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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 amoun

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 3000 mile race, nearly 5000km). Women are allowed to join in. This is even longer than the Tour. Not only have many women finished RAAM, in Leah Goldstein actually won. Not the women's category. The race outright. Period. Or the Transcontinental Race (TRC, similar to RAAM but across Europe and without a support team, between 3000-4000km depending on the year). Not only have many women participated and completed it, in 2019 a Fiona Kolbinger won. And again, not the women's category. She won the 10 day race beating out the best man by 10 hours! Both of these races show that not only can women complete the men's Tour, they could end up setting better times. > But they will not, and cannot, EVER, be asked to ride what the men's teams do. It is just too harmfull. And impossible. I hope that the clear evidence I gave you, the fact that women have done far more than this, and have beaten the world's best men while doing it, will make you reconsider your position in the future. It's not backed by evidence, it's just prejudice.

loeg 3y ago
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.
- light_hue_1 3y ago
  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.
  - loeg 3y ago
    > We're at the "women aren't allowed to ride races of the same length as men" stage even in their own competitions. I don't think women actually want this! Again, no objection to allowing it, but I don't think this actually benefits women in sport.
- tokai 3y ago
  Its not much but world championship mixed relay TT is a thing. So it has already happened.
  - loeg 3y ago
    > So it has already happened. Not sure what "it" is here or how it is responsive to my comment.
    - tokai 3y ago
      >not explicitly forbidding mixed fields, but I suspect [mixed fields] won't happen even without a rule against [mixed fields]. So I point out that in a tiny sliver of pro cycling a mixed gender field is happening.
      - loeg 3y ago
        The mixed relay is a format that mandates 3 women and 3 men. It's not an open format -- if it was, teams with 6 men would dominate and there wouldn't be women in the event at all -- much like a hypothetical mixed field TdF.
  - spongebobstoes 3y ago
    Do you mean that the format requires a mix (e.g. mixed doubles tennis) or that a mix was not forbidden, and occurred with positive results?
heywhatupboys 3y ago
[flagged]
- light_hue_1 3y ago
  Again, just look at the data! Men's vs women's time trials. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UCI_Road_World_Championships_%E2%80%93_Men%27s_time_trial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UCI_Road_World_Championships_%... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UCI_Road_World_Championships_%E2%80%93_Women%27s_time_trial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UCI_Road_World_Championships_%... In 2022 women allowed to race the same TT tracks as men for the world championship. Had the top woman (Ellen van Dijk) competed in the men's field, she would have ranked 31st. The 27th ranked man (Alexey Lutsenko) won a stage at the Tour de France and has ranked top 20 in the race. Stop it with the sexism, please. Women can complete the men's races. Not just overall, not just keeping up and even beating men in the long term, but as you can see even stage by stage they can keep up. The evidence for that is overwhelming and clear.
sarcasticus 3y ago
There is a significant disparity in competition between those races and the Tour de France. Leah Goldstein won the RAAM with an average speed of 18km/h. However, in the 2022 TDF, the winner achieved an average speed of 42km/h. While women have outperformed men in certain races, such victories are primarily in lower-level competitions. No woman will beat Kipchoge in a marathon.
spongebobstoes 3y ago
I agree that women should be allowed to compete, and it is a travesty that they are denied the attempt. Your points about women winning TRC and RAAM are interesting (and extremely impressive!), but they do not translate to the type of contest that the Tour de France is. The Tour has fixed stages each day, whereas RAAM or TRC appear to be an overall completion time. That means that one could ride for longer each day, or have better navigation, or better preparation, and win. Combined with how these are less popular races, and the winner Leah was 52 at the time of winning (surely that is not the ideal age for such an achievement), and I am unconvinced that in a more rigorous and popular setting like the Tour that women cyclists could be directly competitive with men. Additionally, I briefly researched ironman race times and marathon times -- two endurance sports that came to mind. In neither case were the best women's times particularly competitive with men (at least 10% slower). Those aren't as long races as the Tour, but they do provide data points that align with all other physically demanding sports I know of: at the very top tier, women (sadly) cannot physically compete with men. In smaller sports, races or venues, the very top tier athletes may not be present, and in those cases women can often compete with men. But at larger scales there is sadly less variance, in my experience.

loeg 3y ago

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.

light_hue_1 3y ago
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.
- loeg 3y ago
  > We're at the "women aren't allowed to ride races of the same length as men" stage even in their own competitions. I don't think women actually want this! Again, no objection to allowing it, but I don't think this actually benefits women in sport.
tokai 3y ago
Its not much but world championship mixed relay TT is a thing. So it has already happened.
- loeg 3y ago
  > So it has already happened. Not sure what "it" is here or how it is responsive to my comment.
  - tokai 3y ago
    >not explicitly forbidding mixed fields, but I suspect [mixed fields] won't happen even without a rule against [mixed fields]. So I point out that in a tiny sliver of pro cycling a mixed gender field is happening.
    - loeg 3y ago
      The mixed relay is a format that mandates 3 women and 3 men. It's not an open format -- if it was, teams with 6 men would dominate and there wouldn't be women in the event at all -- much like a hypothetical mixed field TdF.
- spongebobstoes 3y ago
  Do you mean that the format requires a mix (e.g. mixed doubles tennis) or that a mix was not forbidden, and occurred with positive results?

heywhatupboys 3y ago

[flagged]

light_hue_1 3y ago
Again, just look at the data! Men's vs women's time trials. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UCI_Road_World_Championships_%E2%80%93_Men%27s_time_trial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UCI_Road_World_Championships_%... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UCI_Road_World_Championships_%E2%80%93_Women%27s_time_trial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UCI_Road_World_Championships_%... In 2022 women allowed to race the same TT tracks as men for the world championship. Had the top woman (Ellen van Dijk) competed in the men's field, she would have ranked 31st. The 27th ranked man (Alexey Lutsenko) won a stage at the Tour de France and has ranked top 20 in the race. Stop it with the sexism, please. Women can complete the men's races. Not just overall, not just keeping up and even beating men in the long term, but as you can see even stage by stage they can keep up. The evidence for that is overwhelming and clear.

sarcasticus 3y ago

There is a significant disparity in competition between those races and the Tour de France. Leah Goldstein won the RAAM with an average speed of 18km/h. However, in the 2022 TDF, the winner achieved an average speed of 42km/h. While women have outperformed men in certain races, such victories are primarily in lower-level competitions. No woman will beat Kipchoge in a marathon.

spongebobstoes 3y ago

I agree that women should be allowed to compete, and it is a travesty that they are denied the attempt. Your points about women winning TRC and RAAM are interesting (and extremely impressive!), but they do not translate to the type of contest that the Tour de France is. The Tour has fixed stages each day, whereas RAAM or TRC appear to be an overall completion time. That means that one could ride for longer each day, or have better navigation, or better preparation, and win. Combined with how these are less popular races, and the winner Leah was 52 at the time of winning (surely that is not the ideal age for such an achievement), and I am unconvinced that in a more rigorous and popular setting like the Tour that women cyclists could be directly competitive with men. Additionally, I briefly researched ironman race times and marathon times -- two endurance sports that came to mind. In neither case were the best women's times particularly competitive with men (at least 10% slower). Those aren't as long races as the Tour, but they do provide data points that align with all other physically demanding sports I know of: at the very top tier, women (sadly) cannot physically compete with men. In smaller sports, races or venues, the very top tier athletes may not be present, and in those cases women can often compete with men. But at larger scales there is sadly less variance, in my experience.