Looks like Lauren / team is accusing one of the rider’s husbands of threatening her on a climb and the whole “I’ll go back and get my wife” thing. Assuming it’s the CX rider / champ’s husband who was mentioned above about having her husband tow her around for years now.
And then others are accusing Jess Cerrea of having (a) male Team Pinarello domestique(s?)at Unbound (who openly posted about it on IG).
What a mess and it didn’t have to be like this. I agree. Separate race for the pro’s with rules and enforcement, and the rest of the other thousands of people can just have their own thing and enjoy it.
My last post on this. No dog in the fight and now it’s just really ugly and sad. The internet sucks.
Someone should post how the Grant Park Criterium in GA raised a $20k purse for women. That feels a lot better.
I agree with your premise, it should just be an explicit rule. Then it can be managed by the riders, but to suggest they’ll work out what’s fair and what’s not by themselves is a bit weak.
Oh, I 100% disagree here….I think it had a LOT to do with the argument. You have a guy running a team who basically cheated his whole career and is now employing questionable tactics to help his clients win big races.
There is no doubt that what LC did was within the rules….but ethically, it is sketchy at best….which reasonably brings Tommy D’s past into the discussion.
I don’t know how you can police the situation, however….you have similar problems in long-course triathlon. IMO, it will almost undoubtedly lead to separate fields for men’s and women’s races eventually, which will be a damn shame.
The hyprocicy is killing me. I’ve been beaten many times by women using the help of men who are now trying to discredit me
Here she is trying to change the narrative……the issue isn’t working with men necessarily, it is having dedicated male teammates who dropped back to assist her. They can try and pretty it up by saying she only “briefly” rode with them, but when your team director basically says “you gotta know the rules so you can exploit them”, it kinda blows her story to bits.
Until this year, gravel racing has been fun and exciting to watch. As the sport has grown and gotten more attention, the stakes to win also increased. That adds pressure, not only for the athletes but for sponsors/advertisers too. As much as many of us would like the sport to remain as it has been in previous years, It is inevitable that the sport will change. It is also inevitable that there will be a certain degree of contention as those changes take place. That being said, what really concerns me is the way some of these “pro” athletes are airing their squabbles within public mediums when a simple private conversation with the party involved would likely resolve the majority of perceived issues. All the public bickering and finger pointing has caused me to rapidly lose interest in the “race” and just want to go ride my bike without any further care over who “won”. I seriously doubt I’m alone. My hope for these athletes (and their sponsors) is that they will open their eyes and recognize that continuing these kinds of squabbles in public mediums will ultimately be detrimental to all of them. Cheers.
The whole idea that elite women will sit on the wheels of elite men for as long as they can in these races just seems wrong to me. It makes you ask, what kind of race is it? A test of motorpacing? A test of which woman can ride threshold longest and then settle into a more reasonable pace after they get dropped?
as long course triathlon - it becomes an issue when discovered
So, you guys are saying that triathletes pay all this money to do an Ironman and then they cheat by drafting other riders? It is supposed to be a time trial, right?
Also why I find draft-legal triathlon uninteresting to watch or follow.
I think it would be unfortunate for the women’s gravel scene for a set of strong male domestiques becomes a requirement to win or podium. I agree that this would make that field a lot less interesting to me.
Yes - all sexes - ALL the time - the flatter the course the worse it gets. Part of it is congestion, some of it is the desire for the fastest time, easier run, some of it is blatant bad behavior.
Ironman female pro’s have over the years and still to this day get caught up in the back of the men’s pro field and or front of the elite amateurs and sit at a legal draft distance for the entire race.
They split the men’s and women’s pro starts to break up the groups, but a couple times a year the topic of an elite male will be seen towing his elite female friend around the course and social media will go nuts with accusations.
In my view they need to break up the start line, mass starts are cool, but the men’s and women’s pro fields should have their own starts and rules should be clearly stated . Gravel isn’t were it was a couple years ago, can’t put it back into the box now, too much fame and/or money in play now.
Cycling is a team sport, and racing against stronger teams always feels somewhat unfair, when you haven’t got the same support.
I find it cool that there are mixed teams, and men supporting women.
I also think this is a bit of a rare issue - the top female competitors will probably be in the top 20 or so overall, so the pool of men that can feasibly act as their domestiques is fairly small. They’ll also sacrify a decent own placing to work for another rider.
In mixed-cat road racing, what happens if a cat 1 teammate tows a cat 2 to a win?
The question would be “what happens if a dropped male road racer sits up and waits for a female teammate who is in a different race”……and the answer is DQ’d.
Gravel will go where every other sport goes. It’ll get more intense as it gets more popular.
You can make a rule, I guess, that would prohibit someone sacrificing their race for another’s. I think triathlon has some sort of rule like that, to prevent what something a few have tried, which is a swimmer intentionally pulling a weaker swimmer through that leg.
On the one hand I empathize with the idea that if you’re going to work as a team, it seems fundamentally unfair if one woman has a pre-organized team of elite men who are going to wait for her, then pull her to a win. It seems pretty fair to me if that same woman can catch some elite men, and hang with them for the race.
So I get that criticism/worry. On the other hand, people fretting about preserving the spirit remind me slightly of the “old boys” team at my old rugby club. They would claim that the sport was ruined because we wouldn’t go out the night before games, had mandatory strength programs, etc. To them, it was better when it was just 15 dudes who hung out and played ball on Saturday. But now it was 100 dudes fighting to be one of 23 who got to play first side ball on Saturday, and it’s a lot harder to win that match on Saturday.,
I don’t believe her. Just because she responded doesn’t mean what she wrote is true or accurate. I also think the deflection of claiming she is the victim is so just on point with society right now.
Boy, that sure turned into a childish, dramatic mess of a trainwreck of a mushroom cloud as the day went on. Disappointing from every. single. angle.
Honestly, that SBT response doesn’t seem so terrible now - in hindsight, seems like they mostly just wanted to peace out asap because they knew what was coming
Maybe it wouldn’t have been nearly as messy if the Cinch coach wasn’t who he was? Lot of bitterness there, it seems. Seriously, none of that was good for gravel, cycling in general, or humanity.
If I know racer X is going out with her husband who is going to pull her to the win, can I not just latch onto their wheels? Would you let two strong teammates go out in the break in literally any other kind of race? Same for someone having teammates in a gravel race. If I know a potential winner has a bunch of teammates in the race, maybe mark them to see what they do? Tadej Pogacar won the Tour de France using this strategy in 2020. Or is “no strategy allowed” also an unwritten rule of gravel racing?
What’s more - this whole unwritten rule about having “domestiques” is BS. If I do a gravel race with a group of friends, and they slowed down in order to help me do better, it would be seen as the ultimate “super chill” gravel vibe. The people camping out drinking craft IPAs after the race would be lauding my friends who sacrificed their own position to help me.