How the Tour de France became a $100M business
It&#x27;s also important to highlight that the Tour de France is one of the most sexist sporting events still around. Cycling in general.<p>The cycling establishment refuses to allow equality for women. The women&#x27;s Tour didn&#x27;t even exist before 2022. The current women&#x27;s tour is a pale shadow of the men&#x27;s. The women are not allowed to ride the same tour, they can only do 8 stages and almost none of the 8 correspond to the men&#x27;s race (they&#x27;re 50-100km shorter). The 2023 women&#x27;s edition got one time trial and one mountain stage. It&#x27;s pathetic.<p>The entire UCI behaves like it&#x27;s the year 1800. There&#x27;s a written rule that women are not allowed to race the same distances and times as men. It doesn&#x27;t matter that they can. It doesn&#x27;t matter that they want to. It doesn&#x27;t matter if they raise the money to. The rule is, women must be inferior to men in cycling. It&#x27;s just like with marathon running, you literally have older men in power holding women back for no reason at all.<p>Women just want to cycle. They aren&#x27;t demanding the same rewards or the same prize money. They just want to ride the same race! Why wouldn&#x27;t we allow that? There&#x27;s pretty good evidence that women are actually better endurance athletes than men. I wonder if one day we&#x27;ll see the Women&#x27;s Tour actually beat out the men&#x27;s.<p>PS: Someone in a reply said that clearly women can&#x27;t do this. We know women can. And they can even beat men at it!<p>Take the RAAM (Race Across America, a gruelling almost 3000 mile race, nearly 5000km). Women are allowed to join in. This is even longer than the Tour. Not only have many women finished RAAM, in Leah Goldstein actually won. Not the women&#x27;s category. The race outright. Period.<p>Or the Transcontinental Race (TRC, similar to RAAM but across Europe and without a support team, between 3000-4000km depending on the year). Not only have many women participated and completed it, in 2019 a Fiona Kolbinger won. And again, not the women&#x27;s category. She won the 10 day race beating out the best man by 10 hours!