company that sells ex-professional cycling equipment. On top of that, I have RMG Sports Production which makes cycling and other videos and documentaries. I’ve just been involved in making a 59-minute documentary on motorsports. 

Then I have two other cycling teams that I work with - the High5 Dream Team, and the Australian national team. 

To run all my activities I’ve gotta be a bit OCD where I’m super super-organised, so I use my time wisely. Normally in meetings I say, "I’m spending 15 minutes - give me your issues," and I say yes no yes no, and bang - I’m gone. There are moments where you need to let the conversations go - there are no time limits, and you have to stay and listen to everything.

Since I’ve retired and gone into business it has been a big challenge keeping fit and feeling comfortable about doing exercise without it being your job, and without feeling guilty about not training hard when you are out on the bike.

I have now come to realise that I have to do exercise to function, work and make good decisions and be relaxed. So it is more efficient for me to combine exercise and work together.

When it comes to places to cycle I love Mallorca because the roads are smooth, the weather’s good, there are a lot of cyclists out there to ride with. I only discovered Mallorca a couple of years ago and really fell in love with it. I come here to do a lot of work, but I enjoy my rides and that makes me feel more productive.

My mum is a massive fan of women’s cycling and she knows way more than I do because she has a lot more time than I do to be reading about them on social media! And if I want to know something I could just pick up the phone to my mum and ask her. She’ll tell me things sometimes and I say, “There’s no way that’s true!” And she’ll say, “It’s on Twitter, I’ll send you the link!”

She’s not one of those people who woud want to influence my decisions on team matters, but she will inform, and she will say, “Why don’t you sign this rider next year, she’s been doing really well.” Then we’ll have a debate about why she got points or her results, or whatever. My mum ’s definitely a good person to have discussions with.

She’s got a new place to live in Dubai, so I stopped over when I was on my way to Europe from Australia earlier this year. I was there for less than a day and we went shopping. The shopping Mall has an indoor ski slope, so I went for a ski while she went to the bar and watched me from out of the window! She really appreciated me stopping by to see her. Then she comes to see me at my house in Italy a couple of times a year.

My drive and motivation to be successful has come from my step-father, who my mum married 25 or 30 years ago. He’s a very successful business man and I relate very well to the way he manages people and I have learnt so much from him. I wanna make my mum and my step-father very proud. That was my drive, to prove I could make something in the business world.

They’ve always wanted me to hang the bike up and retire and do something in business because that’s how they measure success, and they did ask me quite often, “When are you going to stop with the cycling and do something in business.?” Actually when I told my parents I was going to start a women’s cycling team they were just like…”That’s a ridiculous idea!” But hey, four or five years down the track they are extremely proud.

I never go out on my bike without my phone cover that always has my credit card, usually a hotel keycard, and my business cards. I carry cards for the businesses I have in Australia, so if someone in Australia is looking for a bike, or asking about High5 I can just give them a card. While out on the bike you meet so many people that you can do business with.

I could have done one of a number of different sports, because when I was young I was doing gymnastics, athletics, swimming, surf-lifesaving, motocross ....From the age of three years old I just wanted to do sport. You know, like people say “When did you decide?” I think I was like five or six years old when I was watching the Olympics on TV and I was saying, “That’s me, I am sport!” I was just born to be athletic.

Some people say I may have been better suited to mountain biking because of my technical skills, but road cycling provides such a wonderful life. You move around, you travel the globe. Track cycling for me was probably physically better, but in terms of lifestyle, doing laps around an indoor velodrome was good, but after five or six years, I felt it was time to get out there and go pro with a road team. The freedom of being on the road, there’s no other feeling like it!

I feel so fortunate that I chose cycling and that this has been my career, and my path, and I love it.

Twitter: @RochelleGilmore       Instagram: rochellegilmore        www,wigglehighfive.com

Two teams, two launches, lots of motivation

I managed to get down to the London Bike Show a couple of weekends ago and had the privilege of seeing two women's team launches on the Friday and Saturday.

Friday saw the launch of Drops CC, a new UCI registered team headed by Bob Varney, with mentoring from the hugely successful national racer, Karla Boddy. I am impressed to see her move into a mentoring/Director Sportive role, particularly as I recall her racing some of the races in the old London Women's Cycle Racing League less than 5 years ago.

With riders such as Caribbean Road Race Champion Tamiko Butler, and National Masters Road Race Champion, Laura Massey the team hopes to make its mark in the National Series Races and the National Championships, as well as in some of the races in Europe. The team hopes to get a wildcard entry for the Aviva Women's Tour (now part of the inaugural Women's World Tour series it accepts entries primarily from top tier UCI women's teams).

All the ladies are currently finalising their training in Mallorca, but when they leave the island I look forward to seeing the women making their mark at the early season classic continental races - Le Samyn des Dames, Dwars door Vlaanderen, and Grand Prix de Dottignies, as well as races over here like the Women's Tour of Yorkshire, the Cheshire Classic.


On Saturday afternoon we were treated to the eye-catching kit of the newly formed Cannondale Girls racing team (aka We Ride Green). Again, this team has a lot of familiar racers that I have seen riding on local circuits in London and at the Notts/Derby Cyclo cross and the Northwest Cyclo cross leagues. In fact a number of the girls are from the former Mule Bar Girls racing team.

