In an e-mail to Life Time Grand Prix athletes, the race collection organizers introduced {that a} no-drafting rule is not going to be applied this 12 months.
In gravel racing, the boys’s and girls’s fields, elite and newbie alike, all deal with the race course across the identical time. This has led to a number of points and controversies, significantly for the ladies’s professional area. For one, the beginning frenzy and mingling fields imply that the riders must navigate heavy visitors earlier than they’ll race their very own race. Secondly, as a result of inter-field drafting is authorized, some girls riders have capitalized on the presence of male riders to achieve a bonus.
An instance of this tactic occurred throughout the 2023 Unbound Gravel race, the place Carolin Schiff capitalized on an acceleration made by Dutchman Ivar Slik to interrupt free from the pack. Likewise, many ladies within the chase behind her additionally used the drafts of males in an effort to achieve floor. Whereas this technique is throughout the guidelines and has confirmed profitable, it has additionally drawn criticism. Some argue that the present racing format impedes girls from competing independently, freed from interference or help from different classes.
In an effort to deal with the mass begin visitors, the seven Life Time Grand Prix occasions this 12 months will see separate staging and send-offs for the elite males and elite girls classes. These time gaps vary from a couple of minutes to a full half hour. That is, nevertheless, most useful for the elite males, whose race is now fully freed from inter-mingling of classes, or no less than till the sharp finish of the elite girls’s area catches up.
In an effort to generate a extra even taking part in area – when having a separate race altogether isn’t potential – some riders have known as on race organizers to implement a no-drafting rule. This rule would prohibit riders from one class to draft off riders from one other class.
After months of debate, consultations and deliberation, Life Time at this time knowledgeable riders {that a} no-draft rule merely isn’t possible.
“…we in the end really feel we can’t implement a set of drafting guidelines which might be potential to implement over the programs of our occasions absolutely and pretty,” Life Time’s Advertising and marketing Director Bekah Sands states.
“Whereas this is probably not the choice a few of you have been hoping for, your issues on enforcement have been heard loud and clear. In the long run, we don’t wish to roll out a rule that we can’t correctly implement throughout our huge programs.”
Sands continued with an assurance that Life Time is devoted to advancing girls’s racing by implementing separate begins for the ladies’s professional elite area in any respect of its occasions with wider time gaps within the occasions forward.
For a lot of riders within the professional peloton, the separate race begins is not sufficient and the announcement got here as a disappointment.
Sofia Gomez Villafañe, a former Unbound winner and defending champion of the Life Time Grand Prix collection, took to social media, writing, “Studying an e-mail like this breaks my coronary heart…
“I actually believed [the race organizers] have been going to determine a strategy to give the elite girls a race that will be shielded from begin to end and never enable any males to have an effect on the race dynamics or end result.”
She expressed gratitude for the separate race begins and elevated time gaps in 2024, but additionally states that an equal race alternative in gravel racing remains to be a methods off.
“I really feel like on the finish of the day it’s only a logistical inconvenience to provide the ladies the race we deserve,” she writes.
Deanna Mayles, one other Grand Prix athlete, echoed Villafañe’s sentiment, writing: “I’m additionally disillusioned. I’d personally like to have the identical alternative/ expertise that the entrance of the boys’s race will get. Would completely change the dynamic and the ladies would must be extra strategic about timing efforts inside their race.”
Notably, the UCI has managed to keep away from this battle from the beginning by having the ladies and men elite fields race on completely different days. Whereas logistical constraints forestall this in any respect occasions, it stays a subject of intense debate as gravel racing continues to professionalize and riders’ careers are at stake.
