Condoms, chicks and La Course: the Tour de France still has a sexism problem | Sport

Condoms, chicks and La Course: the Tour de France still has a sexism problem | Sport

How can you tell it’s Tour de France time? Because up pops a doping positive. Step forward André Cardoso of the Trek-Segafredo team! But this year, Cardoso may have to cede the stupid crown to Jan Bakelants. The AG2R La Mondiale rider is in trouble for his sexist/funny comments (delete as appropriate depending on your place on the evolutionary scale) about condoms and podium girls.

Asked what he would take with him for his free moments during the Tour, Bakelants said: “A packet of condoms, for sure. You never know where those podium chicks have been hanging out.” The Belgian, who won a stage and wore the Yellow Jersey at the 2013 Tour, can be excused for feeling under pressure before racing for a French team in the biggest race of the season, but this supposed joke came after he had told his interviewer he would miss his “cute little daughter” Julia the most over the three weeks of racing“but we’ll see each other every day via Skype.”

Perhaps he should realise that the attitudes he espouses about women now are the ones his daughter will grow up with. The podium girls in the revealing outfits who make nice to him and his fellow competitors day after day are not absolutely gagging for it. They’re working long days, smiling until their teeth ache, while running the risk of having their arses pinched by cyclists.

You might think I’m banging the same old drum again: the one I’ve beaten over the “unacceptable” kit row and the sexist poster debacle. Maybe I am. But it seems to me that, instead of evolving into a sport where equality makes antediluvian attitudes entirely redundant, cycling is ever more entrenched in its boys’ club attitudes. Brian Cookson’s abject failure in empowering the sport to deliver the kinds of fundamental reforms that women’s cycling needs to give it true parity with the men’s sport will probably not harm his chances of re-election to the leadership of the UCI later this year because men’s cycling still exists in the 1970s, a decade the women’s sport is desperate to escape.

Of course Bakelants apologised, like Peter Sagan before him. “My sincerest apologies to all those offended by my words in a so called humouristic itw. My words have been inappropriate,” he wrote on Twitter after Tour director Christian Prudhomme contacted his team “so that he makes an apology.”

While on the topic of women in cycling, the Tour might want to look closer to home. They create the conditions that help sexism persist. They should get rid of podium girls. This doesn’t need to be a gendered job. Any reasonably sentient being could give riders bouquets and shuffle them off the stage in the right direction. When the only visible women in the biggest race in cycling resemble hostesses in a tawdry daytime TV quiz show, it’s time to start asking questions about the sport’s underlying attitudes to women.

But the women riders have La Course, I hear you splutter indignantly. And yes, they will be climbing the Col d’Izoard, whose Casse Déserte has been the proving ground of champions for decades. Lest we forget that women cyclists tackled Italy’s fearsome Monte Zoncolan six years before their male counterparts. We live in a century when women in other sports are allowed to tackle distances and events on parity with men, but there remain several major problem with this year’s La Course.

Firstly, the women’s race is just 62km long, while the stage the men tackle on the same day is 129km. Nicole Cooke, the former Olympic and world champion, pointed out the failings of the route and mocked the supposed “progress” on Twitter. “Agreed,” tweeted Dani King. “This isn’t progress for our sport!” Molly Weaver joined in: “Disappointing La Course isn’t a stage race and that it’s so short ... seems like a parallel step!” Kathryn Bertine made the same point: “Instead of expanding to a multi-day race, La Course moves its one-day location â€" be careful not to confuse progress with shapeshifting.” While Yolanda Álvarez put it neatly: “Do you think we cannot do better?”

Secondly, the riders with the best times on the Col d’Izoard will then be invited to compete in a bonus stage, a pursuit around the fabled Orange velodrome in Marseille as the men tough it out on the road in the penultimate time-trial around Marseille. Just ponder this for a moment. One race is a disciplined exercise of muscle and machine, the other a hell-for-leather dash of chaos in the velodrome â€" for the best climbers. It’s a freak show of an event that might as well be ridden in clown suits on children’s bicycles.

So, Jan, when you joke about getting it on with podium girls you’re just feeding into the kind of institutionalised sexism that has long been a feature of cycling. It’s time to stop treating women riders like performing animals and stop objectifying women race staff. Women riders are professional athletes and women race staff are professional employees. Your daughters will thank you for it.

• This article is from 100 Tours 100 Tales
• Follow Suze Clemitson on Twitter

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