Originally Posted by
CliffordK
As @
brianmcg123 mentioned, she got close to support vehicles (which could have yielded). Although the next thing might be to catch some stragglers.
Many races have a maximum time allotted to be on the course, whether it is being lapped on a short course with several laps, or in the TDF, the stragglers have an allotted time to finish behind the leaders.
If this was a single day event, then those riders that had fallen say 5 or 10 minutes behind the Peloton were already largely irrelevant.
It may well give the races a new level of competition to say give the men a 10 minute head-start, and let the women be "chasers". Give them "points" for every man they pass, and make any passed men sit aside until at least a couple of minutes after the Peloton passes.
Catch the Peloton, or any male break-aways... and mega bonus points!!!
It's a 200km single day race that has been organized since 1945 and the women have their own race in the event for about 13 years. The women's race was stopped after about 30km, which means that some of the women have really stepped on it on the flat from the go while the men have been taking it easy before the first climbs. That happens in races, and it was not very likely this start was a serious attempt by Hanselmann to win the race allthoug their race was 80km shorter, but probably an attempt to catch the men to make a statement and for publicity.
I don't see a good reason why the women's race should interfere with the men's race, and the organization made sure it didn't. It's complicated and dangerous enough with the support vehicles of one race, if it's not good enough for the women this way, they should organize their own event.