EF Pro Cycling Is Doubling Down, Announcing Their Own Women’s WorldTour Team

May 03, 2023

Despite all the recent strides in women's cycling, last month was still a tough one for the pro women's peloton. When Silicon Valley Bank declared bankruptcy, the ripples were felt even in the cycling world, where one of the longest running women's teams—EF Education-Tibco-SVB—had to scramble to find another title sponsor for 2024 at the eleventh hour.

While the future of that team remains unclear, EF Pro Cycling is doubling down on their efforts in women's cycling with the announcement of their own women's WorldTour team. EF Pro Cycling announced yesterday that they’d be stepping into a title sponsor role in women's cycling along with Cannondale.

However, the press release was vague as to whether the EF Education-Tibco-SVB riders would find homes in the new program. The team has had a solid year, most notably with Alison Jackson's incredible Paris-Roubaix Femmes win.

According to a press release from Education First's EF Pro Cycling Team, the 2024 team will have partners similar to the men's EF Pro Cycling Team. The press release notes: "United around an aligned mission and values, EF Pro Cycling and Cannondale are focused on building the best team in the sport—one that competes with character, wins races, and inspires more women to ride. Longstanding EF Pro Cycling partners Rapha, POC, and Wahoo will also join in their support of the team."

This move to seemingly bring the men's EF Pro Cycling and the women's iteration of the team closer together is something we’re seeing more and more in the pro cycling space. Men's teams (like DSM and Jumbo Visma) are realizing the value of having women's teams alongside them, and the combining of resources allows for many in the women's peloton to access resources previously outside of the women-specific team budgets.

This is something that two-time Olympic gold medalist Kristin Armstrong noted even several years ago, telling Bicycling back in 2016 that "things like coaching and what I’d call performance support, things like going to the wind tunnel, nutrition advice, those are things that the men's team have as part of staff… Women's teams, it's not. So that support team became critical to me accomplishing what I have in my career. Not only is there a big discrepancy in support between men and women, but there's a big one even within women's racing, with your competitors on the line. At a world-class level, everyone trains hard. If you don't have that support you’re already at a disadvantage."

Now, more women's teams are able to level up—and we’re certainly seeing it in the racing this season. We can only hope that more competitive base salaries for pro women racers will soon follow.

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