"We are now almost at the limit of the number of competition days we can add to the calendar," Lapartiento told the Dutch website Wielerflits. 'In the last few years, many new good competitions have been added, like this year's Tour de France Femme.' These days you can see that more and more organizers are being encouraged by their local authorities to create women's competitions. Of course, this is great, but the question is whether there are enough athletes for all those new races."
Along with the Tour de France Fam, a women's version of the Tour de Romandie will join the women's World Tour in 2022, and the Giro d'Italia Donne has been restarted after its absence in 2021. Many other races are moving to more closely align the status of men and women.
The Flanders Classic is a four-year Closing the Gap initiative beginning in 2023 that calls for the 1.Pro rank Omloop Het Nieuwsblad to be moved to the Women's World Tour level, and CEO Thomas van den Spiegel told Cycling News that he would eventually like to bring the women's Dwars Door Hlaanderen into the top league as well. Kimberly Conte, race director of the Women's Tour Down Under, also said earlier this year that women's World Tour status is "a possibility."
Organizers, however, will be competing for space on a calendar that is already showing signs of being at capacity.
"When the major organizers sign up for the women's world tour, we will have to say 'no' very quickly," says Lapartiento. Our challenge is to make sure we have enough good riders who can perform at the highest level for the majority of the season." That's why we want to continue our global work to get women's cycling back on track on all continents."
[11The top tier of women's cycling has grown considerably this season, with the number of UCI Women's WorldTeams increasing from nine in 2021 to 14 in 2022. However, with four fewer WorldTeams than men and less than half as many riders registered on each team, the number of riders still varies widely not only between the WorldTour and women's WorldTour, but also in the tiers below them.
"There is certainly an imbalance between the number of riders and teams and the current competition calendar," Lapartiento said in an interview with Wieler Fritz. We have to recognize that the women's peloton at the highest level is still not large enough." There are about 900 riders at the top two levels for the men, but less than 400 for the women. So we can't offer the same program to the girls as we do to the boys."
And while many race organizers have made the decision to level the prize money for dual events and salaries are on the rise, there is a large gap between mandated prize money and salaries. The minimum wage for athletes contracted to the women's world team will be the same as the men's UCI pro team in 2023, and the UCI stated in a communiqué released in September that it aims to equalize salaries for men's and women's world teams "as quickly as possible".
"I am positive. If you look at where we came from and where we are now, women's cycling is making unprecedented progress," Lapartiento told Wielerfritz. 'Athletes are getting paid more, and the average wage for a WorldTour team has already reached 50,000 euros. Athletes at the highest level are now able to live off the sport."
." I am also confident that the Tour de France Femme will give women's cycling a further boost next summer.
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