Flanders Classics has raised the bar in its daring four-year plan for equality – Closing the Hole – implementing equal prize cash throughout all six of its 2023 Spring Classics races.
The brand new step is due to a renewed partnership (opens in new tab) between Flanders Classics and KPMG and their efforts to professionalize ladies’s biking.
“Final season, we expressed our ambition to supply equal prize cash for all races in 2023. Immediately, we are able to already affirm that may certainly be the case this spring. As of the season’s opening traditional, it will not simply be an ambition however a concrete achievement,” mentioned Tomas Van Den Spiegel, CEO of Flanders Classics, which runs Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, Gent-Wevelgem, Dwars door Vlaanderen, Tour of Flanders, Scheldeprijs and Brabantse Pijl.
“Along with the brand new initiatives in 2023, the overall funding within the challenge already quantities to some €1.6 million,” he mentioned.
Van Den Spiegel mentioned in an interview with Sporza (opens in new tab) that providing equal prize cash throughout occasions was the cherry on prime of the larger image. “We have already been engaged on upgrading the beginning charges, bettering our races and extra media protection and broadcast hours.
“However you may’t get left behind with prize cash, and we need to present that that is the momentum. We need to lead by instance.
“Ladies’s biking was once described by organizers as a value. Immediately it is an funding. We need to be modern, and we need to keep first in our class. And so I believe different organizers will likely be obliged to observe.”
Flanders Classics made a promise to ladies’s biking by its well-known four-year initiative, which goals to deliver visibility and equality to its occasions from the underside up.
It was launched in 2020 in partnership with KPMG to create equality throughout all of its six ladies’s and males’s Spring Classics in three principal areas: stay TV protection, classification on the worldwide calendar and prize cash.
Final yr, Flanders Classics provided €50,000 for ladies’s Tour of Flanders to equal the prize purse of the boys’s race.
Presently, three of Flanders Classics ladies’s occasions are a part of the Ladies’s WorldTour; the newly upgraded Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, Gent-Wevelgem, and Tour of Flanders.
There are then two occasions which might be a part of the ProSeries; Dwars door Vlaanderen, which is a part of the boys’s WorldTour however was denied a license to be a part of the Ladies’s WorldTour for this season, and De Brabantse Pijl. Scheldeprijs stays a 1.1 ladies’s occasion to provide alternatives for the Continental groups to take part, whereas the boys’s occasion is a part of the ProSeries.
“The Tour of Flanders is a Monument, after which you will have €50,000 in prize cash for the boys and the ladies. The winner will get €20,000. Within the different races, a class decrease, it is rather less. These should not the fats pots, it is a surplus. For our six races, that is about €400,000,” Van Den Spiegel defined how the purse was divided.
Stefanie Pauwels, KPMG Head of Gross sales and Advertising and marketing, mentioned that equal pay is about extra than simply the cash and that it has a good higher symbolic worth.
“Further assets are a step towards one of the best circumstances for ladies cyclists, each financially and athletically. To allow them to more and more fulfil their ambition to hone their expertise full-time, excel and go full throttle for a sports activities profession,” Pauwels mentioned.
“The initiative additionally results in a snowball impact: we successfully see different organizations worldwide following the instance of Flanders Classics Ladies, such because the Tour de France, thanks partly to our assist.”
Van Den Spiegel additionally stresses that steps nonetheless must be taken to attain a sustainable enterprise mannequin for ladies’s biking.
“This sport is changing into widespread. There’s a new technology, ladies’s biking is interesting, and the tales are good on their very own. It has an impartial future,” he mentioned.
Flanders Classics can be invested in youth to develop the game from the bottom up. This yr, U17 and U19 feminine riders have an opportunity to compete within the Tour of Flanders Youth Day on Could 21, and U17 and U19 riders will likely be on this system throughout the Gent-Wevelgem race on March 26.
“Up till a number of years in the past, these races had been merely not accessible to younger feminine riders,” Van Den Spiegel mentioned. “Final yr’s Tour of Flanders Youth Day, nevertheless, paved the best way for tomorrow’s expertise to experience their first ‘Ronde’. And we’re persevering with that momentum this yr. Investing early within the careers of younger riders could have a scientific and generational influence on the planet of biking.”
Study extra in regards to the Ladies’s WorldTour in Cyclingnews’ definitive information for 2023, and our complete information to the 2023 Spring Classics. Be a part of Cyclingnews for stay protection of the 2023 Spring Classics, and test in after every race for our full stories, outcomes, galleries, information and options.
