Title IX, giving opportunities for American female students, became law the spring of my senior year in high school. While some sports, such as professional tennis, offer the same prize money to men and woman, cycling unfortunately is a very different story.
From the New York Times:
Women’s Pro Teams Struggle for Recognition
SANTA ROSA, Calif. — Five hours before the Tour of California’s caravan of bikes, vans and team cars headed into this city Sunday for the finish of Stage 1, a group of women’s cyclists prepared for its own race here.
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Courtenay Morgan Redis for The New York Times
From left, Team TIBCO’s Lauren Tamayo, Amber Rais and Brooke Miller.
Those women grabbed their bikes from atop their team van as rain fell sideways. They changed into their cycling clothes in a parking lot, first pulling on skirts so they could remain decent while slipping into their shorts.
They held a team meeting inside a van, squeezing inside the cluttered space stuffed with helmets, handlebars, drink packets and luggage.
As simple and as spartan as most of the women’s teams here, Team TIBCO, a professional cycling team based in California’s Silicon Valley, readied itself for the Tour of California’s women’s criterium, an hourlong race through downtown.
Emilia Fahlin of Team Columbia-Highroad later won the race, several hours before Rock Racing’s Francisco Mancebo finished first in Stage 1 of the men’s race to take the leader’s jersey from Fabian Cancellara, who had dropped out with a fever. Levi Leipheimer, the two-time defending champion, was in second place over all, 1 minute 2 seconds off the lead, and David Zabriskie was third, 1:03 back. Lance Armstrong was fifth, 1:05 back.
The men’s and women’s races each took place in chilly, wet weather, but that might have been the only similarity.
“You could look at the men’s teams and their entourages and fancy equipment and get pretty jealous,” said Brooke Miller, the women’s defending champion, who finished 15th after an equipment malfunction. “But this is just the usual for women’s cycling. The truth is, there’s a big disparity between the women and the men. We’re very, very different.”
Among women’s cycling teams, which often struggle for sponsorship and recognition, Team TIBCO separates itself for another reason: 6 of its 13 riders have postgraduate degrees.
The 32-year-old Miller, the team leader, has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of California, Santa Cruz. On her Web site, she describes herself as “a nerd and a jock — a rare combination of unadulterated dork who exercises their body into a fine-tuned machine.” For fun, she dabbles in software development.
Amber Rais, 27, is a former swimmer at Stanford, where she earned a master’s degree in oceanography. She has since started her own environmental consulting firm. Alison Rosenthal, 32, a rider on TIBCO’s development team, works 80-hour weeks as the manager of mobile business development for Facebook. She has an M.B.A. from Stanford.
“Our dinner conversations are probably not very normal compared to the ones other teams have,” said Lauren Tamayo, who finished second to Fahlin on Sunday. “Brooke wrote her thesis on banana slugs, so we get a lot of information about mating habits of banana slugs. You know, just the usual stuff you talk about around the table.” (Miller clarified that the topic of her doctoral thesis was “sexual conflict in banana slugs.”)
But the women find time to talk about cycling, too. Most have goals of making the Olympics. Miller has devoted herself to training. She lives in a friend’s dining room, draping a bed sheet across the room for privacy. She said the salary she draws from cycling was so low it was basically, “You eat what you kill.”
“Our lives are pretty balanced compared to the men,” said Miller, who received a four-year volleyball scholarship from the University of California at Berkeley, where she received a bachelor’s degree in integrative biology.
“People often ask why women’s cycling isn’t bigger,” she said. “I say it’s just because we don’t get enough opportunity to show what we could do.”
Bob Stapleton, the owner of Team Columbia-Highroad, has long been a champion of women’s cycling in the United States. He and his wife, Tess, have supported a women’s team since 2002; it has evolved into Team Columbia, which won 68 of 130 races last season — more than any other women’s program.
Stapleton stood in the driving rain Sunday, water dripping from his hat. His men’s team was already on the road, heading from Davis to Santa Rosa, but Stapleton declined to follow the men’s race. He cheered the women instead.
In his women’s team, he sees a perfect opportunity for marketing and sponsorships. Still, he says, he has had to underwrite his women’s team from its inception. He estimated that the salaries for members of the women’s team ranged from “a jersey and a bike” to about $100,000 a year. Men’s salaries are from $45,000 to more than $2.5 million.
“For me, the women are the best part of the sport because they do it because they love it, not for the money,” he said. “It’s not complicated and it’s not filled with big shots or big egos. We just need more exposure.”
Linda Jackson, the team director for Team TIBCO, started her cycling team in 2005 to give women the opportunity to follow in her footsteps.
Jackson, who has an M.B.A. from Stanford, began cycling when she was in her 30s and working as an investment banker. She said she would train in the morning, then rush to the office, driving there in her sweaty cycling gear. While in traffic, she would change into her business suit, nylons and all, and try to apply her makeup without poking out an eye. Once at work, she would sneak to a nearby gym to shower. After lunch, she sometimes rented a booth in a tanning salon for 20 minutes, just to nap.
At 35, she quit the job to train for the Olympics. It was worth it. She made the Canadian cycling team for the 1996 Games.
“When I’m 80 or 90 years old, am I going to remember some I.P.O. or M. & A. deal? No, I’m going to remember the Olympics,” she said. “I’m trying to help these women have the same chance.”
Jackson is now trying to secure enough sponsorship money — hundreds of thousands of dollars — to send the team to European races. That would put them in the pool to make the 2012 or 2016 Games, she said.
Rosenthal, the Facebook executive, is considering training full time for the next Olympics. For now, she fits in her training at 4:45 a.m., before heading to work.
“I like the balance in my life,” she said.
But sometimes it can be hectic.
An hour after the race ended, she waited for a car that was scheduled to take her to the airport. She was headed to Barcelona for a weeklong business trip.
