Organizers of the Tour de France recently equipped that this year, there will likely be no “podium girls” presenting the awards to—and kissing the cheeks of—the winners. As an quite rather a lot of, there will likely be one male host and one female hostess to support hand out the awards after every stage.
Nevertheless the true fact that this is even a headline in 2020 feels laughably out of date. Severely, how has this taken so lengthy to occur?
Podium girls—two classically comely females who stand on either facet of an award winner, planting kisses on his cheeks for a photo opportunity—luxuriate in been a degree of contention within the cycling change for years. Many races luxuriate in opted out of the antiquated tradition, like the Tour Down Underneath, which has junior racers and local celebrities establish the prizes as a replacement. In 2017, the Vuelta a España turned into as soon as the first Enormous Tour to pull the recount. Nevertheless other races, like the Giro d’Italia, luxuriate in kept it alive for plenty too lengthy.
Really, even Amaury Sport Organization (ASO), the firm that owns the Tour de France, has been using a bunch and a hostess, somewhat than podium girls, at other races like Liège-Bastogne-Liège for a protracted time. The group has made announcements within the past about putting off the rostrum girls at the Tour, but no straggle till now.
Useless to order, within the supreme level of cycling organizations, no longer continuously does a pass like this occur simply as a end result of it’s the ‘appropriate thing to gain.’ On this case, this somewhat cynical reporter is speculating that phase of the clarification for ditching the rostrum girls for the Tour is a numbers recreation, lowering the amount of contact with other folks within the center of the coronavirus pandemic by about a. Attributable to screen-wearing and social-distancing techniques in train, the rostrum girls’ job would moreover be in establish aside a query to: Positively no cheek-kissing allowed, and even placing a medal spherical the winner’s neck or helping him into the chief’s jersey is in total frowned upon.
In the event you’re about to respond on Twitter or hop into the comments portion to establish that podium girls are properly-paid and elect to gain the job, mediate all another time. In accordance to The Current York Cases, podium girls traditionally made wherever from $1,100 to $2,200 to your total 23-day Tour, in total working 12-plus hour days. Whereas that would per chance well well also sound like decent money at the outset, it’s value noting that the hourly pay drops properly below minimum wage. Also, the hostess role isn’t going away completely—horny the attire and the cheek kiss.
Let’s dig even deeper into that cost-lowering angle. The organizers are likely losing money this year attributable to a lack of spectators, and while reducing the assortment of hosts and hostesses from four to 2 would per chance well well also no longer seem like plenty, every little bit counts. So are the organizers making a social divulge or simply bowing to the global pandemic?
Whereas we are able to applaud the Tour’s pass to gain away with podium girls, it feels hard to indubitably cheer this construction, brooding about the amount of labor that also wants to be performed to declare extra equality to the Tour.
Tim de WaeleGetty Images
In all likelihood the pass that edges us nearer to valid equality within the sport would be to grant the females of pro cycling a stagger that’s equal to the Tour de France. The closest that exists appropriate now’s La Route by Le Tour de France With FDJ, which is a single-day affair that begins sooner than the males’s stagger on August 29, the first day of the Tour. There are stage races for the pro females’s peloton, obviously, but nothing comes end to the grandeur of the Tour de France.
Rumors luxuriate in been swirling in March that ASO turned into as soon as taking into consideration a females’s stage stagger, so I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed that that line item is subsequent on their ‘issues we’re doing to promote equality in cycling’ checklist.
Changes like this are wanted and relief to root out ways in which sexism is bolstered within the sport. If Components 1 can continue to exist dissolving this system of ‘grid girls,’ indubitably pro cycling will put together without two females kissing a sweaty, exhausted stage winner on the cheek. Yes, it’s a step away from tradition, but brooding about that tradition turned into as soon as one which objectifies females, it’s no longer precisely one to miss.
Nevertheless retract into consideration—if an group’s work in the direction of equality ends with transferring away from awkward cheek kisses at the discontinue of a stage… Effectively, that’s no longer precisely earth-shattering steps forward in females’s construction within the sport of cycling.
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