Guest of the program "It feels good", sports journalist Gérard Holtz details the reasons for the absence of major sports competition in women's cycling in France.
And recalls that a women's Tour de France has existed in the past.
INTERVIEW
The Tour de France remains a men's sporting event.
Journalist Gérard Holtz (who publishes
Légendes du Tour de France, 180 stories to relive the greatest hours of the tour
) explains to Anne Roumanoff's microphone what makes this inequality endure.
>> Find all of Anne Roumanoff's shows in replay and podcast here
The vicious circle of lack of notoriety
According to the former commentator of the Tour de France, the lack of notoriety of women's cycling has several causes, which feed between them.
"It's an equation," he theorizes.
"Women's cycling, for a very long time, didn't have the aura it should have. So the sponsors weren't coming. They didn't have enough money to run an event. And in the end less transcripts. , therefore less audience, etc. "
However, a female equivalent of the Tour de France did exist every year between 1984 and 2009, as Gérard Holtz reminds us.
First "Women's Tour de France", it was then called the Women's Tour de la CEE, then the International Women's Grande Boucle.
"Jeannie Longo won it several times", underlines the journalist.
>> LISTEN ALSO -
Editorial: "The health crisis is taking women's sport down to the bottom"
What organization for a women's Tour de France?
Gérard Holtz believes that it would however be impossible to organize both male and female Tours de France simultaneously.
"We are already blocking the roads from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. just for the boys and the advertising caravan. So we could not lengthen the blockage for the girls. There are 4,500 people in the men's Tour de France. The women's teams should be added. , it could be too much for the hotels on certain stages ”, lists the journalist.
Would the solution be to alternate the men's and women's editions every other year?
"We can imagine a lot of things", boot in touch Gérard Holtz.