La Course by Le Tour de France: Women want to change the world, men want to rule it.

Riad KACED
Jul 23, 2017 · 3 min read
Janneke ENSING, Team ALE CIPOLLINI. Credit Tour de France Digital Reporters

Le Tour de France is the world’s premier cycling race, and one of the most beautiful sporting shows in the world. On Sunday, thousands of Parisians will be cheering wildly as the peloton rolls down the Champs-Élysées, Paris’s most famous boulevard toward the majestic Arc de Triomphe. What fans won’t see however are female cyclists as women are still not allowed to compete alongside men. Instead, women will appear on the podium only to serve champagne and give flowers to the male victors. A century’s worth of races, yet the same outdated views.

In this day and age, gender categories in sports should be abolished, women and men should compete alongside one another on equal terms, with equal reward and media coverage. World class sporting events like Le Tour de France must take the necessary steps to make the race more welcoming to women. It’s long past time to change the narrative, to ditch anecdotal stereotypes, irrational clichés, and biological racism against female athletes whose courage is unparalleled in the sports world and elsewhere. I’m very hopeful for that moment of enlightenment to spring into the minds of the organizers, riders and fans to challenge our preconceptions about women riding the entire tour, from start to finish, very likely delivering a human experience never thought possible in an elite competition. Meanwhile, I’ve only got myself to appreciate the extraordinary performance of these great athletes as they race in this year’s edition of La Course by Le Tour de France

In this year’s edition, twenty teams of six cyclists raced a 2-day competition coinciding with the 18th and 20th stages of Le Tour de France. In the first stage, Dutch rider Annemiek van Vleuten launched a solo attack 5km to the finish line to claim victory at the top of the Col d’Izoard. On the second stage, Annemiek showed her time-trialling pedigree and triumphed over her challengers despite their constant relaying effort. Annemiek won this year’s La Course with power and class, fans at Marseille’s legendary Stade Vélodrome hosted her with a huge reception.

Today, Annemiek van Vleuten became Marseille’s Notre-Dame de La Course

The finest moments of the 2017 La Course by Le Tour de France have been captured in the videos as below. Also, The tour’s Digital Reporters have shot some of the most beautiful pictures of this race, I hope you will enjoy them as much I did, here you are !

STAGE1: Briançon / Izoard, July 20th 2017

STAGE 2: Marseille, July 22nd 2017

PS: The title of this essay is inspired by Diane Bryant, executive vice president and general manager of Intel’s Data Center Group [1]

References

  1. Women want to change the world, men want to rule it.
  2. The Tour de France, again, has no women cyclists
  3. Sports and Sexual Segregation
  4. Why Aren’t Women’s Sports as Big as Men’s? Your Thoughts
  5. The Science Of Gender: No, Men Aren’t From Mars And Women From Venus
  6. Lizzie Deignan critical of La Course format after Van Vleuten’s easy win

Riad KACED

Written by

Citizen of the world, Human rights activist and social justice advocate

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