An established and adept journalist and author, and one of the main voices of women’s cycling, Suze Clemitson is a voice worth listening too. Her book, 100 Tours, 100 Tales, followed each of the 100 Tour de France events, and is based on her award winning blog. She writes regularly for The Guardian,

If the name sounds particularly fresh in your memory, it’s because she wrote an excellent piece in The Guardian recently regarding the shocking image a cycle race used to advertise their event. The poster was subsequently pulled from circulation.

“To get a better women’s cycling media we first need to improve the worth of women’s cycling. We need equal prize money to give the sport equal value and a minimum wage that allows women to consider professional cycling as a viable option.

Improve the depth and talent of the women’s peloton and you have an even more compelling sport for fans, for sponsors and for the media. If men’s World Tour teams were mandated to run women’s teams and World Tour events mandated to run women’s events we might finally break the vicious circle that the media like to use as an excuse to not cover the women’s sport.

There’s a strong argument for women’s cycling being used as a test bed for innovation that can then transfer to the men’s sport – and that could and should also apply to media. Women’s cycling media has, by necessity, been very much from the grassroots with passionately informed commentators like Sarah Connolly leading the way with her integrated use of social media to provide a 360 picture of the women’s sport and her patreon website is a really interesting funding model. And of course sites like Total Women’s Cycling and Cyclingtips, who’ve just appointed a women’s cycling editor.

The drive for a better women’s cycling media will come from fans and from social media.

We also need to change the media perception of women in cycling, which is where equipment retailers and local clubs can all play their part in ‘normalising’ the idea of women on bikes. We need less fauxrage over non-issues like the Bogota Humana kit and more examination of the actual issues of the way cycling media uses images of naked women in body paint, for example.

And I would love to see some of the ‘big interviews’ with the stars of the women’s sport in mainstream media – invariably done by men – coming from a dual perspective.

That’s not to suggest that there should be some kind of journalistic apartheid but unless we have more women’s voices in mainstream cycling media we run the risk of always seeing the women’s sport through the male gaze.”