Tour de France organisers ASO considering women's Tour

Bring it on - exciting women's racing. Certainly it would need to tick a few boxes, but I'd love to be able to see the likes of Marianne Vos, Pooley, Armistead, Bronzini, Abbott and others slog it out in the biggest arenas of cycling - just imagine Vos going through Dutch corner on Alpe d'Huez!

Simultaneous racing broadcast would not work imo - too many things happening at the same time (hopefully!) - I'm already shouting at the tv when we're being shown the back of the peloton for no good reason. Also worth bearing in mind that even the most committed cycling fans usually only get away with hogging the TV for so long....a highlights programme dedicated to the women's race, similar to what ITV4 do now would certainly work for me. Dedicated live coverage of a women's stage on the men's rest days - even they can join in watching and cheering on. Short punchy stages where the racing is on from the start, and please no prologues.

Why not add some new techy features to the women's races - bike/helmet cameras, live HR/power data, even a mid stage wheelie competition.

The women's Giro is a week or so long, so no need to necessarily contemplate a 3 week tour.

What's not to like? It would transform women's cycling and certainly attract more female youngsters into the sport.

Have to disagree I'm afraid. A successful Women's TdF might show RAI that the Giro Rosa was, in terms of advertising revenue, worth showing on TV. More TV coverage means more sponsors for the event itself, enabling more stages, more TV time, and so on.

I am not against having a female tour de France.

More against having it take priority above all the other races which have stayed loyal to the women's circuit over the years, even through some financial hardships and losing money hand over fist.

Its these races that need to be rewarded first and foremost with the support of the female ranks, get them to a level where we can have them live on TV, highlights shows and out there in the general media, not just dedicated cycling media.

Then and ONLY then, should we all be calling for a female tour de France.

Why should the ASO be the ones to profit, which in all likely hood would see other female races lose out to sponsorship as they all jump ship and back the "biggest" race out there, the TdF.

Instead of seeing it as a great leap forward, I see it as a step backwards. It would take years to rebuild the potential damage caused by just setting up this ONE race.

Can no-one but me see this coming?

Agreed. A bit of a captive audience would be a good thing. If the women's FA cup final was in front of the same audience earlier in the day it would only improve the respect for women's football too.

It's more of a 'why not?' than a 'can't be done.' situation - regardless of the stats.

I'm looking forward to it. There's nothing to fear but fear itself. Unless one's the type of bloke with a fear of women of course...

Wow. There is a lot of negativity here - I think it's a great idea.

Two races for the price of one, but I'd set the girls off first. Give them three hours head start to clear the course (not that they'll need it) and let the caravan go off even early. Then you can have a lot of fans building up to the women's race and then men's. I've stood by the roads to watching before, and frankly the more racing the better.

It would be great if they could double it up on the day, more racing fun to watch. Maybe it would pull in higher viewership numbers combined.

I spent 4 very enjoyable (albeit BORING, HOT and SUNBURNT) hours waiting to see Jens go up Semnoz followed by the peloton, but not first without being pelted by *crap* from the Caravane.

I don't think I could manage a total 8 hours waiting to see the girls go by too.

The women need to stop trying to "instantly" create an event by tagging onto the TdF, but create an event they can call their own. Whether it co-insides timing wise with the TdF is not the issue, it's rather creating a Tag-Along event that will be dismissed, doing it a disservice, as it has done in the past.

Cheers, I knew about the UCI press one, here http://www.uci.ch/Modules/ENews/ENewsDetails.asp?source=SiteSearch&id=OD...

I think I'll stick to what I can find on BARB as official enough

Sorry Gkam, my scources for viewing figures are media articles, usually in The Guardian, that attribute their figures to BARB. The figures The Guardian gave for the Men's Road Race and Time Trial, and the Women's Sprint and Omnium, tally with the figures the UCI gave in their Press release of the 18th of August last year, so I would suggest that BARB's overnight figures are the closest thing to "Official" that we have.

Cheers Rumpo, did they give peaks out for the TT's aswell?

Also, do you have a link or any documentation from BARB on these peaks that I could use?

Are there collated figures from UCI/IOC?

I mean it is strange just to look at British viewing figures for such international events if you really want to try and gauge how popular something would be.

Its BARB I have been using and cannot find the 7.6 million.

I only find those numbers above and then for the TT's (Held on the same day)

I find Mens PEAK. 5.61 million, Avg 4.1 million and 6.2 million watched Wiggo get the Gold presentation,

Women's 1.45 mil

The 7.6 million (peak) figure is from the British Audience Research Bureau. It includes 0.8 million watching on BBC3.

PLEASE, tell me where everyone is getting this 7.6 million figure from?

I've been researching things for a blog post about this bloody petition and only find official figures of

3.73 million for the womens race
3.64 million for the mens race