How the Tour de France became a $100M business • Hacker News Board

Re: How the Tour de France became a $100M business

#31

Post by loeg » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 4:29 PM UTC

light_hue_1 wrote: post #26

heywhatupboys wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

And the women who ride represent the top 0.00001% of Earth's best humans in the best shape too! And their accomplishments outside any effort that the vast amount of people will ever do in a day of their lives. Of course women can complete such races! We know this because they do it all the time. Not only that, they can even win! All we need to do is let them. Take the RAAM (Race Across America, a gruelling almost 300…

Women can definitely complete the same distances/courses the men do, but they would probably not be competitive in a mixed field TdF. They just don't have the W/kg for a climbing stage and they don't have the raw W/CdA for a sprint finish podium.

(The ultra/bikepacking races you mention are a completely different format to the TdF.)

I support your idea of not explicitly forbidding mixed fields, but I suspect it won't happen even without a rule against it.

Re: How the Tour de France became a $100M business

#32

Post by Dave_Rosenthal » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 4:30 PM UTC

heywhatupboys wrote: post #17

light_hue_1 wrote: post #8

It's also important to highlight that the Tour de France is one of the most sexist sporting events still around. Cycling in general. The cycling establishment refuses to allow equality for women. The women's Tour didn't even exist before 2022. The current women's tour is a pale shadow of the men's. The women are not allowed to ride the same tour, they can only do 8 stages and almost none of the 8 correspond to the me…

[flagged]

I took the OP not as saying that they thought women should race simultaneously with the men (no, they don't have the same power). I thought they were just advocating for the women's TDF to have the same course as the men. That is, 21 long stages with lots of vertical feet, etc. Women would have no issue with such a course!

Re: How the Tour de France became a $100M business

#33

Post by heywhatupboys » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 4:30 PM UTC

cyrillite wrote: post #24

heywhatupboys wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Women can complete a Tour de France. A man will likely be the best athlete in every conceivable category. But, I can’t think of a single sport neither sex could meaningfully compete in if normalised against their own sex.

> Women can complete a Tour de France.

absolutely not. Not a single woman in the world can keep pace with the peloton.

Re: How the Tour de France became a $100M business

#34

Post by powera » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 4:30 PM UTC

light_hue_1 wrote: post #8

It's also important to highlight that the Tour de France is one of the most sexist sporting events still around. Cycling in general. The cycling establishment refuses to allow equality for women. The women's Tour didn't even exist before 2022. The current women's tour is a pale shadow of the men's. The women are not allowed to ride the same tour, they can only do 8 stages and almost none of the 8 correspond to the me…

Come on.

Taking the Tourmalet (one of the recent climbs on the TDF) at Strava [https://www.strava.com/segments/4951896], the fastest time for men was 47 minutes while the fastest time for women was 56 minutes.

Women do a shorter race because they are slower over the same distance.

Re: How the Tour de France became a $100M business

#35

Post by light_hue_1 » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 4:31 PM UTC

conradfr wrote: post #23

light_hue_1 wrote: post #8

It's also important to highlight that the Tour de France is one of the most sexist sporting events still around. Cycling in general. The cycling establishment refuses to allow equality for women. The women's Tour didn't even exist before 2022. The current women's tour is a pale shadow of the men's. The women are not allowed to ride the same tour, they can only do 8 stages and almost none of the 8 correspond to the me…

> The women's Tour didn't even exist before 2022 That's not exactly true, there has been many variation of it before its return in 2022. Jeannie Longo was (is?) a quite popular rider in France (despite doping affairs).

> That's not exactly true, there has been many variation of it before its return in 2022.

The history is somewhat more complicated, but not less sexist. "Tour de France Femmes" has only existed since 2022.

You're right that there were other races, some officially related to the Tour, some unofficially related. There was the 1955 women's tour and the 1984-1990 tours which kept getting shorter because the owner of the Tour did not want to include women. Eventually they killed off the format and organizers weren't even allowed to stage their own. There were basically bootleg races under a different name (The Grande Boucle) in the 90s and early 2000s.

