By Shelby Reardon,Steamboat Pilot & Today
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS — Pro women cyclists have less than half the opportunities to compete in stage races than men pro cyclists.
Pro women don’t make nearly as much money as pro men cyclists, and when a woman wins a race, she doesn’t earn anywhere near the same amount as a man who won a similar race.
The Colorado Classic wants to change that.
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The 2019 version of the four-stage race will only feature female riders and begins in Steamboat Springs on Thursday, Aug. 22. When the race was created in 2017, there were four men’s stages and two women’s stages and in 2018, both men and women had four stages.
“As we looked at 2019 and thought what the Colorado Classic was going to look like in the upcoming year, we really kept coming back to this: What if we just did a women’s race? What if we dropped men and only focused on women?” said Lucy Diaz, COO of RPM Events Group, which puts on the race. “In previous years, while we did have women’s racing, it was really a plus-one to the men’s sport.”
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