Women's sponsorship

I read this interesting article on Cyclingnews the other day. The gist is top women's professional cycling teams struggle to continue their teams because of difficulty obtaining sponsorship. It mentions teams like T-Mobile, Diet Cheerwine, Ford-Basis & Victory Brewing.

All of them have to be creative in order to exist. Probably the best at making ends meet and doing things on a shoe string is Nicole Freedman of the now defunct Ford-Basis team.

I have swapped emails with Nicole to see how she's holding up and what her plans were for 2006. She's in the Northeast doing some coaching in hopes of getting a full-time coaching job at a university, but she could end up racing in 2006 if the right situation comes along.

If women's professional cycling is to continue and thrive there has to be a better strategy. The first hurdle to overcome is development of women racers. Go to any USCF race in the Southeast and there might be 10 to 15 in the Pro 1/2/3 field, and if they're lucky 5 to 8 in the Cat 4 field......

You know what, I just started something that I don't have time to complete. I'll come back to this topic later with more thoughts.