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Champion mountain biker Ariane Luthi, the three-time winner of the Absa Cape Epic women’ s race, recently made headlines when she declined to compete in the Grabouw leg of the Ashburton National Mountain Bike Series, because of unequal prize money for men and women. The event sponsors, Ashburton Investments, heeded the Team Spur rider’ s call and subsequently announced that prize money will be equal going forward in the series, but many see this as a bigger issue concerning the fight for women’ s equality in the sport.
– BY ROXANNE MARTIN
As a history graduate, Ariane has always taken a keen interest in sociological gender issues, especially when it comes to women participating in sport. She can tell you that women were excluded from the ancient Olympics, and even the first modern Olympics in Athens in 1896 were still all-male. The 1900 Paris Games saw women participate for the first time, in tennis and golf, and there were women involved in the croquet and sailing events as well. Meanwhile, a young Englishwomen named Madge Syers entered the 1902 World Figure Skating Championships and won the silver medal in what had always been an all-male sport. That prompted the International Skating Union to create a separate |
women’ s championship in 1906, which Madge won twice. She then won the gold medal at the 1908 London Olympics, as well as the bronze in the pairs with her husband Edgar.
With each successive Games, more women took part in the Olympics and more sports were added for them, but it took another 20 years for track and field athletics to be opened to women at the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics, as well as gymnastics, and female cyclists had to wait until 1984 before they were given their Olympic chance! So, as Ariane points out, women’ s cycling has only had 33 years on the highest world sporting stage, and it is perhaps understandable that it is not yet as competitive
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NOT BLACK AND WHITE
“ It is a very complex topic, not one that can be a straight comparison between men and women. Prize money is a bonus system, a reward for good performance, and at present, men in cycling races are generally offered a bigger performance incentive than women, owing to the fact that there are more men competing, and because of that the competition is much fiercer,” she says, but is quick to add that the women that are racing at the top level are putting in stellar performances and should be rewarded as such. This was the argument that Ariane originally put to Advendurance, the race organisers of the Ashburton Series, prompting her decision not to ride the race, but having given the issue still more thought, she says she realised that the issue was much more complicated.
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“ I went on a long training ride, where I had time to think about it, how it should be, what I wanted to stand for,” she says.“ I had time to sit with the issue, to reflect on it, but I also realised that most people, race organisers included, don’ t have the same luxury of time to reflect on it, absorb it or process it, like I was able to.” She says it was this ride that allowed her to see the argument from both sides, which has since allowed her to see how much women’ s cycling has going for it, and how far they still need to go.“ We mustn’ t fight, we must understand each other – I need to respect and understand where they are coming from,” says Ariane in her new approach to speaking to organisers.
TIME FOR CHANGE
Ariane explains that this is not a sport where one can compare apples with apples.“ Women will never beat men racing – there are biological reasons for it, including women having less testosterone, and our performance will always be less.” Organisers therefore cannot expect the same level of competition from both sexes, and what should be done is work on making the women’ s race as exciting by taking away forms of unfair advantages or influences, and making it a fair race.
This line of thinking has worked in the Absa Cape Epic, where last year the elite women were given their own start. This changed the women’ s race dramatically, making it much more competitive, because the new start meant that they were on a much more level playing field and this lead to possibly the most exciting women’ s race the Epic has ever seen.“ Before we had separate starts, we would use the mixed start to our advantage, and we used the rules to win, but I didn’ t
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Images: Chris Hitchcock, Cape Town Sport Photography & Courtesy Spur |