This messy history underscores one thing: women just want equality with men. Just let them ride the same race.

Re: How the Tour de France became a $100M business

#36

Post by light_hue_1 » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 4:32 PM UTC

loeg wrote: post #31

light_hue_1 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the women who ride represent the top 0.00001% of Earth's best humans in the best shape too! And their accomplishments outside any effort that the vast amount of people will ever do in a day of their lives. Of course women can complete such races! We know this because they do it all the time. Not only that, they can even win! All we need to do is let them. Take the RAAM (Race Across America, a gruelling almost 300…

Women can definitely complete the same distances/courses the men do, but they would probably not be competitive in a mixed field TdF. They just don't have the W/kg for a climbing stage and they don't have the raw W/CdA for a sprint finish podium. (The ultra/bikepacking races you mention are a completely different format to the TdF.) I support your idea of not explicitly forbidding mixed fields, but I suspect it won't…

I don't know. We won't know until it happens!

But we aren't even at the not forbidding mixed fields stage in cycling.

We're at the "women aren't allowed to ride races of the same length as men" stage even in their own competitions.

Re: How the Tour de France became a $100M business

#37

Post by tokai » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 4:32 PM UTC

loeg wrote: post #31

light_hue_1 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the women who ride represent the top 0.00001% of Earth's best humans in the best shape too! And their accomplishments outside any effort that the vast amount of people will ever do in a day of their lives. Of course women can complete such races! We know this because they do it all the time. Not only that, they can even win! All we need to do is let them. Take the RAAM (Race Across America, a gruelling almost 300…

Women can definitely complete the same distances/courses the men do, but they would probably not be competitive in a mixed field TdF. They just don't have the W/kg for a climbing stage and they don't have the raw W/CdA for a sprint finish podium. (The ultra/bikepacking races you mention are a completely different format to the TdF.) I support your idea of not explicitly forbidding mixed fields, but I suspect it won't…

Its not much but world championship mixed relay TT is a thing. So it has already happened.

Re: How the Tour de France became a $100M business

#38

Post by heywhatupboys » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 4:32 PM UTC

light_hue_1 wrote: post #26

heywhatupboys wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

And the women who ride represent the top 0.00001% of Earth's best humans in the best shape too! And their accomplishments outside any effort that the vast amount of people will ever do in a day of their lives. Of course women can complete such races! We know this because they do it all the time. Not only that, they can even win! All we need to do is let them. Take the RAAM (Race Across America, a gruelling almost 300…

[flagged]

Re: How the Tour de France became a $100M business

#39

Post by loeg » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 4:33 PM UTC

Dave_Rosenthal wrote: post #32

heywhatupboys wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I took the OP not as saying that they thought women should race simultaneously with the men (no, they don't have the same power). I thought they were just advocating for the women's TDF to have the same course as the men. That is, 21 long stages with lots of vertical feet, etc. Women would have no issue with such a course!

> I took the OP not as saying that they thought women should race simultaneously with the men (no, they don't have the same power).

I think light_hue is seriously arguing for mixed fields in the same race. E.g., they wrote:

> Of course women can complete such races! We know this because they do it all the time. Not only that, they can even win! All we need to do is let them.

Re: How the Tour de France became a $100M business

#40

Post by kashunstva » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 4:33 PM UTC

ulfw wrote: post #14

speed_spread wrote: post #7

My first thought was, wait, only $100M? If this was an American event it would be pumped up to a $2B affair with a theme song, videogame and plastic figurines.

Tour de France instead is full of EPO pumped cyclists. (see Armstrong, see Ullrich etc)

> full of EPO pumped cyclists

It’s an unfortunate truth about professional road cycling. But with the generation of cyclists you mention, there was an unintended consequence on U.S. culture at least. There were a lot of people who, inspired by the narrative and excitement, got off the sofa and onto the roads. I rode avidly with a number of people who began serious cycling in those days.

The whole sordid Epo affair is unfortunate; but through a combination of a winning (albeit false) story and the all-too-human tendency to suspend disbelief, a lot of common joes benefited in this way.