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news
2023 E3 Saxo Classic (GCN/Eurosport)“The economic model for women’s competitions is sputtering”: Women’s E3 Saxo Classic cancelled after just two years
Continuing the theme of misfortune that's befallen women's cycling in recent times, the cobbled Flemish one-day race Women's E3 Saxo Classic has been cancelled by the organisers after just two years of hosting, citing rising organisational costs and low confidence from the sponsors, as well as scheduling conflicts with other races.
The men's edition of the classic, previously known as E3 Harelbeke, with treacherous cobbles, steep climbs and narrow roads, first began in 1958 and taking place in the week preceding the famed monument Tour of Flanders, it soon went on to become a sought-after race as riders began using it as a testing ground for their legs, the most recent winner being Belgium's Wout van Aert.
Women's E3 Saxo Bank, also known as Leiedal Koerse, meanwhile, kicked off in 2022 as a UCI 1.2 event, with pro cycling's governing body set to promote the race to a 1.1 from 2024. But organisers Velovrienden have decided to pull the plug on the race.
The race's press officer Jacques Coussens told Sporza: ""The economic model for women's competitions is sputtering... Organizational costs continue to rise, while the attractiveness for sponsors remains below growth expectations.
"The board of the Nieuwe Velovrienden, the organiser of the women's race, had examined whether a final edition in 2024 in Bavikhove, together with the juniors, was feasible, but the negative economic model is also at play for this edition.
"The organizer fears that the last edition would be too loss-making and did not want to end up with a mountain of debt. That is why the board of the Nieuwe Velovrienden decided to pull the plug on the Leiedal Koerse women's race due to a lack of long-term perspective on the calendar and a lack of healthy financial prospects."
> Women's Tour cancelled for 2023, organisers cite lack of financial backing
The cancellation of Women's E3 Saxo means that of all the main spring Classics, only Milan-San Remo, Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne and now the E3 Saxo Classic lack a race for women.
However, unlike the other spring Classics, which includes the fortnight of prestigious cycle racing in Flanders to take place in late March and early April, the Leiedal Koerse was held at the end of April alongside a junior men's version of the race and not near the date of the men's WorldTour race.
According to Coussens, the scheduling issues, information of which were obtained by the board of organisers through "various contacts" also played a big part in the decision to take the race off the calendar, as sponsors didn't find it lucrative enough.
He said: "The intention was to have the women's race run on the classic Friday of the WorldTour race E3 Saxo Classic for men from 2025 with a start and finish at the Forestiers Stadium in Harelbeke.
"There are calendar problems for moving the women's race. On the Thursday preceding the E3 Saxo Classic for men, there is the WorldTour race for women in De Panne and on the following Sunday in Gent-Wevelgem. Both are sticking to their statutes and date."
This continues a worrying trend as race organisers cite financial woes and struggle to stay afloat. In March last year, the Women's Tour, the biggest women's race hosted in Britain, was on the chopping block.
The organiser SweetSpot, also responsible for organising the men's edition of the Tour of Britain, had said that the landmark race will go on a hiatus owing to high running costs and a lack of sponsors and commercial support — reasons quite similar to the cancellation of E3 as well.
In fact, just a couple of weeks before the cancellation, Sweetspot had issued an urgent appeal for sponsorship for the 2023 edition of the race, with reports suggesting the organisers were facing a £500,000 shortfall.
And just earlier this week, it was reported SweetSpot was entering voluntary liquidation, with liabilities likely to extend significantly past £1 million. Chief executive Hugh Roberts, said: "It's the end of an era. It's 20 years of hard work that have come to this.
"We have been fighting so many headwinds for the last three or four years, that it's come to the point where we really can't carry on in the current climate and the current business environment that we find ourselves in.
"The conditions that were set for us to extract ourselves from the position with British Cycling were too onerous. British Cycling wanted to still receive the full licence fee that they felt they were due in 2022. Despite the Queen dying in the middle of the race and all our other partners showing a little bit of financial sympathy to us they were insisting that the fee they felt they were owed should be paid in full.
