We often consider professional women’s cycling as a one-step-forward-two-back dance for equality. While the women’s road cycling calendar appears to grow year-on-year with more races, longer distances and more challenging events, there’s still a long way to go when it comes to media coverage and adequate support.

Fortunately, the latest UCI news released last week proudly announces the addition of three new races to the women’s WorldTour calendar for 2018. This bumps race days up from 46 to 52 for the year with the inclusion of the Three Days of de Panne-Koksijde, Emakumeen Bira and Tour of Guangxi.

The Emakumeen Bira will be held in May of 2018 and is well known for being a tough four-stage race in Spain’s Basque country. Since 2016, the race has applied to be a part of the UCI Women’s WorldTour, and it looks as if they’ve finally got the go-ahead.

The Three Days of de Panne has traditionally been a men’s race, however, the men’s 3-day event will drop to 2-days and the women will get a 1-day race for 2018.

The Tour of Guangxi will be a brand new race held in China towards the end of the season. Previously, the Tour of Chongming Island has struggled to attract the top teams with those wanting to recover from Spring Classics.

It’s great to see the women’s WorldTour growing in race days with the competition becoming increasingly more fierce. Let’s hope the growth of the Women’s WorldTour will be reflected by the media so we can actually watch it!

Total Women’s Cycling will endeavour to cover as much of women’s racing as we can. You can check our Race News section for all the latest updates.