Please stop and gain some empathy. I have a gender nonconforming child, and honestly you have no idea about anything you speak of. It’s easy to criticize until it’s your own child wanting to be with who they see as their peers
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I’m all for it, let a team of Male domestique’s pull women to the end. Its fair game across the board for all women and anyone can do it.
I honestly think this would make the sport and women race even more interesting and fun to watch (I love all women racing, I think its much better then male).
Think of the huge market for “semi” pros that didn’t quite make it at the pro level but would rock at this level.
They don’t need the help. Plenty of bad ass ladies out there will form a break using their own pacing and tactics 
::Edited for oversimplification… there was a lady3 involved 
No disagreement there! Like I said, I watch more female racing then male, its a lot more competitive and just better sport.
I just think until rules are further established to let the women have a male team pull them around, can you imagine a sprint train at the end of the race with a group of fresh badass ladies hammering it out!?!?!
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Transphobic and anti-trans dialogue is not an example of ‘being excellent’ to one another as a Forum Guideline, and is not a dialogue welcomed on the TrainerRoad Forum or within our community.
Please limit post content to constructive dialogue about the topic being discussed as a requirement for use on the TrainerRoad forum.
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There may be a discussion to be had about the fairness of transgender women in competition but I really fail to see how it is relevant to the topic of this thread?
There was one here: Transgender participation in sport - #162 by palmerneill
Not disagreeing that some of the posts above sounded a bit transphobic…
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A specific race with all male domestiques and women racers would be a cool spectacle. It would interesting to see a more obviously differentiated “protected rider” and maybe show people who aren’t avid watchers of road racing how the strategies work.
The specific and very valid criticism of such an event is that women are therefore dependent on men in order to complete.
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But if only the women could win, it would be interesting. I would consider it a spectacle, not a major road race added to the calendar.
As the one who flagged the comments, I agree…I am absolutely intolerant of intolerance.
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you’re not here for an honest discussion, you come out of the woodwork after nearly a year with a transphobic agenda. fact is, you’re not going to change my mind and folks like power13 and myself aren’t going to change yours, so let’s drop it, there’s no honest discussion to be had
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But based on what I have read, the majority of women don’t want such an event…they want to race on their own merits and not have to depend on men to help them succeed.
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If you look earlier in the thread, I don’t enjoy men being a part of women’s races, I was spitballing that an exhibition race featuring a mixed field could be interesting. And until gravel organizers clamp down on the mixing of fields, we are going to continue to see women get assistance from male teammates. I was spitballing that maybe there could be a specific race designed for that to happen purposely, and then get rid of it for everything else.
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The thing is that there wouldn’t be very interesting tactics to this race. The smart woman rider would only ever follow wheels until the end. Sending male attacks up the road wouldn’t elicit a response from any woman because the male cannot win anyways. Nor would a team send their male to match that attack bc why waste that riders energy. No team would send that male up in the first place because they’re better off pulling their woman rider. It would really just be a race where the woman who can follow wheels best wins. It seems sort of demeaning tho I understand you don’t mean it that way (why not just have them race their own race because they obv have the ability to do so)
Oh yeah, I understood where you were coming from…I was just adding the perspective of what I have seen female racer’s say. Ultimately, IMO, it is their call to decide how they want to race…but based on those comments, I would think an “exhibition” of that sort would bother them even more, since it would emphasize the need for male domestiques.
I don’t know how you balance the desire for women to race in the same field as men but prevent men assisting them. Some of it is inevitable…the elite women can hang with some pretty strong men if they ride wheels. How you determine that some are deliberately “helping” is an answer I simply don’t have…
the obvious answer is to ban specific assistance between teammates of different sexes…but when they start wearing different jerseys, or are just friends helping friends, it gets pretty murky.
I’m female and lean pretty feminist, so I agree with your points. I just think if women (gravel) racers want legitimacy, then the fields need to be totally separate. Maybe it goes against gravel ethos “mass start, strongest person should win” but the Lauren already demonstrated how the rules can be bent and give an advantage.
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Sending someone up the road early and having them ahead for a female attack up a hill or hard section to catch them is 100% a smart tactic.
Isolate the other women, make others pull etc. The tactics of a male domestique race would be endless and have so many end possibilities.
Like I said before, an all women race is just as amazing, but until the rules are solid it would be very interesting to watch a race as discussed.
yeah, I think that is the ultimate ending for this issue…but I would like to see them try some other solutions before reaching that conclusion. I do think having a mass start is a very cool and unique aspect of gravel racing. I would hate to deprive the women’s field of that experience.
Well in that case, that race already exists. It is the current state of gravel. Do they actually do it?
Well in my experience they do this already.
The biggest race I have been to is Barry and I race the medium distance race and am typically in the front group. The top 3 women are in that front group trying to hold on until the end.
I’m referring to pro level organization as how it would be a spectacle of tactics.