Olympics Women's Road Race

[RoadRaven]

I was talking about the fact that a lot of these riders would not be use to the humidity and the bad air quality. When I watched the men a lot of great riders suffered because of the humidity. The girls were perhaps being cautious incase the humidity etc took the same toll on them.

Yeah, I could see wanting to go out as slowly as possible and spend as little time in the red zone with that smog and humidity.

Oh I agree, Hawk. The humidity was awful. And yes, of course, humidity does take a toll on any person, male or female.

However, since both of you raise the mens RR, and both mention humidity, I guess its useful to point out that yes, while I agree that some of the men started to wilt probably because of humidity... they went twice the distance.

The two racing styles (men - "who can I drop?") (women - "I hope I don't get dropped") really bear no comparison. And that is what I was hoping to get into discussion with TEers about.

Why do women's races tend to be so different from men's? I find it so frustrating in more than one way. Its frustrating to watch because it looks slow and boring. Its frustrating to watch because if I, who want to watch, and love cycling, find it boring, than how in heck will women's cycling begin to get a high media profile or high sponsorship like men's?