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Nicola Cranmer on Losing Sho-Air, Hiring Kristin Armstrong, and the Olympic Chase

Team TWENTY20 owner/manager Nicola Cranmer was all about horses while growing up in southern England, but she always rode her bike to get to the stables. She ended up in northern California in her teens, staying with a friend who was working as an au pair. While there, Cranmer met some mountain bikers, caught the cycling bug and began racing with them. After a few years of moving back and forth between the U.S. and the U.K. – including one deportation from the U.S. due to a speeding ticket while riding a bicycle – she eventually came back to the States, settled down, immersed herself into the cycling community, and eventually decided to start her own pro women’s team in 2004. “I really didn’t know a thing about how to start or run a team,” says Cranmer. “I just decided that was what I wanted to do.” She talked to friend and former Director Giana Roberge and was able to obtain a copy of...

The Impact of Endurance Training on the Cardiac Health of Women

Dr. Mehreen Quhreshi is a cardiologist with advanced training in stress testing and cardiac imaging from Columbia University Medical Center in New York. She practices in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and serves as the director of the Preventative Cardiology Program and the Nuclear Stress Lab at UPMC Pinnacle Heart and Vascular Institute. Dr. Bill Apollo, an amateur bike racer, runner, and duathlete is a Harrisburg, Pennsylvania-based cardiologist, who directs the UPMC Pinnacle Sports and Exercise Cardiology Clinic. At the Paris Olympics in 1900, endurance sports were exclusively dominated by men; a mere 22 women participated, competing in the five “gentrified” events of croquet, equestrian, golf, tennis, and sailing. It took until the latter half of the twentieth century for the world to witness women competing in major Olympic endurance sports such as cycling (Los Angeles, 1984) and...

The Best Has yet to Come for Women’s Pro Cycling

Raymond Kerckhoffs is the cycling report for the Dutch national newspaper, de Telegraaf, and has reported on the Tour de France for more than 30 years. He’s also the owner/founder of the cycling-related websites CyclingOpinions.com and MyCols.app, and he serves as the president of the AIJC (International Association of Cycling Journalists). A different version of this article appeared earlier on the Team Boels-Dolmans website. Women’s pro cycling is being transformed, as more and more fans discover the excitement of women’s bike racing. Some of the best athletes in the world are starting to get involved in the sport, and an exciting calendar of traditional races and new global events is starting to emerge. In turn, this attention is sparking more significant investment in women’s cycling, more media focus, and new opportunities for growth across all facets of the sport. Women’s cycling...

The Path to Parity

A major priority of the UCI under President Brian Cookson has been to raise the profile of women’s cycling.  This may have helped spur the return of a women’s event to coincide with the Tour de France for the first time in over a decade, and is just one of several positive changes in the sport since September 2013.  The recent Cycling Independent Reform Commission (CIRC) report suggested several additional changes, but – like so many of the UCI’s new broad and sweeping proposals – they lack the actionable details needed to truly advance the sport in a coherent or timely fashion. Nowhere is the desire and need for positive reform more immediate than in women’s professional cycling.  A meaningful long-term strategy which will improve the opportunities and treatment of women has yet to materialize, and this is especially distressing for the current athletes who are attempting to make a...