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Irish women's national road race enters final lap (via Twitter.jpgWomen cyclists in Irish national road race told to pull over and let men past
Riders taking part in the Irish national women's road race were told to pull aside to allow the men’s race to pass this weekend. According to the organisers, the women were riding "too slowly" and were asked to pull in to avoid a clash between the two races.
Race director Derek Webb told Independent.ie: "It's the rules of Cycling Ireland and it's always the way it's done, the slowest race is pulled over. You can't ask the faster race, who are there to race, to slow down. You don't do that."
The women had been given “a 17km head-start” and organisers had expected they would have finished by the point at which the commissaires asked them to pull over.
Webb added: "I have a responsibility to the riders but I'm not responsible for the riders, for their actions. And they were just racing too slow and the average speed was well below what was expected of them.”
The winner of the women’s race, Lydia Boylan, said: "Unfortunately, I think it was always going to be a likely scenario, on the circuit that they chose for the race.
"Having such a big men's bunch and conversely such a small women's bunch, I think they probably over-estimated the speed of the women's group and thought that it wouldn't catch."
Eve McCrystal, who was runner-up in 2016, said: "The point in the race we were stopped was kind of paralysing. If we were allowed to keep cycling it could have changed the whole dynamic of the race."
Boyland, however, said she didn’t think it was the kind of race where the temporary stop would have had much of an impact. "I think that I'd be a lot more angry had it been a bit more of an attacking race and there were groups all over the road and stopping it meant groups came back together."
The Women's Commission for Cycling in Ireland said it would be contacting Cycling Ireland to prevent such an incident from happening again.
Cycling Ireland said it was treating the matter "very seriously".
Alex has written for more cricket publications than the rest of the road.cc team combined. Despite the apparent evidence of this picture, he doesn't especially like cake.
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9 comments
Bit of a bollocks headline this:
> "Women cyclists in Irish national road race told to pull over and let men past"
If this article wasn't click-baity, it'd actually read:
> "Slow group of cyclists in Irish national road race told to pull over and let faster group past"
But that wouldn't get as much ad revenue.
As mentioned, whilst easy to whack out the sexism card for this one, I am sure the organisation were doing the best they could with the constraints placed upon them. There would be a reason why they ran concurrent rather than separately timed events; from a resource perspective concurrent events are far more demanding, so I am sure it wasn't by choice.
However, this needs to be looked at. Maybe the women could have started a lap earlier than the men, then the men started nearly 2 laps down. This would mean the womens race would have finished a lap earlier and thus not been caught. This would also only add a small length of time the roads needed to be managed (~25-30mins).
In all seriousness, a 15km head start is probably 20mins max in time, so I'd suggest that it was touch and go from the start.
That said, I think a little bit of focus needs to be pointed towards the women racing on the day. From the reported average speed they were clearly not racing with any venom... I think the words 'conservative racing' was used somewhere.
If you are going to cruise around all day before a smash up at the end, you have to accept that you may get caught and stopped. The women would have been aware of the situation from the start, but they chose to ride like they did... therefore I have only limited sympathy.
Fingers crossed lessons will be learnt and this will be avoided in future; either a longer course or different approach to race times.
There are always some issues that arise in events like this, and you do the best that you can to fix them, but this just sounds like piss poor planning. It's not like this was a first time event.
Would it not be more sensible to start the women's race after the men? Then they wouldn't have to guess what the speed differential would be.
presumably they maximise the numbers hanging around at the finish this way.
It probably also reduces the length of time they have to keep certain parts of the road closed.
This is often done for time constraints as road management is done to certain schedules, often dictated by the authorities (I know, I've run a number of races). Even at the world age group champs last year this was done as the M5 men caught the M3&4 women at about 50 k after they had a 10 k head start.
Generally it'sa mixture between the constraints of road management and course size which cause this, and the slower moving race is always pulled over if it's considered necessary for safety or fairness.
Before people label it muppetry, or stupid, or bad organising, just put your head above the parapet and run a few road races. It's no picnic.
Well THAT really is badly organised stupid muppetry. Why not just pack a couple of sausage rolls, two bits of fruit, a flask of cold squash and a small blanket in a daysack, and it would be. Simples.
'Will you not have a cup of tea now you're here? Aaaah, go on go on go on go on. And a little cake - they've got EPO in...".
Muppetry