"That, along with Covid, with not having a race from September 2019 to September 2021, the debt taken on board to keep the whole thing afloat. Local council bankruptcies, belt-tightening all over the place – that does not augur well for events that rely on government support.
"British Cycling say they have a plan [for the men's Tour of Britain] but I don’t know what it is. There was no room to negotiate. We were not even given the grounds to appeal."
British Cycling said it is "making every possible effort to ensure that the Tour of Britain and a UCI Women's World Tour stage race take place in 2024 and beyond, and will be in a position to provide further details in the coming weeks".
Adwitiya joined road.cc in 2023 as a news writer after graduating with a masters in journalism from Cardiff University. His dissertation focused on active travel, which soon threw him into the deep end of covering everything related to the two-wheeled tool, and now cycling is as big a part of his life as guitars and football. He has previously covered local and national politics for Voice Wales, and also likes to writes about science, tech and the environment, if he can find the time. Living right next to the Taff trail in the Welsh capital, you can find him trying to tackle the brutal climbs in the valleys.
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53 comments
I wondered when you would be along, sniffing out the opportunity of forming another little bully group along the lines of the one you had with Martin and Nigel before you were banned for racism, bullying, harassment and libel.
Haha - and your best retort is to throw your blatant lies back again! Real men don't make stuff up.
Everyone knows you're the protagonist - there's only one common denominator in these arguments - you.
Again, where's the insults? It would appear that you're the one with the snidey insults and just don't like it when the compliment is returned. Nice touch with the Italian, not sure why you'd do that (I know exactly why you'd do that).
I'm sure we can all remember what it was about. Are you now saying it is only "professional" women who aren't capable of not getting knocked off their bikes?
So in other words, in answer to the question where are these UCI road races, amateur or professional, which you have claimed take place in which men and women race together, you don't have an answer.
Not wanting to play silly games with you and not having an answer are not the same thing. You'll have to take my word for it, I have seen races with women, Elite and U19 starting together. Or don't take my word for it. It's up to you.
You said, and I quote, "It's certainly not unheard of for women to compete against men in UCI road races." I've simply asked you to name me a single UCI road race where this has happened. The fact that you have resorted to saying I've seen it and you'll have to take my word for it but I'm not going to say what the race was rather speaks volumes, don't you think?
Yeah, it says I'm not going to play silly games with you, which is what I wrote in my last comment. I have no interest in petty point scoring.
You claimed that there are UCI road races where men and women race together. I asked you for a single example and you have proved unable to provide one. Don't make statements if you can't support them, and when you can't support them be honest enough to admit it rather than saying "I know the answer but I'm not telling you."
I'll make any statement I like. And as I said, I'm not going to play your games. You're going round and round in circles, and you're not achieving anything.
Well obviously, it's rather difficult to make any headway in an argument if one's antagonist makes a claim that they think undermines one's argument (in this case that there are already UCI road races in which men and women race together) but refuses to provide any substantive evidence for said claim other than "I've seen it but I'm not telling you where or what the race was." All one can conclude is that the refusal to provide any evidence for the claim proves that the claim, and therefore the argument it purports to support, is invalid.
Martin73 ?
No, too much interest in cycling (though very limited knowledge about it). Quite a few shared characteristics though!
Is this a self proclamation that you are knowledgeable?
More so than somebody who thinks that it would be a good idea to have men and women racing together in the classics, certainly. But to be fair you don't have to be that knowledgeable about cycling to realise that that's an entirely stupid suggestion, you just have to have a bit of basic common sense. If you lack that quality, try asking female racers whether they think it's a good idea.
Your arrogance is admirable, only matched by your ignorance. Well done.
