Just lately retired from skilled biking, Grace Brown has stepped into a brand new function because the president of The Cyclists’ Alliance (TCA) and has highlighted security, salaries, and truthful working situations as only a few of the areas through which she is going to assist the organisation proceed its work to enhance throughout girls’s biking.
Brown retired from the game in 2024 after one in all her most profitable seasons the place she received Liège-Bastogne-Liège, a gold medal on the Paris Olympic Video games and a rainbow jersey on the Zurich Worlds, each within the particular person time trial.
In a latest Q&A on TCA’s Instagram feed, Brown defined that shifting into her new function as head of the affiliation would assist her keep linked to the game in a significant approach.
“TCA’s mission strongly aligns with my imaginative and prescient and keenness for biking, girls’s sports activities and gender fairness. The function of president was the good alternative for me to proceed having a constructive influence on girls’s skilled biking, regardless of stepping away from racing,” she stated.
Girls’s biking has seen important enchancment since Brown signed her first skilled contract to race underneath WIggle High5 in 2018. She went on to race for Mitchelton-Scott and FDJ-SUEZ earlier than retiring on the finish of this yr.
Throughout that point, the UCI introduced that it had added minimal wage necessities, together with a maternity depart clause and different securities reminiscent of insurance coverage to Girls’s WorldTeam contracts in 2020, though some groups had already been together with these kinds of provisions of their rider contracts earlier than the UCI’s insurance policies.
“I had a comparatively brief profession in skilled biking, however in that point I witnessed large modifications in the sport. The most tangible change has been rider salaries, which have greater than quadrupled for high-value riders in the previous 5 years,” Brown stated.
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“We’re additionally seeing groups with larger assets throughout the board. One in all the greatest modifications has been the improve in broadcast of ladies’s races, which in flip has introduced extra followers to our sport.”
As well as, race organisers who have been a part of the Girls’s WorldTour have been required to supply a minimal of 45 minutes of stay tv protection in the event that they needed to uphold their top-tier standing, bringing extra visibility to girls’s biking than ever earlier than.
The UCI additionally confirmed at a latest WorldTour Seminar held final month in Good, France that it will introduce Girls’s ProTeams in 2025. The three tiers of groups – WorldTeams, ProTeams and Continental Groups – will carry the construction of ladies’s skilled groups according to the lads’s groups.
It additionally confirmed that seven girls’s groups have already utilized for UCI Girls’s ProTeam standing for the primary yr and a few extra groups have already expressed their want to be part of this degree in 2026.
Nonetheless regardless of the numerous enhancements made to the top-tier of ladies’s racing, there have been rising considerations that the underside tier of Continental groups has fallen behind. Continental groups usually are not obliged to pay its riders a minimal wage, though some do.
The 2023 TCA annual survey revealed that among the many second-tier groups, riders who responded to the survey indicated that they “battle to make ends meet”. As well as, those that responded to the survey indicated that “monetary causes” continued to be the primary purpose most girls contemplate leaving the game sooner than deliberate.
“Regardless of the constructive progress of the sport, there are nonetheless some areas which can be lagging behind. We’re significantly conscious that progress at the high doesn’t all the time trickle down,” Brown stated.
“For instance, the situations on Continental degree UCI groups nonetheless depart rather a lot to be desired, with many riders nonetheless with out a wage. We need to ensure this cohort of ladies usually are not left behind, particularly as a result of they’re in an necessary and susceptible improvement part of their careers.”
Brown stated that rider security can also be a primary concern on the forefront of the TCA’s technique for enhancements in girls’s biking.
“With the degree of the girls’s peloton growing annually, the risks of the sport have gotten extra prevalent. That is one thing that each one stakeholders in biking, together with riders, must work collectively on bettering.”
Brown stated that she is dedicated to sustaining a “united voice” throughout all three tiers of ladies’s biking in order that they keep the leverage wanted to barter considerations among the many peloton.
“Additionally it is essential for riders to recognise that simply because the high tier of the sport has seen their circumstances tremendously enhance, it doesn’t imply it’s common. We have to proceed advocating for the situations of Continental degree riders in addition to riders of disciplines apart from street,” Brown stated.
