Patrick Lefevere has once more come beneath fireplace for controversial remarks, suggesting that introducing a minimal wage for Ladies’s WorldTeams has ‘artificially pushed’ ladies’s biking ahead.
In an interview printed within the Krant van West-Vlaanderen, the Soudal-QuickStep boss says the top-tier of girls’s biking has but to progress sufficient for all its riders to earn a base wage in the identical means as males’s biking.
“I definitely and firmly imagine within the potential of girls’s biking, definitely do not get me flawed, solely for the time being it’s artificially pushed. Take, for instance, the minimal wage: within the WorldTour, it is €60,000 on an annual foundation, the identical quantity as the lads’s. That is not OK,” Lefevere informed Krant van West-Vlaanderen.
“Once more: do not get me flawed, I do not begrudge them, however there are riders who usually are not price that quantity in any respect. Within the Tour [de France Femmes] final 12 months, for instance, they needed to increase the time restrict as a result of in any other case, half the peloton would have arrived exterior the time restrict. Absolutely you do not pay somebody who cannot compete, €60,000? There are definitely riders who earn that quantity, and a few way more, however as we speak the highest in ladies’s biking is simply not broad sufficient to justify that minimal wage.”
The UCI launched minimal salaries for Ladies’s WorldTeams in 2020, which was a vital step as a part of its reforms to assist enhance the general progress and professionalisation of girls’s biking. This step has allowed extra ladies athletes to coach and race full-time, resulting in the general development in depth of the ladies’s area a the highest degree. There are at present 15 WorldTeams which might be obliged to pay their riders a minimal wage.
57 Continental groups usually are not obliged to pay a base wage, though a few of the higher-ranked groups at present do.
The minimal wage for Ladies’s WorldTeams has elevated to €32,102 (employed) / €52,647 (self-employed) in 2023. Nevertheless, that base wage quantity doesn’t equal what males earn for racing on the WorldTour.
Lefevere appeared to have restricted information of the wage scales and historic inequities between males’s and ladies’s biking, revealing that he thought-about partnering with a ladies’s staff, which has now grown to change into AG Insurance coverage-Soudal-QuickStep, when he discovered that some ladies athletes earn as little as €250 a month.
“That is not attainable, is it? Then I made a decision I needed to do one thing … Should you do it, do it nicely. In any other case, it is higher to not begin. It can take time, and now we have to construct, however in time we will likely be on the high with the ladies,” Lefevere informed Krant van West-Vlaanderen.
Cyclingnews printed a in-depth article, Racing under the breadline: The ladies’s biking omertà, which detailed the challenges that many ladies athletes who do not earn a correct wage face in biking, together with working one or two further jobs with a view to make ends meet. This typically implies that they can not prepare and race in the identical full-time capability as those that earn a minimal wage do on the WorldTour.
As well as, The Cyclists’ Alliance annual survey in 2020 concluded that 25% of feminine skilled riders earn zero wage.
Lefevere, who owns and operates the lads’s WorldTour staff Soudal-QuickStep, got here beneath fireplace in 2021 when he eschewed the concept of beginning a ladies’s staff in an interview with members of the media forward of the UCI Street World Championships in Flanders. Within the interview with Het Laatste Nieuws Sportscast, Lefevere acknowledged that he was “not the welfare” and had “no expertise, time, cash or need to take a position” in ladies’s biking.
Regardless of his controversial remarks, Lefevere moved into ladies’s biking with Experza, an organization he co-owned, sponsoring the event staff NXTG in 2022. The identical firm additionally helped kickstart the ladies’s staff Experza-Footlogix in 2018.
Managed by founder Natascha den Ouden, the staff added AG Insurance coverage as a title sponsor on a long-term deal by means of 2025. They acquired one of many coveted wildcard invites to the Tour de France Femmes final 12 months as a growth staff, guided by director Jolien D’hoore, and completed nineteenth within the UCI World Rating amongst a few of the finest groups on the planet.
The staff has shortly grown right into a three-tier ladies’s biking programme this 12 months; under-19, under-23 and an elite staff – AG Insurance coverage-Soudal Fast-Step. Reflecting their relationship with Lefevere’s WorldTeam, the elite squad has a Continental licence and is scheduled to compete in lots of the largest races together with Spring Classics corresponding to Paris-Roubaix Femmes.
The staff additionally goals for a future place within the Ladies’s WorldTour. This 12 months, they’ve signed a sequence of proficient riders, together with Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio and Lotta Henttala, who not too long ago completed second place behind former world champion Elisa Balsamo (Trek-Segafredo) within the first two phases on the Setmana Valenciana.
Lefevere acknowledged that his long-term purpose for AG Insurance coverage-Soudal-QuickStep is to compete on the highest degree {of professional} biking. Nevertheless, in his interview with Krant van West-Vlaanderen, he appeared to have little regard for his staff and gave them little credit score for his or her successes on the worldwide calendar.
“In the long term, I additionally need to compete on the high in ladies’s biking. In spite of everything, I am unable to afford to be world high with my males’s staff and trip simply in entrance of the broom wagon with my ladies’s staff.”
