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On Sunday the U23 ladies will line up within the highway race on the Federation College Australian Street Nationwide Championships scattered by way of a area of elite ladies, maybe for the final time. As quickly as 2025, the class might have a stand alone race.
“We have been one of many first international locations to recognise the beneath 23 ladies, and have that as a podium – within the criterium, the time trial and the highway race – and that is been the case for a number of years now,” AusCycling Government Common Supervisor-Sport, Kipp Kaufmann advised Cyclingnews whereas on the Australian Street Nationwide Championships in Ballarat. “I believe that was , proud start line.”
It’s, nonetheless, a journey that appears due for one more step.
The primary Street World Championships to incorporate an U23 ladies’s title was simply over two years in the past, in 2022 in Wollongong, working as race inside the elite race, simply because it has on the Australian Championships for greater than 15 years. However whereas the popularity of an U23 ladies’s title is a constructive step – with the U23 males lengthy having had a title and stand alone race each on the nationwide and world platform – the format of a mixed U23 and elite race actually has its pitfalls.
For a begin, the treasured and rapidly recognised picture of throwing the arms up within the air in celebration whereas crossing the road first doesn’t exist. Actually at instances it is laborious for the riders to even know if they’ve received until after the occasion, as they get scattered inside the mixed elite/U23 area the place most frequently the battle for the elite title trumps every other consideration.
The Street World Championships shall be shifting to a stand-alone ladies’s U23 occasion in 2025. AusCycling’s Kaufmann mentioned it is going to be saying a call on whether or not it additionally will make the shift subsequent 12 months, within the first half of 2024. If that’s the case the stand-alone U23 ladies’s race would run in tandem with the shift of the Nationwide Championships away from Ballarat for the primary time in practically 20 years.
“It’s on this transition that we’re making that we wish to make the beneath 23 ladies’s highway race, specifically, turn into its personal standalone race,” mentioned Kaufmann.
There are, nonetheless, some challenges and necessary issues to sort out earlier than the likelihood turns into a actuality.
“We have to do two issues, make sure that we are able to pull this off operationally… and in addition making certain that it is the best choice from an athlete improvement perspective and for the group improvement perspective,” mentioned Kaufmann. “I do not wish to communicate on their behalf, however we’d do this stakeholder engagement as a part of the method as properly.”
Even when there are hurdles alongside the best way with logistics that isn’t a problem that it appears shall be allowed to be a present stopper.
“We most likely have not carried out that stakeholder half as a result of we’ve not bought over the logistics half, or operational challenges, simply but,” mentioned Kaufmann. “However as a result of we have now operational challenges does not imply we should not do it.
“We discovered methods to do it with beneath 19s, we discovered methods to do it with Para-cycling, we discovered methods to do all of these issues and, I believe, be leaders in them. We actually want to have the ability to be a pacesetter in Below 23 ladies.”
There are 22 Below 23 ladies on the beginning checklist for Sunday’s mixed U23/elite ladies’s highway race, which has a complete area of 75. Ella Simpson claimed the U23 ladies’s highway race title in 2023, coming over the road in ninth spot within the mixed U23/elite race.
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