WK Heerlen first flags presented








Presentation of flags for the UCI Road world championships.
Interview


Yesterday I went to Heerlen in Limburg, by train which is always great, it just gets greener and greener. There was a meeting in the Glass Palace, in the center of town and the presentation of the flags.

Vincent van der Stouwe had worked until very early in the morning to get it all done, as usual the deadlines are pretty tight.

I was very happy with the result. In the beginning of the project we discussed that it would be good to do a man and a woman, but there was no time and no money for two images. But after the presentation in Kopenhagen during the WK last year I kept on thinking that I was the one blocking the possibility to dress up the event with a woman as well, for the wrong reasons. I promised myself if I would have a week off I would try and make one, after all the colors and everything had been determined and I only had to draw a woman in the same style. So the time came and I did.

It did not take much effort to convince the organisation that they should use the woman as well, they where very happy with it, but the main image still stayed the man for the usual reasons, which hopefully will change in the following years.

The reason; there are more people interested in the man races, they are longer faster...but I think watching sport is not as common for a woman as it is for a men. Please correct me if I am wrong, I do think though that it would do us good to have something else to talk about and be interested in than children, work or men. And sport is just perfect.

I like to watch men sport too but I can not identify with them, not as much as I can with a woman. So it would be really nice if there would be more publicity and attention for womansport.

Fortunately the Dokkumer flag centrale offered flags that could be printed on both sides. One side a woman on the other side the man, that was a wonderful solution. It looked great the colors where perfect. The flags in Limburg will be bigger, there will be 1000 flags and I think around 250 smaller ones.

A bit more about cycling,

Marianne Vos won in 2006, and has been second for 5 years in a row now, it is going to be an exciting race for her..I am pressing my thumbs!

Therefor the women's races will be very exciting for me to watch, imagine trying to win 5 times, and coming in second..How determined would it make you?




The UCI Road World Championships for women made its debut in Reims, France in 1958. For the first several years (until about 1990), the race varied in length from a low of 46.6 km in 1966 to around 72 km (30 to 50 miles). Beginning in 1991, the race length began to gradually increase, first to 79 km (Stuttgart, Germany), and then to over 100 km in 1996 (Lugano, Switzerland).

Some history facts that make me smile :)

Ladies on a bycicle 1899

"Bicycling has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world.
I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride on a wheel.
It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance.
"Susan B. Anthony, suffragist, 1896

In history of female and male inequality the bicycle became a tool of autonomy. With the help of bicycle, woman could get them selves from A to B without the dependence on men. Bicycle meant freedom. With the bike came off the corsets and on came the bloomers.

"Girls should go on thinking that there is a world
out there and it is theirs for taking."
Ann Bancroft, first woman to reach the North Pole by dogsled 



A fake moustache was easier to handle than a dress on a bike.



The Dutch girls who won the World road cycling championships:




