Putting the brakes on women's road racing is madness - The Age

Podium pucker: Cadel Evans gets congratulations in Europe. Photo: AFP

THE message to female cyclists who want to make it on the main stage at Tour Down Under is that they'd be wise to perfect the art of puckering up rather than pedalling.

Every day during Australia's premier cycling event, wonderfully groomed young women take to a stage to kiss the winners from a day's racing. And to any layperson following the World Tour race attended by the world's most elite road-cycling teams, this is where the role of females - at least in terms of obvious presentation - begins and ends.

There is a women's race during Tour Down Under. But it has nothing to do with Tour Down Under beyond timing.

Cycling South Australia stages a criterium series known this year as the Santos Women's Cup. The 2013 edition is a three-day event claiming to involve Australia's best female road riders. Sadly, the billing is false.

What is true is that Australia's best female road riders are currently gathered in Canberra - not in Adelaide - and that women's road racing at the Tour Down Under has gone backwards this year.

Twelve months ago Australia's trailblazing professional team launched as GreenEDGE. It made a point of launching its male and female teams at the same time and in the same place.

Everyone who knows about professional cycling knows that it's a rare woman who can make a living from the sport, while millionaires abound in the men's pro ranks. But on GreenEDGE's historic launch day in Adelaide last year, its male and female outfits were presented as equals.

The women's team, then led by German three-time world champion Judith Arndt, went on to dominate proceedings at the Adelaide's Women's Cup. The night that GreenEDGE's women won the series overall, team owner Gerry Ryan threw a dinner at which he raised a toast and said: ''Winning's fun, so keep having fun!''

GreenEDGE's women's team enjoyed a highly successful 2012 and is aiming higher in 2013. It is telling, then, that its coaches have not entered even one of its riders in this year's racing in Adelaide - an event that, in the past, has been impossible for members of the media to cover if they want to follow the men's race, too.

The outfit now known as Orica-AIS is on a training camp in the ACT, where it is also holding its 2013 launch. Presumably, coaches have decided that the riders will get more out of that than racing three criteriums in Adelaide over four days.

The matter of women's racing at Tour Down Under is a red-rag issue for event director Mike Turtur who has repeated ad nauseam that he's employed to stage the race that the South Australian government pays to put on, which is exclusively for men.

Tracey Gaudry recently replaced Turtur as president of the UCI's Oceania confederation. She is due in Adelaide later this week and in her meeting with Premier Jay Weatherill will raise what she considers a great opportunity that's being missed.

Gaudry is a great advocate of female cycling who is convinced the Tour Down Under can accommodate a women's stage event running concurrently with the men's racing. She knows she can't pull off miracles in a day.

But it's a fair bet that the Santos Women's Cup will never be the same again. And that's progress in itself.