Women’s groups of 2020: Who’s committing to the UCI’s new tips, who’s not, and why

Posted On Nov 9, 2019 By admin With Comments Off

features

In early October, in the final weeks of the cycling season, the UCI announces the teams that have entered applications to compete at the different levels of the play for the coming year. Earlier this week we embraced the men’s WorldTour and ProTeam moves for 2020, and now it’s time to take a closer look at the women’s peloton.

Structural alters

The coming season ascertains the first steps toward seismic reforms in women’s cycling, scheduled to be phased in over the coming three seasons. The practical effect of this is a split of the women’s peloton from one split- UCI Women’s Teams- into two- UCI WorldTeams and UCI Women’s Continental Teams.

A ranking system, based on phases accrued by the top four equestrians on a team’s roster, was previously used to determine the 15 Women’s Teams who received automatic invitations to WorldTour races, with remaining neighbourhoods filled up by wildcards.

In total, there were 46 UCI Women’s Teams racing in the 2019 season, some achieving much greater prominence than others, and with a wide variation in wages and benefits presented to the riders. A rider survey conducted in 2017 found that nearly half of the women’s UCI peloton then raced for less than 5,000 Euros( A $7,700) a year, with 17.5% of that group going completely unpaid.

For the 2020 season onward, nonetheless, the UCI is introducing upper-division UCI WorldTeams, who will gain automated access to WorldTour scoots. For the first time in women’s cycling, a minimum wage will be introduced at the WorldTeam level, and addressing units will also be assessed “on the basis of sporting, ethical, fiscal and administrative criteria, ” in agreement with the UCI.

The WorldTeam tier renders a substantial step forward for women’s cycling, which has been criticised in the past for the lack of business and occupation insurance it offered to female cyclists. Minimum wages- well-established in the men’s peloton- was also being phased in, with payments of EUR1 5,000 in 2020, EUR2 0,000 in 2021, EUR2 7,500 in 2022, and from 2023, parity with men’s ProTeam( ex-Pro Continental)- currently around EUR3 0,000.

Also appearing for the first time are rules around anniversary repay, sickness mask, maternity put-on, and limits set for race days.

racing

Separate to the introduction of the WorldTeam tier, the UCI has announced a altered scoot schedule, with four racing discords: UCI Women’s WorldTour, UCI ProSeries, Class 1 and Class 2.

features

The UCI has also committed to a 10% per season increase to prize money for the top 20 riders in every race on the UCI calendar. For a full epitome of the changes to the structure of women’s professional cycling, view here.

Who’s strengthened as WorldTeams?

The UCI had originally planned for five squads to compile the bounce to WorldTeam status for 2020, but they’ve outshone that minimum level, with eight teams having referred lotions. These should read as follows 😛 TAGEND

Ale BTC Ljubljana Canyon-SRAM Racing CCC-LIV FDJ Nouvelle- Aquitane Futuroscope Mitchelton-Scott Movistar Team Women Team Sunweb Trek-Segafredo

Some, like Trek-Segafredo, who are trailblazers in their advocacy for women’s cycling and indicated a then-pregnant Lizzie Deignan to the team when they launched, are unsurprising inclusions. The other consistent theme is that most of the teams have an equivalent men’s squad in the WorldTour: exclusively Canyon-SRAM and Ale BTC Ljubljana are standalone women’s-only entities.

All of the eight prospective WorldTeams are in the top 15 on the Women’s WorldTour rankings, so in that sense, it’s a fairly good representation of the upper echelons of the athletic. Nonetheless, there are some surprising omissions.

Who’s missing?

Boels-Dolmans, the top-ranked women’s team since 2016, and dwelling to four consecutive street nature endorses, is notably absent. Team manager Danny Stam is on record saying that he felt the reforms were happening “too fast”, although he was broadly supportive of moves to professionalise women’s cycling.

In an interview with Cyclingnews, Stam stated that the team had no problem meeting the minimum wage requirement, but known the additional costs associated with WorldTeam status extremely onerous for crews that is not have a correspond men’s team to increase efficiencies.

racing

Anna van der Breggen built it look easy at the 2018 Tour of Flanders, razzing away from the rest of the field to acquire by over a minute.

For Boels-Dolmans there’s the computed complication that their sponsorship deals with plant hire company Boels and landscaping busines Dolmans expire at the end of 2020.

Other remarkable omissions from the index of WorldTeam applicants include 😛 TAGEND

ParkHotel Valkenburg, the team of dominant sprinter Lorena Wiebes Virtu Cycling, the team of onetime world champion and Tour of Flanders champion Marta Bastianelli WNT-Rotor, the team of Dutch powerhouse Kristen Wild and German climber Clara Koppenburg; and Bigla Pro Cycling, the team of the charismatic Dane, Cecilie Uttrup-Ludwig.

There’s concern from some crew proprietors that not enough is being done by the UCI to increase exposure for women’s cycling, deteriorating the quality proposition for possible patrons. We still have higher expenses associated for WorldTeams, both from the perspective of registration fees and in staffing. Given the lack of money in the athletic relative to men’s cycling, the summarizes apparently don’t add up to create a strong business case for making a jump to WorldTeam level for a majority of the already existing women’s teams.

What it all means

Women’s professional cycling is in a period of flux coming into the 2020 season, and the longer-term implications of the well-intentioned- and long overdue- reforms are as yet unknown. A general increase in minimum team sizes at both separations has opened up a few seats, but it sees there’s been a much more significant contraction in the number of units applying for permissions for 2020.

To date, the UCI has only rostered the eight WorldTeam entrants- the final tally of crews at the Continental level are as yet unconfirmed. By ProCyclingStats’ count, however, there were 27 women’s crews( eight WorldTeam, 19 Continental) in the mingle for 2020 between the two splits- a significant drop from the 46 UCI Women’s Teams of 2019.

There have been moans of moves into women’s cycling by EF Education First, Ineos and Katusha, although these are as yet unsubstantiated. However, given the majority of the proposed Women’s WorldTeams sit alongside top-tier men’s squads, it seems that this is a template that works. Although there is no formal requirement for men’s WorldTour teams to field a correspond women’s crew, hopefully it becomes an increasingly common see over the coming years.

By 2022, the UCI plans to have 15 WorldTeams competing at the top division of women’s sport, and are more than half of the road there before the 2020 season has even commence. It really remains to be determined whether the rising tide will parent all ships, or merely has become a drop in the seas and oceans in terms of achieving equality for women’s cycling.

The post Women’s units of 2020: Who’s committing to the UCI’s new guidelines, who’s not, and why materialized first on CyclingTips.