Although there remains a lot of work to be done in providing women's racing with the same opportunities as the men, the sport has come a long way in equality from its early days, when an openly chauvinistic attitude toward female athletes saw women riders treated as a novelty or shunned from participation completely. While that attitude still exists in some quarters of the sport, momentum is building among the voices trying to quash it.
For women racing in the 1980s and early 1990s, however, competing in the boys' club could be like stepping into a '70s spaghetti western, where rules were fluid, deals were never certain, alliances changed quickly, and friends of the moment could be hard to find when things got rough.
That's the world that American and three-time Olympian Inga Thompson found herself in when she ventured to Argentina in 1991 with a teammate, their sketchy Russian director, and too much competitiveness for a local race promoter's comfort.
ADVERTISEMENT
Same as it ever was
To say the structure of cycling and race schedules was a tad bit looser in the early 1990s would be an understatement of epic proportions; opportunities for women could be almost non-existent at times on the calendar. So Thompson and teammate Marion Clignet travelled far afield looking for competition that would allow them to keep their fitness high and hone their pack skills.
That's how they found themselves in South America in the winter of 1991, racing with large fields in men's races that challenged their racing abilities and nerve – and not just on the bike. Everyday was an adventure, and sometimes the racing was interesting, too.
Thompson and Clignet got a taste of how fast things could go sideways during one trip while travelling through Argentina from one race to another. A simple border crossing quickly turned complicated when the pair were stopped by a group of border patrol officers who promptly put them in a sod jail and demanded ransom.
And you may find yourself...
Letting the days go by
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
via Cyclingnews Latest Interviews and Features http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/once-upon-a-time-in-the-west-inga-thompsons-south-american-adventure
No comments:
Post a Comment