What Comes After Cancellation for the Women's Tour?
When SweetSpot—the organizers of the UK stage race The Women’s Tour—announced they were sadly canceling this year’s race, it was made very clear that this cancellation would only prove to be a year-long hiatus.
In fact, the very first line of their statement said in bright font and no uncertain terms, “The Women’s Tour, the award-winning and trailblazing cycle race, will take a one-year hiatus in 2023.”
After setting out the series of reasons for the unfortunate cancellation (“a combination in increased running costs… a reduced level of commercial support, and challenges in finding a vehicle partner”) and covering some of the race’s prestigious history and its place in the sport’s evolution, SweetSpot’s public statement concluded with a note about how race organizers are “already working on plans for next year’s edition, which will mark the 10th anniversary of the inaugural Women’s Tour.”
And while announcing next year’s race in a statement canceling this year’s race does cause a healthy bit of skepticism, there are a few reasons to hold out hope that the groundbreaking race will be back in 2024.
According to the statement, a long-term agreement has been in place with the Welsh government to host the race’s Grand Départ while also incorporating the men’s Tour of Britain, a race that is also organized by SweetSpot.
Another hopeful element that we’ll see the Women’s Tour back in 2024 is time.
No doubt SweetSpot had been working behind the scenes to ensure this year’s race would happen. But from the time they came out publicly in early March, stating that they were in danger of canceling the race due to a lack of sponsorship money, to the announcement of a crowdfunding campaign only a week later, to the final word of cancelation, not even a month had passed.
That was not a lot of time to find the reported £500,000 they needed to make the five-day race happen.
Now, armed with a year or more, hopefully SweetSpot can find the sponsorship that was lacking (which included naming rights for three of the race’s four classification jerseys) and a carmaker to pick up the vehicle sponsorship that was left vacant when Czech auto manufacturer Škoda exercised an option in their contract that allowed them to abandon their involvement in the race.
Even if SweetSpot needs to resort to crowdfunding again, perhaps a more concentrated campaign with more enticing rewards than the promise of donors’ names being included on a backer’s wall, would beget more success.
One thing time can’t control is the rising costs of putting the event together, which SweetSpot said played a major role in this year’s cancellation. According to their announcement, this year’s Women’s Tour would cost 20 percent more than the 2022 iteration, which was the first time it was carried live on television.
Granted, the entire world is currently experiencing an era of inflation, which no doubt played a role in the increased costs. Whether that trend continues into next year remains to be seen.
Even for all of the strides women’s racing has made over the last few years—many of which, such as equal pay, the Women’s Tour was directly responsible for—and for all of the international excitement the sport has experienced with the Tour de France Femmes, Strade Bianche Donne, Paris-Roubaix Femmes, and other classics races, this cancellation shows that the women’s sport still has a way to go to get on equal footing with the men’s.
To wit, the Tour of Britain, which is the men’s equivalent of the Women’s Tour, has never had to resort to crowdfunding, never had to scramble for sponsorship dollars, and only canceled its race once. And that was due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Here’s hoping this year’s cancellation on the Women’s Tour was just a bump in the long road to true equality between the men’s and women’s pelotons. And here’s hoping that time is exactly what SweetSpot needs to bring this essential race back in 2024.
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