Emma Pooley signals that she may retire from cycling

Women's racing is great to watch - it's fast, plenty of attacks and lots going off, much less of a procession that men's racing can be.

As for the UCI, tather than trying to spread cycling to the outer reaches of god knows where, they should be aggressively promoting women's cycling in the US and Europe - there is a huge market for it. Look at the number of women joing cycling clubs, picking u pthe cycle to work scheme and seeing Emma and the gilrs winning.

As Jeff Banks said on the Cycle Show, making a very valid point, businesses in female specific markets such as make up houses etc should be putting money into this sport, not pratting around and throwing wedges of cash at models who look like they died but forgot to lie down (I paraphrase )

As a male cyclist (mamil), I for one really enjoyed watching the Olympic womens road race and found it comparable if not more entertaining than the mens race. ITV4 could probably do more to promote womens cycling. An example is last years tour series where they only showed a few minutes of the womens races but all of the mens race. Everyone is trying to get more women onto their bikes, so lets give them something to aspire to. Hopefully a new series of The Cycling Show will have more female specific articles.

Surprised the pay is not better, it is all about making money, surely the larger of the untapped markets is the female market. To those who say it is not as exciting as the male equivalent, well it is not you they are targeting. It is to get the increasingly affluent female professional to part with their money on expensive sporting products. It is the flipside of how the cosmetic companies pursued the male market.

Ah She's my new hero. Watching her in the Olympic road race was so inspiring. Powering up the hills. I hope she keeps on racing for a while longer. I'm an aging MTBer and looking to get my first road bike very soon. but finding it very sad how womens road racing is really pushed aside. Viva Women Roadies!

Sudor +1

Someone here previously suggested allowing points earned by women's teams to count on the men's UCI ranking. This could be a great way of encouraging women's racing.

It's a case of market forces - if people want to watch they'll pay and sponsors will follow. It will be the same as will disabled sport: once the euphoria of the Paralympics is over they will be back to performing in front of a handful of spectators and no tv cameras!

I tell you, if a PhD stipend rivals the funding available to women cyclists, the pay level is shocking!

Fast is merely relative and it does not necessarily equate to exiting - You can't tell me hat the women's olympic road race was not great to watch - it was one of the few occasions when we were able to see any women's road racing on the TV at all.

It's not hard to understand WHY women cyclists aren't able to get paid as much for racing as the men.

Quite simply it's because they're not as fast. Therefore it's not as exciting and so nobody wants to watch it. Then because less people are going to watch it sponsors won't make as much money out of it and so won't pay as much.

it makes me angry that there's no minimum wage in women's road cycling and a talent such as Emma Pooley struggles to find a women's team that survives for more than a year. Don't hear much from Pat and the boys at UCI about this sad state of affairs.

Yes Darthshearer get your facts and cycling knowledge up to speed, you seem not to have even read the last comments in the article.

True, but Emma Pooley is a top international, former world champion and stage race winner. Palmares equivalent to almost any Brit male rider except maybe Wiggo or Cav.

Thats a bit of an assumption re the male cyclists.

I am sure there are lads on the domestic scene that are going to have to work!