Gary Verity, the head of Welcome to Yorkshire, believes that he has a duty and obligation to help grow women’s cycling.
The organiser of the Tour de Yorkshire, and the man responsible for bringing the Tour de France to Britain in 2014, and the World Championships to Yorkshire in 2019, Verity was speaking just before the news broke that the 2018 women’s Tour de Yorkshire would double in size to two days.
“The significant announcement has been the doubling in size of the women’s race. Instead of being a one-day race it will be a two-day women’s stage race. That’s really significant. We want to help grow women’s cycling, and we’re passionate about growing women’s sport. As a father of a 14-year-old girl, I think that’s something I’m duty-bound to do,” Verity told Cyclingnews during the World Championships in Bergen, Norway.
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The women’s race was launched two years ago as a one-day event and ran in conjunction with the men’s three-day event. Since then the event has stepped up another level. Television coverage has increased and the female peloton now races over the same roads as the men.
“We’ve improved things in a number of ways. We’ve increased the media coverage so that there’s the same television coverage for both genders. They do the same parcours, and that happened for the first time in 2017. The biggest thing is perhaps that the prize money is four times bigger for the women’s race. It’s one of the most lucrative events in the women’s calendar and we hope to carry that on in 2018.”
At the same time as announcing the expansion of the women’s race, Verity and his team confirmed that the men’s race would move from three days to four. The race had lobbied for the move since the race's inaugural edition in 2015, and the additional day, Verity believes, gives them scope to attract a better field of world-class sprinters.
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