Cannondale Girls seem to have retained the same spirit of fun while racing hard. In fact the big reveal included generous amounts of Prosecco as well as delicious cookies and cakes baked by the girls themselves. Moving swiftly on from their kitchen talents Natalie, Adele, Diane, and Maxine talked to me about their plans for the coming season. Plans are quite varied within the team due to the diversity of disciplines Cannondale Girls pursue. Unlike Drops CC who are focusing on the road, Cannondale Girls will be mixing in quite a lot of off-road activities - Enduro, Downhill and Cross country mountain biking, as well as cyclo cross - and also mountain bike orienteering. A rather alternative way of cycle racing, and Natalie was very excitedly looking forward to a season of doing this with team-mate Emily Benham, the 2015 World Mountain Bike Orienteering series winner in this exciting discipline.

It'll be very exciting to see how this group of "Wonderwomen" get on in 2016. In fact you can catch up with some of the team members at Cannock Chase trail centre on 20th March during their Bike Demo weekend.

Although both of these teams, have a slightly different slant in terms of their racing, they share equal amounts of motivation and energy. Furthermore, what I admire about them is that most of the racers are not full time athletes. They have professional jobs or studies, and family commitments - some with children, while one (Phoebe Sneddon) is currently pregnant!
But yet they are so disciplined and hungry to succeed that they manage to juggle all other aspects of their lives with their racing and still manage to take home silverware. And that gets my full admiration.

10 soundbites from.....the Aviva Women's Tour

So the Women's Tour has been and gone. I wasn't able to follow the first edition of the race last year, but I managed to follow the different stages this year. Trying to second guess how the race would unfold each day, and who would be the overall winner was pretty exciting, and there was some exciting racing throughout the week. This has become a great event on the women's pro cycling calendar. I caught up with some of the riders and they were very positive about how their week had been.


Stefan Wyman (Director Sportive, Matrix Pro Cycling): "We had a few goals in the race and to be in the feature break was one of them, and to be on the podium either with a stage or a jersey was the key goal for us, so we did it. Elinor [Barker] is an unsung hero, and it is really difficult to transition from the track to the road so it was nice that she had the best British rider jersey for a time. It wasn’t all Laura [Trott] and it took the pressure off Laura. I think they did really well as a team so they should be really happy."



Dame Sarah Storey: "The first four stages were very samey, but the last stage was a lot more interesting. We need to get to a point where we don’t have five bunch sprints. It’s quite exciting potentially for watching, but as riders it’s nice to have another opportunity to put other types of riders up to win a stage. I would have liked to have seen long hilly climbs. They are the races I tend to target. The support we got from the side of the road was absolutely phenomenal, so to the people who supported us, I can’t thank them enough."


Lisa Brennauer (Yellow Jersey): "This is the biggest victory of my career so far. I have really enjoyed the racing here in the UK and it was great to see so many crowds when we were racing."


Melissa Hoskins (Queen of the Mountains): "I came into the QOM competition for a bit of fun and something for the team to do, but then I decided to do everything I could to defend it. It was something unexpected, even for myself. It’s been brilliant racing in England. The crowds have been fantastic.  I was overwhelmed with how many people were so interested in what we are doing. We don’t get that anywhere else in Europe. It’s a nice change to feel important for what you are doing, and inspiring young kids to do cycling."


Helen Wyman: "I have found the week fun, with really safe riding. There’s not been very many crashes. This is fantastic training for the 'cross season. You need to be as fit as you can be to train hard for 'cross. These are just really great base miles."   


Hannah Barnes (Best British Rider/Stage 5 winner): "In America we are one of the biggest teams, but here we are one of the small teams so we wanted to get stuck in and not be afraid to show our face. I’ve been focussing on my climbing this winter and my coach Jenny Gretton has helped me improve a lot this year. I always made sure I was in a good position when going into the bottom of the climb and I was on the right side of the split. In the last stage I just stayed near the front and hoped for it to come down to a sprint. I love following Alexis’s [Ryan] wheel during the race. She’s really nice to follow. I call her the Alexis bubble! The roads are wider in the States. So in terms of positioning you get a bit lazy because you know that in two seconds you can be at the front, whereas here it can take you an hour to get to the front, and less than a minute to drop to the back!"



Rachel Heal (Director Sportive, UnitedHealthcare Procycling): "With Hannah being at home and with the race being local to her she has had a lot of other pressures to deal with so the last couple of days we tried to kind of relax Hannah so she could be able to just focus on bike racing. Hannah has been sprinting really well all week and she had got top 5 a few times so we knew that she was fast enough
to get a win. To put it all together, and to be in the right place and to sprint at the right time, is just fantastic, especially on the last day." 



Sue Barnes (Hannah Barnes's mum): "It was so close, and I didn’t realise Hannah had won until they said so on the tannoy, and I was just jumping up and down. I am very proud of her right now. I work in a stationery shop – Colemans in Arundel. I did a Hannah window in the shop. It’s gone a bit viral on Twitter and the takings have gone up massively this week! I am keeping it there until the end of the National Championships where my other daughter, Alice will be racing too. We all do a bit of cycling but the girls' granddad was a very good time triallist in his day so they must get that from him as well. I have been to all the stages, and Hannah's gran, who is 87,
has been to three of the stages with me. We were at the start, the finish and lots of different parts of he course. It has meant a lot to Hannah to have her family there."


Will Mangar (Race doctor): "I have felt the racing has been faster this year and more flowing and more seamless. There's been a palpable shift in quality and skill level with the ladies' riding this year. It was difficult last year, with the rain. We had so many girls spinning off and there was lots and lots of road rash, This year everyone's been good. What I've noticed is there's less injuries but to be honest, these girls are tough. They are really made of strong stuff and it takes a lot for them to not want to get back on the bike."





Marianne Vos: "The crowd support has been fantastic! It's really cool to see all the schoolkids around and coming out of their schools, supporting, cheering for the riders and cheering for the Tour. You really feel that cycling is really popular in Britain."




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