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The Sufferfest to sponsor women’s World Cup road race seriesA still from The Sufferfest video Hell Hath No Fury.png

The Sufferfest to sponsor women’s World Cup road race series

Training video maker to support UCI Women Road World Cup
by John Stevenson
Wed, Apr 02, 2014 19:26
7

 

For the first time, the world’s peak women’s road racing series will have a major sponsor in training video producer The Sufferfest.

The UCI today announced that The Sufferfest will support the UCI Women Road World Cup*. In a statement, the UCI said: “The sponsorship agreement is another indication of the growing appeal of women’s cycling and the UCI’s commitment to develop and grow it worldwide.”

The sponsorshop will see Sufferfest messages included in promotional clips for the UCI Women Road World Cup on TV and online. The Sufferfest and the UCI will also work together to promote women in cycling and develop concepts such as a UCI Women Road World Cup day to be advertised through the gyms where The Sufferfest’s group training sessions are available.
 
The UCI recently announced that highlights from all nine races on this year’s calendar will be shown on the BBC as well as other major international broadcasters including RAI Sports (Italy), NOS (Netherlands) and Canal+ (France).
 
Brian Cookson, UCI president, said: “The Sufferfest is well known for their effective training videos and the UCI Women Road World Cup is one of the most challenging series in any sport, so there is a natural synergy between our respective organisations. Bringing them together makes perfect sense.
 
David McQuillen, Founder of The Sufferfest, said: “Our short history shows the commitment we have to women’s cycling and this new partnership with the UCI is a natural progression for us. Three years ago we created a cycling training video featuring women’s professional racing and since then we’ve continued to build on our content featuring the best female cyclists in the world.
 
“We have also sponsored several women’s teams and we were the first corporate backer of Half the Road, a new documentary on Women’s Pro Cycling.”

*But not to the extent of throwing the UCI a spare apostrophe and a letter S, obvs.

UCI Women Road World Cup
uci
The Sufferfest
Brian Cookson
John Stevenson

John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.

He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.

Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.

John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.

He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.

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7 comments

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d_jp | 10 years ago
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Great news 1

Had a look on the BBC website (http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/cycling/26768974) and found this at the bottom of the page...
"World governing body the UCI will upload highlights from each of this season's World Cups to YouTube, while the World Championships will be televised by BBC Sport."...
sounds like we have to rely on YouTube for the World Cup races then.

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edster99 | 10 years ago
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Good news all round ! Womens racing, and hopefully some kickback for Sufferfest, whose training videos I 'enjoy' immensely.

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Simon E | 10 years ago
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Thanks for mentioning the video PJ. I've just bookmarked the Podium Café page featuring the 26 minute version (and other links) for later:
http://www.podiumcafe.com/2014/3/22/5536164/2014-ronde-van-drenthe-video

Every mention of the women's WC means another reminder that it exists, hopefully more pairs of eyes reading about it, which should lead to more people knowing about it.

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PJ McNally | 10 years ago
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Yes - what happened to this being televised?

I'm not bothered about it, personally, as I'll take a youtube channel over having to remember a scheduled TV slot any day, but it's a shame it's not on TV where it might get out to a more casual audience!

I remember reading something recently saying the quality of the video from Drenthe wasn't good enough for the BBC? (I would agree, about the 5 minute one, but the 30 minute one was high quality, engaging world class sportswomen being awesome - what's not to like)?

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mooleur | 10 years ago
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Hopefully with a sponsor like this the televised/media coverage aspect will get a bit of a kick up the arse.

If I were Sufferfest I'd be asking some serious questions of the UCI right about now on how they are proposing to help make returns on my investments anyway.

Don't even get me started on the BBC/TV farce!

On the positive this is a great partnership anyway, they've a lovely ethos and I think it fits perfectly with the world cup and women's cycling overall. Very excited to see where it takes us. 1

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MNgraveur | 10 years ago
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I believe verbruggen donated the uci's spare apostrophes to an African orphan fund. He's like that.

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Gkam84 | 10 years ago
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They have said it would be on BBC...BUT it never has been shown, we are coming up to race 3....

I guess this starts in 2015, with Boels being the main sponsor at the moment?

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