EDIT: It could be worse, I could be claiming that 58kg riders shouldn't be in the same race as 78kg riders and expecting to be taken seriously. I could be claiming that someone has demanded that women's races should be cancelled when they clearly didn't. I could be someone who hurls insults then cries when it comes back at them. I could be someone that thinks responding to Spanish with Italian is smart.
Not so much whether they thinks it's a good idea as whether they think it's a less bad idea than not riding them at all, surely? And, for the sake of completeness, whether they would be scared of getting knocked off by other riders.
Another reason, which occurred to me as I was out riding this morning, why men and women racing together is a really, really stupid idea: imagine a scenario where men and women are racing together in the Ronde van Vlaanderen and Team A and Team B have entered both men's and women's teams. Team A have a rider who has a good chance of taking the male race and a rider who has a good chance of taking the female race. Team B doesn't have any riders with a realistic chance in the male race but has a female rider with about the same chance as Team A's female rider. So the race starts and Team A's male cohort disappears into the distance looking after their male rider; Team B instructs all their male riders to stick with their female favourite, who thereby gets an armchair ride being towed by a full men's team and destroying Team A's female rider's chances. Would that be fair?
Still, I expect wanting women to be allowed to race equally and without let or hindrance and/or without unfair assistance from male riders makes me a misogynist who is scared of women.
Quite. They changed the definition of the women's marathon record after Paula Radcliffe was paced by a group of men, and drafting is rather more important in cycling.
Female athletes don't want to race against men. They know that, even pound for pound, a male elite athlete is stronger and faster than they are because that's how the sexes' physiology goes. Lizzie Deignan knows she can't compete with Adam Yates, just like Serena Williams knew she couldn't compete with similarly-sized male players. And that's no slight on them, women's athletic capacity just is below men's.
These guys (and it is all guys, isn't it) are just working on a new angle to get what they really want, which is women's sport to be put back in its box. They know what they're doing, and they know what they are.
Great to see you inventing scenarios that no one has suggested, again.
It's naughty to lie, to lie when the evidence of you saying what you now deny is right here on this page for everyone to see is just plain stupid. Or are you now going to claim that by "Put the women in the men's race" and "women mixing it up with the men" you didn't mean racing together? Nothing would surprise me where you're concerned now.
Great to see you having to insert yourr own words to justify your fantasy response too. You making stuff up is not me lying. For the third time, I request that you show evidence (you have been unable on the previous two attempts for obvious, and demonstrable, reasons)of me saying that men would be racing with the women on the same team, helping each other. I'm fucking bored of this stupidity now, really fucking bored. You're boring, repetitive and failing to offer anything constructive. You came in here stating that women were too weak to match the men's pace and shouldn't be able to mix it with men, in spite of evidence to the contrary, you made stuff up there too. You stated, from your high horse, that women shouldn't be allowed to mix it with the men. I can't think of anything more misogynistic. A fella telling women what they can and can't do! You then tried to claim that I was a race organiser, as I was responsible for the cancelling of this particular race and therefore a misogynist... I made a suggestion and have not told anyone what to do (until now).
You cried that the bullies were coming for you as others expressed their opinions.
You have sat in the thread demanding that others produce evidence, without supplying your own, no surprise there. You have no interest in adding to the topic, just making a tit of yourself in trying to prove me wrong (that's why I do the chao thing
and it always works). I recall a childish "let's see who gets the most likes" comment in there somewhere. It's the internet dude, likes mean nothing!
If I wanted someone or something to follow me around dry humping my leg, I'd get a puppy. At least it'd provide intellectual input.
Given your dry humping, snowflake tendencies and inability to contribute positively (or even realistically), I suggest you leave the thread and stop boring the shit out of everyone.
¡Chao capullo!
Aw, feel better now? I know it's hard to accept that you've made a fool of yourself, if that vomit of whining impotent rage helps you, that's fine.
Your suggestion was idiotic, unworkable and demeaning to women racers. Enough of your nonense, your ranting proves you know you've lost, give it up.
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