The obvious disparity between men and women’s athletics is no more apparent than in basketball. This history of the sport has some interesting parallels with cycling, as well as some lessons for those of us wishing to bolster the women's half of our sport. Women started in basketball at almost year one -- just a year after its inception, it was introduced as a women's college sport. Since they couldn’t vote at the time, the world must have offered a small consolation and allowed them to play with peach baskets and soccer balls. Probably a big debate down at the athletic center that day, since there was still a widely held belief that women’s uteruses would fall out if they ran too much. As the sport evolved, the women's side kept pace ... well, sort of. After ditching the weird women-only modifications, they played the same game, however, the attention and growth of the 
women's basketball was stunted along with the rest of women's athletics. At the amateur level, basketball progressed, spreading as a grassroots movement through amateur athletic participation. Ultimately, the sport's elite men were packaged and marketed, along with the rest of the sport, into an entertainment spectacle. Meanwhile, women's basketball lagged. At the amateur level it was added to the Olympics in 1976, 40 years after the men played their first game in Berlin. I blame Hitler. Even with a significant number of women participating, women’s professional basketball was also a late arrival. Early successes were standout athletes and a base of industrial teams. This sound familiar? It should.
The WNBA is the latest incarnation of women's professional basketball. It’s the sideshow to the NBA. Unlike other women’s professional leagues that have been developed and died, it has gotten a foothold in the American marketplace. If you believe the data, it holds American attention more than the NHL. It also is financially sound. In the beginning -- and maybe still today -- if you ask a die-hard basketball fan why he didn't or doesn’t watch the WNBA, what would he say? "Women can't dunk." The argument is simple: while women displayed the fundamentals, they didn’t put on the same show, there were no acrobatic moves, no feats of gravity defying power. Fine. We can see and acknowledge the difference. But what if it’s not there? Well, welcome to cycling.
If women’s cycling is suffering from the same ignorance and impediments as women’s basketball – and it seems that it does -- I propose we use following argument: You, Mr. Armchair Sports, cannot tell the difference between men's and women’s cycling. The things that draw you to cycling as a spectator sport are perhaps better, more pronounced with women. Cycling is the struggle, a zero-sum equation, a balanced-on-a-razor’s-edge fight among the need to dispatch a rival, overwhelming the instinct to stop the pain, and overcoming personal hardships. If you love watching the Tour, you’d love watching a women’s version of the same scope. Short of telemetry or power data displayed on the screen, there’s no difference. (I’ll ignore the baser element, and not highlight it being about sweaty, fit women in tight clothes.) If you can tell the difference between 25 and 29MPH, you’re probably a cop in Virginia, and therefore not like the rest of us. Cycling is about the struggle, not the obvious speed or power.. If in a beer-induced pang of humanity you ever teared up watching an Olympic sport, caught up in the backstory and drama on and off the arena of play, then women’s cycling is for you. If sprints are the essential part of the drama of the sport, I have already stated the obvious previously: the women’s races are often about the sprint. Oh, you think you can do better, Mr. Big Talk? Think your pain threshold is more than a female cyclist’s? Actually, take the cyclist out of that, and perform a little home experiment: tell the women in your life that you have a higher pain tolerance and have overcome more personal hardships. Before doing so, put 911 on speed dial, Tough Guy, and we hope the paramedics that show up are compassionate men. Say you slipped in the shower. Still not convinced? If you are a believer in sport being war dressed in a different uniform, then we accept your gauntlet. Put on your best pair of underoos and meet us in the street. I know some women that would love to hold a class.
Cycling is not a power sport, and unlike Basketball, the gender differences do not make for a different or “lesser” show. If anything, it is an enhancement. Even so, Basketball underscores the hardships, prejudices, and perhaps the way forward for cycling. I hope cycling doesn’t take another 100 years to figure out the obvious. In trying to raise money for a women’s cycling team, we’re running up against the same story. People innocently ask all about the professional nature of the women’s cycling and its riders, but it comes across as cringe-worthy, Victorian-era comments about race. With the ill-informed audience and a less than nurturing environment, women’s events are being canceled, curtailed, or postponed. The men’s races on the same roads, often on the same day, flourish. We can save the sport – and probably grow the whole thing – by making a better place and argument for the underappreciated women’s field. We just need to get the message out: cycling men can’t dunk.
--Joe Laltrello