  • 1869 - Frenchwomen enter cycling races at Bordeaux, France. 
  • 1888 - Women join (bi)cycling clubs in Chicago and tennis clubs in New York City 
  • 1890's - More than a million American women will own and ride bicycles during the next decade. It is the first time in American history that an athletic activity for women will become widely popular. 
  • 1890 - Fanny Bullock Workman (1859-1925), with her husband William, begins 10 years of bicycle tours. Cycling across the back roads of Europe and charting new pathways for fellow cyclists, the Workmans published their first travel book in 1895, after a tour of Algeria. They toured the Far East, cycling across Asian countries and the Indian Subcontinent in 1897 and 1898, publishing more travel accounts. For the rest of their careers they were mountaineers, completing eight Himalayan expeditions between 1898 and 1912. 
  • 1893 to 1900 - The "Golden Age of the Bicycle", with the development of the modern-style "safety bicycle" with two equal- sized wheels, coaster brakes, and pneumatic tires creating a comfortable, faster and safer ride. A side effect is more common-sense dressing for women.1893 - 16-year old Tessie Reynonds of Brighton rides her bycycle to London and back, a distance of 120 miles, in 8.5 hours. She wore the shocking "rationale" dress - a long jacket over knickers, which outraged some observers as much as her feat. 
  • 1894 - Annie "Londonderry" Kopchovsky, 23, sets out to become the first woman to bicycle around the world, a journey that lasted 15 months and earned her $5,000 along the way. 
  • 1895 - Mrs. Frank Sittig exhibits her new duplex riding skirt - which The New York Times judges to be "An ideal suit for cycling, to which even the most prudish could not object." 
  • 1896 - Women are buying 25-30% of all new bicycles. 
  • 1896 - Susan B. Anthony says that "the bicycle has done more for the emancipation of women than anything else in the world." 
  • 1896 - The first 6-day bicycle race for women starts on Jan 6 at Madison Square Garden in NYC. 
  • 1899 - Setting a new women's cycling endurance record, 125 pound Jane Yatman rides 700 miles in 81 hours, 5 mintes on Long Island. During the 3 and one half day trial, she rests less than 2 hours. Her record is beaten on Oct. 19 by Jane Lindsay who rides 900 mikes in 91 hours, 48 minutes. 
  • 1937 - The US nation championship in cycling begin with competition for women with Doris Kopsky taking top honors. 
  • 1958 - Women are admitted to the international cycling championships. 
  • 1976 - At the Innsbruck Olympic Games, Sheila Young becomes the first American to win three medals at a Winter Olympics, taking gold in the 500, silver in the 1,500 and bronze in the 1,000 in speedskating. Later that year she wins her second skating/cycling world championships double before retiring from competition. 
  • 1976 - After winning three medals in speed skating at the Winter Olympics, Sheila Young of Michigan wins both the United States and world sprint cycling titles. 
  • 1979 - Beth Heiden becomes the first US women's world overall champion in speed skating. She follows this with a world title in cycling and the NCAA championship in cross-country skiing. 
  • 1979 - Jeannie Longo-Ciprelli, a 12-time world Cycling champion, begins competing. In her career, she will break 36 world records, and win 37 French national titles. 
  • 1981 - Sheila Young wins the World Cycling Championships. 
  • 1984 - The first Tour de France for women is held in cycling in July over a distance of 616 miles. Marianne Martin of the US wins with an elasped time of 29:39:2. Countrywoman Deborah Shumway comes in third behind the second-place Helen Hage of the Netherlands. 
  • 1984 - Joan Benoit of the US wins the first women's Olympic marathon. Women's cycling, synchronized swimming, and rhythmic gymnastics are added to the Olympic calendar. Mary Lou Retton, 16, wins the first-ever all-around title for the US in women's gymnastics. Connie Carpenter-Phinney wins a gold medal in cycling in the women's road race covering 79.2 kilometers 
  • 1984 - Connie Carpenter wins the first women's cycling event in Olympic history at the Los Angeles Games. She is the first US woman to compete in both the Winter and Summer Olympics, having competed at the 1972 Sapporo Games in 1,500 meter speedskating event. She retired after the Games with 12 national cycling titles and four world championships medals. 
  • 1989 - Cyclist Susan Notorangelo is the first woman to finish the Race Across America and places seventh over-all in the race. 
  • 1989 - Juli Furtado, a member of the US Ski Team from 1980 to '87, until knee injuries forced her out of the sport, wins the national cycling championship. 
  • 1992 - Velo News names Juli Furtado Cyclist of the Year, making her the first woman to earn that honor. At her retirement in 1997, she was a two-time world champion, three-time World Cup champion and five time national champion in mountain biking. 
  • 1999 - In June, Jeannie Longo-Ciprelli wins the HP-LaserJet Women's Challenge, the richest event in women's cycling ($125,000). She dominated the 12-day event from start to finish. 
  • 1999 - There are 16 new women's events planned for the 2000 Summer Olympics in Syndey: women's weightlifting, trap shooting, skeet shooting, duet synchronized swimming, synchronized diving, 2 km walk, 500, 1,000 and 3,000 meter cycling, water polo, pole vault, triathlon, taekwondo, hammer throw, modern pentathalon and trampolining. 
  • 2000 - Nicole Freedman, 28, wins the right to represent the US at the Sydney Olympics with her victory in the 64-mile cycling trials road race in 2:38:56. 
  • 2000 - Australia’s Anna Wilson wins the 17th annual Women’s Challenge cycling race with just by 27 seconds to spare over Lithuanian Diana Ziliute in Boise, ID. Sarah Ulmer of New Zealand finished third overall in the 625-mile race, the world’s most lucrative women’s cycling event. Wilson also won the race in 1996. 
  • 2001 - Ina-Yoko Teutenberg wins first and teammate Petra Rossner takes second in the 18th Annual HP Women's Challenge for a Team Saturn sweep in cycling. Saturn teammate Lyne Bessette wins first place as Overall Individual. Considered the women's Tour de France, this 12-day road race consisted of 13 stages and covered 688 miles of rugged Idaho terrain. The HP Women's Challenge features $128,000 in prize money, the largest purse in North American cycling regardless of gender. 
  • 2005 - Germany’s Regina Schleicher takes the gold medal in the women’s road race event at the world cycling championships. 
  • 2006 - At the World Track Cycling championships, Germany’s Christin Muche wins the women’s keirin gold medal with Clara Sanchez of France taking the silver and Shuan Guo of China the bronze.

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