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 intere

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.