"We only receive 11% of what the men do" - Demi Vollering hits out at 'very disappointing' prize money gap at Milano-Sanremo
Cycling
Last weekend saw the first Monument of the 2025 season take place at Milano-Sanremo. Alongside Mathieu van der Poel's thrilling win over Filippo Ganna and Tadej Pogacar though, this year there was also a women's edition, eventually won by Team Sd Worx - Protime's European champion Lorena Wiebes.
In a big difference between the two races however, the women's World Tour peloton were only given a fraction of the prize money offered to their male counterparts. In the opinion of one of the leading lights in women's cycling, Demi Vollering, this gender pay gap is simply not good enough.
"We only receive, and this is very disappointing, 11 percent of what the men do. That’s a huge difference," explains the former Tour de France Femmes winner, who left Wiebes' Team SD Worx - Protime for a new challenge at FDJ - Suez over the recent off-season, in conversation with Eurosport. "Now, none of us are here for the prize money, but if people talk about equal opportunities, then we really want to see that happen. That includes the small things, like prize money. It just shows that we’re not there yet. There’s still a lot of work to be done."
It wasn't just the prize money of the women's edition that came under fire either. After the race, Puck Pieterse took aim at the significant difference in length between the men's and women's edition, calling for a similar level of equality there.
"I would definitely like it to be longer. The great thing about San Remo for men is that it is a long race. That makes the Poggio tough for them, but for us everyone arrived reasonably fresh," explained the Dutch star, comparing the women's 156km to the men's near-300km distance. "I think the distance should be at least 200 kilometres. But it could easily be longer. If we were on the bike for five, five and a half hours, that would be great."
Lorena Wiebes 🇳🇱 wins the revived Milan-Sanremo Women! 💥
— UCI (@UCI_cycling) March 22, 2025
The Dutch rider takes the victory in a small group sprint, with crucial support from team-mate Lotte Kopecky in the final. 🏆
🥈 Marianne Vos 🇳🇱
🥉 Noemi Rüegg 🇨🇭
A historic day for Women’s cycling! 🤩#UCI #UCIWWT pic.twitter.com/m2qipFcIlc
Come on, shorter stages, easier stages, less stages, easier one day races, shorter one day races, far lesser competition, slower speed, lack of bike handling skills and strategy … you can demand equality where it is due.. but that is rather not the case here. The men’s race was 20x more entertaining, so receiving 10x less is rather fair.
Huh? So when the men’s is boring and the women’s isn’t should they transfer money or how do you suggest to do things. Last I heard, it’s a bunch of mostly ageing chubby men who set the criteria for women’s races (and in most sports it’s still rather like how religions are run). Don’t think the girls are particularly against doing the same races as the men. Anyway, there’s a huge unjustified gap between 11% of and a difference of 11%. Doubt this happens at the Olympics.
I think, sometimes, women's races are more interesting because of their unpredictability due to their silly mistakes. The most recent ones seem to always involve Demi Vollering against SD Worx. 11% is way too discriminative. Is there no guardrail in EU laws that prevent this sort of discrimination?
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santiagobenites26-03-2025 - I hope Wout can come back. He has had 3 terrible crashes--not on par with Froome or Bernal, but at his level just a fraction of a percent is all that separates the grand champions of this new generation. Even if he is back all the way physically, those abrupt confrontations with pavement and mortality take a psychic toll, especially for a father of young kids.
Barney26-03-2025 - Everyone was so keen on free speech for a while, what happened ;-) But seriously, the problem is not so much that he gave his view as that someone follows it and spreads it, not totally unlike the schoolkids running US war games at present ;-)Mistermaumau26-03-2025
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