{"id":743860,"date":"2026-08-20T08:34:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T08:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/743860\/"},"modified":"2026-08-20T08:34:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T08:34:09","slug":"tour-of-britain-inspiring-more-muslim-women-to-cycle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/743860\/","title":{"rendered":"Tour of Britain inspiring more Muslim women to cycle"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The organiser of a community cycling group has said this week&#8217;s Tour of Britain women&#8217;s race can inspire more Muslim women to get onto wheels.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Shabana Seedat set up Spokes Sisters in 2023, after she noticed Muslim women who wanted to cycle did not feel confident enough to start, but she says high profile women&#8217;s races are &#8220;empowering&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Lancashire welcomed the Tour of Britain women&#8217;s cycling race to the county for the first time on Wednesday, with stage two passing through more than 70 miles (about 113km) from Clitheroe to Blackpool.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Seedat, 42, said: &#8220;Seeing these events does encourage myself and my fellow Muslim women to go out there and do some more cycling.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">She added: &#8220;We&#8217;ve started to do a lot of inclines in the hills, so that has pushed us to do that.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Muslim women are underrepresented in cycling, but Seedat believes her group shows the sport is not &#8220;limited to others&#8221; and believes &#8220;the bike lane is for everyone, and we&#8217;re here to prove it&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Seedat, who started cycling during the Covid-19 pandemic, realised a barrier for some women was actually owning and storing a bike, so she applied for funding from Cycling UK last year to procure some bikes and store them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The organiser of a community cycling group has said this week&#8217;s Tour of Britain women&#8217;s race can inspire&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":743861,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-743860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=743860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743860\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/743861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=743860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=743860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=743860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}