No live television meant no video immediately post-race. When we update with quotes from Elisa and Jolien, we’ll add in the video that should be available pretty shortly here. Stay tuned!

Hi Natalia - I don’t know enough to fully explain the situation, but I can tell you with a reasonable amount of confidence that is completely false that the UCI does not hold back live footage to avoid losing potential viewers for their YouTube videos. I attended the women’s cycling seminar in Siena, and from that, I know the UCI is actively involved and invested in getting live women’s racing in front of as many eyes as possible.

Hi,
Picking this thread up late but perhaps I can add something to this. We are the company which currently produces the UCI videos of the Women’s Road World Cup. Firstly rhere is no conflict between us and any host broadcaster and no one is standing in the way of live coverage of Women’s races. The problem is entirely down to money and in some cases the perception from Broadcasters that there is not enough interest in the Women’s races to justify the costs and airtime involved. In many cases they are right much though we’d all like that to be different. The truth is that cycling as a whole be it Men’s or Women’s struggles to get a big enough audience to justify the huge costs of covering it. Obviously the interest varies from country to country, different host broadcasters will come to different decisions.

The idea of “splicing” between the two races sounds simple but the reality is very different. To cover the women race live would require a minimum of 2 motorbike mounted cameras. These would have to be live linked which means that each bike must have an accompanying helicopter. These signals must then be beamed back to a receive point on separate frequencies to this e being used for the men’s race. All of that and the feeds from the men’s race cameras then go into a production vehicle where a director must select which image to show at any one time. For the Men’s Tour of Flanders he is already looking at 35 cameras. So it’s no easy thing to suggest that he can just have a few more to look at. To make sense of the races someone would have to be across the details of each race and know when something important was happening. On screen graphics would need to be doubled in terms of personnel. None of this is impossible but it’s not easy and it’s certainly not cheap. The big risk would be that you’d end up with neither race getting satisfactory coverage. Or the Women’s race would get a few cursory minutes of attention - say the top of the Kwaremont and Paterberg and the finish. A step up from what’s there at the moment admittedly but still not a proper coverage and all done at at detriment to the coverage of the men’s race. What happens if the Men’s race favourite crashes at the same moment as the Women’s race finishes? In the end no one would be happy.

Specifically in the case of Flanders, I know that the host broadcaster would cover the women’s race live if it was held on the Saturday, but this would have implications for the sportive event (both very popular and extremely lucrative for the organisers) and it might mean that the crowds out round the route wouldn’t be the same as a race on Sunday.

So no easy solution. The answer is to attract more sponsorship income that will pay for increased TV costs but that will only come with increased exposure which means more time on TV etc. We also have to make it as easy as possible for sceptical TV executives to get coverage of Women’s racing and discover that they can get an audience for it. That’s what we have been trying to do with the current UCI shows - make a properly produced highlights show that any broadcaster in the world is happy to transmit. Hopefully they will be encouraged to want more. Initially probably a longer highlights show but with a few live races in the mix as well. There’s also a growing online audience and as we move to a world where most of us get our TV that way then hopefully we’re positioning Women’s cycling to be in the forefront of that transition. There are no quick fixes, it’s going to take time and everyones cooperation, but things are moving in the right direction

I think the next step realistically is to try to get same day highlights coverage. this in itself would require a significant increase in TV budget but it is perhaps more attainable.