For the first time in the UCI Road World Championships history, under-23 women will compete for world titles as part of combined events held within the elite women’s time trial and road races in Wollongong, Australia.
While the sport’s governing body hails the addition of the two new rainbow jerseys as a step toward parity, others view it as a missed opportunity to go the total distance and offer a standalone time trial and road race for the under-23 women’s category.
Mountain biking and cyclo-cross disciplines have paved the way for young female athletes with an under-23 women’s category and world titles available at the World Championships. However, road racing has lagged by not creating a standalone category for its young female riders exiting the junior ranks at age 18.
Until this year, the UCI had not offered specified road race and time trial categories, world titles, or gold medals for under-23 women, a category that was introduced for the under-23 men in 1996. Nor does it provide an under-23 women’s category of events on its national calendar, as it does an under-23 men’s category.
In a wide-ranging feature published ahead of the World Championships in 2021, Cyclingnews examined the importance of adding a standalone under-23 women’s category to the Worlds schedule and highlighted the need to create a bridge for riders to develop during their formative years between racing ages 19-22.
We also considered how excluding this category for women from the World Championships and Nations Cup could result in a loss of visibility, reducing the potential for funding, contracts, development and opportunity, and how it has led to athletes quitting the sport.
The UCI later announced that the first-ever under-23 women’s time trial and road race world champions would be crowned at the Wollongong Worlds. However, in what some deem a controversial move, there would be no standalone races for the category.
UCI President David Lappartient defended the introduction of combined elite and under-23 events, noting it as the first step in what he referred to as a ‘transition measure’ toward eventually creating dedicated under-23 women’s categories in 2025.
The plans attracted widespread criticism from within the women’s peloton, with Australia’s Sarah Gigante, 21, saying that combining the elite and under-23 women’s events was “completely unfair.”
In addition, New Zealand’s Niamh Fisher-Black, 22, questioned the logic of the race within a race format. “If you’re going…
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