The race organizers really fucked that one up. But women catching the back of the men’s peloton is a “problem” that happens from time to time, and it can be hard to tell when it’s incidental or intentional strategy. It has been a tactic for some women to push extra hard at the start to try and catch the men’s field to draft behind them until the finish, which is an unfair advantage. Which is explicitly illegal in most racing series.

Though that gets complicated when it’s a woman catching a large men’s peloton that the female rider can’t ride alongside, and would have to just ride awkwardly far behind the pack to avoid running afoul of the rules.

I don’t know the details of this race in particular, but it seems the organizers halted the race to avoid this once they realized they really should have started the women’s race later. Was she intentionally trying to catch the men’s group? Maybe. Starting a breakaway from 2km in is almost certainly unsustainable, so if she wasn’t planning on catching the men’s field, it was either gross overconfidence or terrible strategy. She was very likely going to get caught by the women’s peloton regardless, and passed since they’ll be on fresher legs when they do catch her.

Edit: I should add that stopping the race for a few minutes with a neutralized restart is not entirely uncommon in pro cycling. For example, if part of the field has to stop and wait for a passing train, they’ll stop the front of the race as well, and restart them with the approximate gaps between groups they had before the train.

The article. The snapshot is fairly accurate. She was catching up to the mens' race support vehicles, they stopped her for five minutes. She lost her momentum and her groove, ended up finishing in 74th place.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/04/sport/cycling-women-belgium-intl-scli-spt/

And this article says perhaps the entire women's race field was paused, not just the one cyclist in the lead. But anyone who's ever done any sort of distance sport event, you know stopping for 5 minutes can absolutely destroy your performance. A mental and physical disruption.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nicole-hanselmann-omloop-het-nieuwsblad-2019-cycling-race-men-belgium/

While I'm sure there's a lot more nuance to this picture, I'm not going to split hairs over a metaphor I'm sure we're all intimately familiar with.

Reminds me of the many bosses I've had who expected me to be nicer to butthurt male employees when they weren't used to having a woman supervisor. "Think about how hard it is for t h e m."

https://time.com/5544228/female-cyclist-forced-to-stop-men/

She said their race was halted for “five or seven minutes.” While she was given a head start to regain her lead when the race began again, Hanselmann told Cyclingnews that she lost her momentum when the race came to an abrupt stop, and her competitors soon gained ground. She ultimately finished in 74th place.

Why are these gendered? How stupid.

Let them all start at once, at one event.

Looks like this post has gained a lot of attention so I'd just like to drop the rules in here as a reminder-

"Rules...

1. Women only... trans women are women, and transphobic or gender critical talk isn't allowed. Anyone under the trans umbrella (e.g. non-binary, bigender, agender) is free to decide whether a women's community is a good fit for them.

2. Don't be a dick. No personal attacks, no aggression, play nice.

3. Don't hate on groups, hatefilled talk about groups is not allowed. Ever.

4. No governmental politics, so no talk of Trump actions etc. We recommend Feminism@beehaw.org for that, but here is an escape from it.

5. New accounts or users with few comments may have their posts removed to prevent spam and bad-faith participation."

If a man goes slow and falls to womens side do they give him a car ride or stop all the women? Like what's the standard protocol there.

Why is bike racing segregated by gender?

Wait til you learn why there's no major women's baseball.......