I fell in love with the Tour de France when I was 10. I learned a lot from watching that race. I learned my first French words: peloton, tête de la course, maillot jaune. I learned, from following British riders with hope, not expectation, the true meaning of “it’s not the winning, it’s the taking part that counts”. I learned what it meant to cheat and lie. In 1995, as Fabio Casartelli careered down that mountain, I learned what death looked like. And I learned what, in the sport’s eyes, was the fundamental difference between men and women.
In all the years of avidly following the Tour, I never saw a female rider or heard a female commentator. As the campaign for a female Tour builds momentum, I’ve learned there was a women’s race – the Tour de France Féminin – but I had never heard about it.
I saw lots of women, though. They stood anonymously on the podium every day, wearing dresses that matched the colours of the jersey the rider that had won. Sometimes, the theme extended to their stiletto heels or possibly an elaborate bow in their hair. They were immaculate and smiled gracefully as the winning rider took to the stage and raised his arms in victory, kissed him on each cheek and dressed him in his winning colours. I would like to think, as I was growing up, that I watched those podium presentations and precociously demanded to know why they happened; why I never saw women racing, or commentating, or taking a prominent role in the organising committee. But I didn’t. I plied my dad with questions about the race, the rules, the doping, but I never found the idea of podium girls strange. And, despite my love of the Tour, my fascination with it, I never once considered taking up the sport myself.
Cycling has changed a lot over the years, but the podium girls have remained a constant. The Tour de France Féminin was cancelled after 2009 and its last winner, Britain’s Emma Pooley, is now one of the athletes behind calls for a new women’s Tour. Equal pay seems like a far-off dream: in her retirement speech, Nicole Cooke spoke of the numerous times she was forced to take employers to court to fight for the money owed to her, or sponsors dropped out, leaving her riding for free.
Critics say there is no interest in women’s racing, hence the lack of sponsors. After seeing the crowds who turned out to watch the women’s Olympic road race last summer, the excitement that surrounded riders such as Nicole Cooke, Victoria Pendleton, Laura Trott and many others, I know that isn’t true. Christian Prudhomme, the director of the Tour de France, has already dismissed the idea, citing the size of the men’s race. All this is no more than the inevitable consequence of change and if there’s one thing the cycling world is crying out for, it’s change.
The Tour de France I grew up with was, for the most part, fictional. I watched my heroes fall with depressing regularity – Richard Virenque, Marco Pantani, Jan Ullrich, David Millar. By the time Lance Armstrong began to rise, I had learned how to be cynical. The feats of endurance I had watched for so many years were as fake as the podium girls’ fixed smiles.
This isn’t to say that female riders equals less doping. But the fictional world the Tour has protected so fiercely for so long has relied on these idealised gender roles. Everyone was playing their part. “They asked me about my endurance level,” a podium girl told the New York Times. “If I could smile, even if I’m tired.” Armstrong told Oprah in January: “It was this mythic, perfect story. And it wasn’t true.”
It’s up to people on the outside – spectators, organisers, sponsors – to keep perspective. To know that doping is cheating. That victories, like looks, aren’t everything. Men can achieve more than gritting their teeth and driving their broken, poisoned bodies over the finish line first. Women can do more than kiss cheeks and smile.
After last year’s Olympics, Bradley Wiggins donated some of his prize money towards the formation of a British female cycling team, and maybe that was the start of something. Breeze, the grassroots campaign to encourage more British women to take up cycling, is just beginning. If there isn’t to be a women’s Tour de France, perhaps the women’s Tour of Britain – already planned for 2014 – is where the future lies.
But when it comes to making a more equal Tour de France, some big changes are needed. Retiring the podium girl tradition is a small one. It won’t do anything for female cycling itself, but it will be one more way for the Tour to distance itself from an era and culture that it is, in all other ways, pedalling away from as fast as its legs can carry it.
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