Great piece. Although some feminists are trying to rebadge this problem as a product of the mens rights movement they are wrong. For example, back in 2019 an obscure cycle race that wouldn't normally make it onto the sports pages, the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, became front page news in the UK. The reason? Well according to the reports, a cyclist in the women's race that stated 10 minutes after men's race had caught up with the men and the women's race had to be neutralised (halted) to allow the men to get ahead again. You can imagine the reporting. This was an example of a woman being held back by her less able male colleagues and yes, women could not only compete with men in cycling, but beat them if they were allowed to. The mens race should have been paused to allow the women to pass, it was argued by some commentators on social media. The truth, of course, was different. The female cyclist, Nicole Hanselmann, never caught up with the men's race, but caught up with a tail-back of following cars at the point were the race entered single file cobbled road. In fact, by the time Nicole Hanselmann caught up with the support vehicles, the leading male rider was 14 minutes ahead. That is, he had gained 4 minutes! The winner of the men’s race of 200km would average 41kph and the winner of the women’s race of 123km averaged 36.7kph. Even the slowest male rider did better than this averaging 39.8kph. In short, the women were slower over a shorter course. Neutralisations to ensure the safety of cyclists are not uncommon in cycle races and there was nothing unusual in what happened to the women's race. The race would have restated with Nicole the same distance ahead of her female rivals. Nicole was not a victim of the patriarchal race organisers. This is not a criticism of the female riders, I am sure it was great race and in its own way the equal of the men's race. This is a criticism of the journalists who misrepresented the race in pursuit of their agenda. They are now reaping what they have sown.