This Saturday, the winner of the race (the arrival at the Roubaix velodrome is scheduled for the 16 hours, through Eurosport), will take 20,000 euros. There are still differences in prizes with men. But the feminine gratifications already begin to have an important economic level with sponsors like Zwiftthe digital platform for sports video games, which has focused on both Roubaix and the Tour.
“The change since 2015 has been brutal. So you had to combine cycling with a job or studies”
change and evolution
“The change since 2015 has been brutal. So if you wanted to dedicate yourself to cycling you had to combine it with a job or studies. Now our races are given on television. It has evolved a lot,” he tells this newspaper Alicia Gonzalez, Movistar cyclist, one of the three Spanish women who this Saturday runs in ‘hell’. “We are growing by leaps and bounds. Before our races were always ‘crazy’. Now there are more tactics and everything is much more organized,” adds his partner Lourdes Oyarbide, also present at Paris-Roubaix. The third Spaniard to run the test is Sandra Alonsoin the Ceratizit team.
Precisely this squad is one of the few, at a high level, that only bets on women’s cycling, because it is already common for the great men’s teams (Ineos would be the exception) to turn to women. There they are, apart from Movistar, Trek, Jumbo, Emirates (where the Majorcan mavi garciaone of the contenders for the next Tour), DSM, BikeExchange, EF or Cofidis, among the World teams with a presence in both categories.
“Now important budgets are already moving and being a professional cyclist begins to be viable”
“Women’s cycling has come a long way during the years I’ve been involved. And the incorporation of traditional races into our circuit has been crucial. Now there are significant budgets moving and being a professional cyclist is becoming viable,” she explains. , to questions from this newspaper, Sarah Roy, Canyon runner and champion of Australia in 2021. She refers to the rise, apart from the Tour and Paris-Roubaix, of races such as the Tour of Flanders, held on April 3, the first major women’s event that equaled the prizes to the perceived by men. Lotte Kopecky and Mathieu van der Poel received €20,000 for the victory.
The case of the world champion
These bonuses allow there to be runners who, just like cyclists have done since times past, can dedicate themselves exclusively to preparing a race; same material, same training plans and same level of hotels and trips, when a decade ago they traveled by plane and they in a van. A) Yes, Elisa Balsamo, the world champion, has been able to train with her mind set on seeking victory this Saturday at the Roubaix velodrome. “To try to win a race like the Paris-Roubaix I have taken a step forward in my physical performance, progressing in various areas,” the Italian told the Tour organization. “A year ago I ended up exhausted. I fell but I wanted to go all the way.” And she did. She came in 57th, 12 minutes from Deignan.
The important thing was to cross the finish line, however it was, in an environment of cold, rain and slippery mud that knocked down, over and over again, a lot of runners. They arrived crying, between emotion and suffering, as happened to the men, the next day. This year, fortunately for them, it will not rain on the cobblestones of Roubaix. Women face 125 kilometers, with 18 sections of ‘pavés’, including the feared and famous Mons in Pévele and the Crossroads of the Tree. The myth of the forest Arenberg is reserved for 2023.
