Not too long ago retired from skilled biking, Grace Brown has stepped right into a new position because the president of The Cyclists’ Alliance (TCA) and has highlighted security, salaries, and honest working circumstances as only a few of the areas by which she is going to assist the organisation proceed its work to enhance throughout ladies’s biking.
Brown retired from the game in 2024 after certainly one of her most profitable seasons the place she gained 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 current Q&A on TCA’s Instagram feed, Brown defined that shifting into her new position 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, ladies’s sports activities and gender fairness. The position of president was the excellent alternative for me to proceed having a constructive influence on ladies’s skilled biking, regardless of stepping away from racing,” she mentioned.
Ladies’s biking has seen important enchancment since Brown signed her first skilled contract to race beneath 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 equivalent to insurance coverage to Ladies’s WorldTeam contracts in 2020, though some groups had already been together with these kind 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 big 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 mentioned.
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“We’re additionally seeing groups with better assets throughout the board. Certainly one of the greatest modifications has been the enhance in broadcast of girls’s races, which in flip has introduced extra followers to our sport.”
As well as, race organisers who have been a part of the Ladies’s WorldTour have been required to supply a minimal of 45 minutes of dwell tv protection in the event that they wished to uphold their top-tier standing, bringing extra visibility to ladies’s biking than ever earlier than.
The UCI additionally confirmed at a current WorldTour Seminar held final month in Good, France that it might introduce Ladies’s ProTeams in 2025. The three tiers of groups – WorldTeams, ProTeams and Continental Groups – will carry the construction of girls’s skilled groups according to the boys’s groups.
It additionally confirmed that seven ladies’s groups have already utilized for UCI Ladies’s ProTeam standing for the primary yr and a few further groups have already expressed their want to be a part of this stage in 2026.
Nonetheless regardless of the numerous enhancements made to the top-tier of girls’s racing, there have been rising issues that the underside tier of Continental groups has fallen behind. Continental groups will not be 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 cause most girls think about 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 at all times trickle down,” Brown mentioned.
“For instance, the circumstances on Continental stage UCI groups nonetheless depart rather a lot to be desired, with many riders nonetheless with no wage. We need to ensure that this cohort of girls will not be left behind, particularly as a result of they’re in an essential and weak growth section of their careers.”
Brown mentioned that rider security can also be a most important concern on the forefront of the TCA’s technique for enhancements in ladies’s biking.
“With the stage of the ladies’s peloton growing annually, the risks of the sport have gotten extra prevalent. That is one thing that every one stakeholders in biking, together with riders, have to work collectively on enhancing.”
Brown mentioned that she is dedicated to sustaining a “united voice” throughout all three tiers of girls’s biking in order that they preserve the leverage wanted to barter issues among the many peloton.
“It’s also essential for riders to recognise that simply because the high tier of the sport has seen their circumstances significantly enhance, it doesn’t imply it’s common. We have to proceed advocating for the circumstances of Continental stage riders in addition to riders of disciplines aside from highway,” Brown mentioned.