In an e-mail to Life Time Grand Prix athletes, the race sequence organizers introduced {that a} no-drafting rule won’t be applied this 12 months.
In gravel racing, the lads’s and girls’s fields, elite and novice alike, all sort out the race course across the identical time. This has led to a number of points and controversies, notably for the ladies’s professional subject. For one, the beginning frenzy and mingling fields imply that the riders need to navigate heavy site visitors earlier than they will race their very own race. Secondly, as a result of inter-field drafting is authorized, some ladies riders have capitalized on the presence of male riders to realize 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 realize floor. Whereas this technique is inside the guidelines and has confirmed profitable, it has additionally drawn criticism. Some argue that the present racing format impedes ladies from competing independently, freed from interference or help from different classes.
In an effort to handle the mass begin site visitors, the seven Life Time Grand Prix occasions this 12 months will see separate staging and send-offs for the elite males and elite ladies 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 not less than till the sharp finish of the elite ladies’s subject catches up.
In an effort to generate a extra even enjoying subject – when having a separate race altogether isn’t potential – some riders have referred to 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 dialogue, consultations and deliberation, Life Time immediately 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 are potential to implement over the programs of our occasions totally and pretty,” Life Time’s Advertising and marketing Director Bekah Sands states.
“Whereas this is probably not the choice a few of you had been hoping for, your considerations on enforcement had been heard loud and clear. Ultimately, 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 ladies’s racing by implementing separate begins for the ladies’s professional elite subject 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 sequence, took to social media, writing, “Studying an e-mail like this breaks my coronary heart…
“I really believed [the race organizers] had been going to determine a approach to give the elite ladies a race that will be shielded from begin to end and never permit any males to have an effect on the race dynamics or consequence.”
She expressed gratitude for the separate race begins and elevated time gaps in 2024, but in addition states that an equal race alternative in gravel racing continues 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 disenchanted. I might personally like to have the identical alternative/ expertise that the entrance of the lads’s race will get. Would completely change the dynamic and the ladies would should 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.
