Women's Cycling Weekly Issue Eleven

A weekly curation of women's cycling news and content straight to your inbox

Feb 05, 2021

Hello! Welcome to Women’s Cycling Weekly issue eleven 🚴‍♀️

I don’t know about you, but seeing the men’s road racing kick off last weekend in France left me more eager than ever to see the women’s peloton back in action. So let’s keep everything crossed that we get to see them line up at Omloop and Strade soon.

Meanwhile, Down Under things are getting interesting at the Aussie Nats (it’s the law to abbreviate words there) and there are still a fair few ‘cross races left to watch. So here’s an in no way exhaustive brief of the week in women’s cycling.

News 📰

Race Updates:

After last week’s myriad cancellations/postponements there aren’t nearly as many this week — which sadly has more to do with how few races are left than anything.

In the UK, The Tour of the Reservoir (5th-6th June) and the Stockton GP (18th July) have both been cancelled and will not be re-scheduled this year. The Lincoln GP (9th May) has been postponed until later this year.
The Oceania Cycling Confederation announced that the Oceania Cycling Championships for road, track, BMX and MTB have been postponed until later in the year.

Elsewhere:

In far more positive news, The Women’s Tour organisers — SweetSpot — have announced a five-year partnership with Eurosport and GCN to bring live coverage of the Women’s Tour for the first time. You can read a statement on the race website here.
Zwift has suspended two female riders from top-level racing: Antonina Reznikov and Selma Trommer received six-month bans for data manipulation.
The organisers of the Amstel Gold Race — due to take place on 18th April — are looking into the possibility of modifying the route to an 18km closed circuit. The race will already be closed to spectators to ensure the event complies with Covid regulations in The Netherlands. The motive behind the change is to avoid having to cancel the race.
Vincent Lavenu, manager of the AG2R Citroën men’s World Tour team told French magazine, Le Dauphiné that a women’s team is, “an ambition.” He added “I hope that in a few months we will have some great news.”
British Cycling has published a list of 14 members of a new Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Group as the organisation prepares to publish its five-year strategy on representation in the sport. The full list can be seen here.
Former Olympian and TTT World Champion Danute 'Bunki' Bankaitis-Davis has sadly died aged 63 after a seven-year long battle with cancer. The American former racer was also a scientist and represented the US in five world championships.
The men’s and women’s Liège-Bastogne-Liège races will feature a new climb this year, the Côte de Desnié. The climb is 1.6km long with an average gradient of 8% and will come right before the Côte de la Redoute.
Lost Dot, the organisers of the Transcontinental race, have put out a call for applications from women, womxn and people of colour to apply to for the eighth edition.
British Cycling have defended a 90-rider simulated Olympics track cycling training event that took place in Manchester last weekend.
The ŠKODA DSI Cycling Academy led by Dame Sarah Storey are looking for two female amateur cyclists aged between 17 and 22 to join. Applications are open until the 5th March. Click here to learn more.

Results 🏆

The Dutch reigned supreme over the cyclocross world championships last weekend. Lucinda Brand won the elite women’s title after a nail-biting race in which defending champ Ceylin del Carmen Alvarado crashed on the first corner leaving her chasing. Annemarie Worst also crashed during the race and rode to second after she and Brand dropped Denise Betsema who came third to make an all-Dutch podium.

18 year-old former pro footballer Fem Van Empel of the Netherlands took the women’s U23 title in a solo victory ahead of compatriot Aniek van Alphen and Kata Blanka Vas of Hungary.
Meanwhile, in Australia, Sarah Gigante’s impressive domestic campaign continued as she took two minutes off her 2020 best time to win the national TT championships for the second year in a row. Georgia Brown of Team BikeExchange came in 17 seconds down on the Tibco-Sillicon Valley Bank rider to take second place. Nicole Frain (Sydney Uni - Staminade) took third at 0:03:58 down.

Annette Edmonson won the Australian criterium championships ahead of Ruby Roseman-Gannon and Chloe Hosking. A crash on the final corner before the line took out some of the favourites including Peta Mullens.
For the full para cycling TT champs results click here.

Upcoming Races 📅

The Australian national championships road race is this Sunday and will be broadcast on Eurosport/GCN from 00:00 CET. You can view the startlist here.
Lucinda Brand will debut her rainbow stripes at the final Telenet Superprestige race this Saturday in Middelkerke. The women’s race will be broadcast on Eurosport/GCN from 13:40 CET.
The following day the X2O Trofee Lille - Krawatencross race will take place and the women’s race will be broadcast from 13:45
The Namibian road race championships are also this Sunday with women junior, U23 and elite titles to be contested.

Read 🗞️

An interview with former world champion Amalie Dideriksen on moving from Boels Dolmans to Trek-Segafredo, the growth of women’s cycling, track racing, the Olympics and much more.
Look away now if you’re a Zwift naysayer.
Smile at the energy of Teniel Campbell’s latest blog for CyclingNews on getting to know her teammates at her first training camp with BikeExhange.
Remember Mavi Garcia’s heroic Strade Bianche ride last season? Find out what she did leading up to that race as well as her 2021 ambitions.
An interview with Canyon//SRAM’s Diversity and Inclusion consultant, Christine Kalkschmid.
This extract from ex-pro rider and Homestretch CEO Kathryn Bertine’s new book STAND: A memoir on activism. A manual for progress. What really happens when we stand on the front lines of change.

Listen 🎧

The Rouleur Conversations podcast with guest-editor of the women’s-only issue of the magazine, Orla Chennaoui, and Rebecca Charlton. It features a great conversation about the process behind the issue and a preview of the content inside the magazine. Also, for those who are not fans of the cover, Orla provides a very thought-provoking defence of it.

Two podcasts came out featuring Kasia Niewiadoma this week — who I promise you cannot get bored of — on two shows I’ve recommended before. Firstly, on the Freewheeling Podcast from CyclingTips in a continuation of the ‘Growing Up In’ series. And Secondly, on the Matt Stephens Unplugged podcast from Sigma Sports.

All well worth putting on your weekend podcast playlist.

Feel Good Friday 💕

If you want something to smile about this Friday then read about Syria’s first ever women’s cycling race.

The race took place in Amuda, northeastern Syria, last month and was organised by a group of women from the nearby city of Qamishli after they set up an initiative called “I Want a Bike”. The initiative aims to overcome the stigma around women and girls cycling in Syria and the group also have their own team which now has 50 members.