Some of our top junior girls are able to compete and win against the seniors at the very highest domestic level. The recent Tour of the Reservoir, a grueling two-stage Women’s Road Series event saw a number of riders from the British Cycling academy programme fighting it out for podium positions. But the academy program is highly selective, and designed specifically to identify and develop the very best riders. It’s an effective if sometimes ruthless system that sees only a very few junior girls awarded academy places and the accompanying high levels of support that come with it.

So Tim and I spent an hour in the South East sunshine, watching the girls training and pouring over ways to make it happen considering everything from stand-alone events to piggybacking races onto the existing junior boys series of races. We considered the counter argument for a stand-alone junior girls’ series that the best way to develop young riders is to ride with a higher standard of racer, i.e. the seniors, and that any series with low numbers of entrants and little support would surely just identify the lack of interest that many against the idea believed there was for such a series?

In plain English organisers would have to be willing to take a leap of faith on it

Eventually we came up with some agreed and clearly defined targets of what success would look like, a short series of junior women only road races plus a stand-alone national championship event (the current unfathomable set-up sees a small number of juniors racing with the seniors in a National Road Series event) run by a handful of dedicated organisers interested more in the development of women’s racing than the income generated from the events. In plain English organisers would have to be willing to take a leap of faith on it. The series’ events would need to be aggressively promoted and most importantly of all, the girls would have to have a majority stake in the ownership of it.

A few key posts on social media put the idea out there and we sat back to wait for the responses and suggestions to come in. Jayati Hine, a stalwart of the youth scene with RST and this season a junior with Velosport issued a well argued plea for a stand alone junior’s series and created a petition to back it which was quickly signed with over 1000 names. You can read it here, its currently up at around 1620 signatures from a wide range of riders, parents, organisers and anybody concerned by the disparity in opportunities for junior women in road racing.

The race that made history

Skip forward 4 months and I’m on the side of the road at the first of those races, the Mark Botteley organized Bourne Wheelers event, the first ever junior only women’s road race held on the UK’s roads. It is 27degrees, there are almost 50 riders in the peloton (from an initial entry of 56) and the notion that these girls would be better off in their development racing solely with seniors is quite simply an insult to their capabilities. They are knocking seven kinds of hell out of each other in a display of attacking racing that makes the event look more like a continental classic than a UK women’s road race.

In a senior’s road race, on restricted gears, only the very strongest of juniors can influence the race, which is why a lot of them simply don’t enter. Some often feel too intimidated to actively attack the seniors by the very fact that they are juniors in a seniors’ event opting instead to sit in the wheels and get little more out of it than a kind of motor-paced effort getting dragged along by the bunch.

This they can do easily and it contributes little to their development. They have copious time and experience of bunch riding from their days on RSRs and their bunch handling skills and tactical nous would put many of their senior counterparts to shame. A junior only race gives them a level playing field to develop their race craft, somewhere they can practice those skills. A week ago a lot of the riders in today’s race quite comfortable sat in a bunch of seniors for all three days of the Bedford Women’s Team Series race. Here, after 2 laps of dizzying attack and counter attack half of them were off the back of the lead group as the stronger riders put the attacking moves in at the sharp end of the race.

Where are we now?

The race proved a massive success, demonstrating that the interest is there and with the right organisers and promotion, well attended, credible road races for junior women can work. Feedback from the riders and parents has been very positive. In a way it’s not even about the risers who attended that first race, they are the ones we already know will support and continue to race. Rather, its about all the youth riders who attend the Circuit Series and regional races the length and breadth of the country feeling that they’ll have a credible junior series which allows them to continue racing when they turn 16.

It’ll live or die by the number of attendee… but it’s a start.

We’re under no illusions moving forward. This is purely a feasibility study into whether a junior women’s series can exist and grow in a way the junior men’s series has, and eventually be sanctioned by BC. It’ll live or die by the number of attendees and feeding into that we’ll need to develop and nurture strong supporting youth/junior programs locally, in the various regions, but it’s a start.