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News & Racing<\/a><\/p>\n Quantifying the evolution of women’s road cycling is surprisingly tricky. Let’s give it a try anyway.<\/p>\n We hear it all the time: women\u2019s professional road racing is faster than ever, harder than ever, more competitive than ever. We hear that the sport has soared to new heights in recent years; that it\u2019s only getting more difficult to compete at the highest level and much harder to win at the highest level.<\/p>\n But is all of that actually true? And if women\u2019s racing is getting faster and harder, how do we even measure that change?<\/p>\n To answer those questions (and more), we took a deep dive into the data to analyse the more than five hundred days of women\u2019s WorldTour racing since the competition began in 2016. As you’ll soon see, the data paints an intriguing picture of the evolution of women\u2019s cycling, even if the conclusions are a little more complicated than we might expect.<\/p>\n Part 1: Average winning speeds<\/p>\n Let\u2019s start at the most obvious point: by comparing the winning average speed of a bunch of different races over time. If women\u2019s racing is getting faster, then we\u2019d probably expect to see those winning speeds trending upwards over time, right?<\/p>\n For this particular discussion, we\u2019ve looked at almost every one-day race that\u2019s currently in the Women\u2019s WorldTour (WWT), noting the average winning speed for as far back into the race\u2019s history as we have access to. The only current WWT one-day races we didn’t include were Milan-San Remo and the Copenhagen Sprint, both of which have only been around for a couple years, and therefore offer little by way of comparative value.<\/p>\n Why no stage races? With the exception of a select few events, virtually all stage races feature different courses from year to year, making it near-pointless to compare one edition to another. While one-day races evolve over time too (more on that in a moment), their routes generally remain close enough from year to year to at least allow for a rough comparison.<\/p>\n So what does the data show? Let\u2019s take a look at some examples, starting with the Tour of Flanders. The chart below shows the average speed of the winning rider in each edition of the women\u2019s Ronde since the race began in 2004.<\/p>\n While the 2004 edition was actually won at a higher average speed than this year\u2019s race \u2013 and while there\u2019s clearly plenty of variation in winning speed from year to year \u2013 the trendline shows that the average winning speed at De Ronde is trending upwards over time.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a similar story at Fl\u00e8che Wallonne where the upward trajectory is reasonably obvious.<\/p>\n Strade Bianche, too, shows a similar trend, particularly in the last couple years. Note the scale here though. Where Flanders and Fl\u00e8che have been trending gently upwards since the early 2000s (or earlier), Strade\u2019s upward trend is happening even quicker (since 2015).<\/p>\n Of the 14 WWT one-day races sampled for this analysis, nine appear to be trending towards faster average speeds. Of the remaining five, one seems to be standing still (Trofeo Alfredo Binda) while four actually seem to be trending slower. Perhaps the most striking of these is Li\u00e8ge-Bastogne-Li\u00e8ge which has been getting faster over the past three years, but has been trending slower overall since it began in 2017.<\/p>\n Still, the majority of races in the women\u2019s WorldTour seem to be getting faster. So is it true to say that WWT racing is getting faster overall? That would be a bold claim to make based solely on the above.<\/p>\n For starters, the dataset used is far from perfect. Most races on the women\u2019s WorldTour have been getting longer in recent years (consider this foreshadowing) and as was hinted at above, it\u2019s rare for a race to keep the exact same route for any length of time.\u00a0<\/p>\n Remember, too, that road cycling is a sport where so many variables can affect how fast any single race is ridden \u2013 factors like wind speed and direction, whether there was any rain, whether crashes influenced peloton dynamics, the tactics of those within the race, and so much more. When you\u2019re comparing races over time, any or all of these variables can be different, making it harder to compare like for like, especially when route changes are involved.<\/p>\n So what if we step back and take a broader view? Would it be more instructive to look at things from a season-long perspective?<\/p>\n This post is for paying subscribers only Already have an account? Sign in<\/a><\/p>\n Did we do a good job with this story?<\/p>\n \n \ud83d\udc4dYep![\"Matt](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Matt-de-Neef-150x150.jpg\")
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