Remember IDRD-Bogota Humana-San Mateo-Solgar? They were the virtually unknown women’s team who provoked instant social media fauxrage last year with their supposedly “nude” strip. The response was a curious blend of isms - driven on the one hand by a pruriently sexist attitude to objectifying and demeaning women’s bodies, on the other by the feminist idea that women’s bodies should not be exploited in this way. The opprobrium went right to the top, with Brian Cookson, president of the UCI, tweeting that the kit was “unacceptable”.

Peter Sagan pinching a flower girl’s bottom on the podium. Photograph: Francois Lenoir/Reuters

So what to make of the publicity for this year’s E3 Harelbeke with its tagline, “Who squeezes them in Harelbeke?” They have previous for this kind of thing, featuring women’s naked, objectified bodies in 2011 and 2014.



This year’s campaign plays on the infamous moment when Peter Sagan decided to grope podium girl Maja Leye’s bottom as she planted the obligatory winner’s kiss on Fabian Cancellara’s cheek at the Tour of Flanders in 2013. He later presented her with flowers, because flowers make everything alright after a sexual assault, don’t they?

Of course the PR team behind the E3 Harelbeke campaign are worth their weight in gold. They don’t just court controversy, they take it all the way down the aisle. They’re like a bunch of little boys giggling at a glimpse of boob or arse, virtually masturbating over the idea of their campaigns going viral.



Women cycling fans – and their male allies – will even now be splitting into camps: the outraged, the eyeball rollers, the not-that-arsed and the sadly resigned. And that’s OK, because that’s what feminism actually looks like: conflicted and nuanced and sometimes at odds with itself. Because women have the right to be offended or not by these images.

NEW BANNER E3 HARELBEKE pic.twitter.com/c9ZZiklOnd — E3 Harelbeke (@E3Harelbeke) February 25, 2014

To some it will be yet another example of the way cycling drives an artificial gender divide between the roles of men and women in the sport. To others it’s not a big deal and reading anything else into it is to give the image a power it doesn’t deserve.

That sexism is endemic in cycling is hardly news. Nicole Cooke addressed the issue at some length in her award-winning autobiography The Breakaway, forensically detailing the way that she was used as a “single female to pose with the men and whose star could not in any way be a threat to their collective machismo”.

Sexist attitudes have been identified as one of the barriers that keep women off the roads. The tales of cat-calling and bullying that Cathy Bussey has collated are by no means atypical and Total Women’s Cycling has a series of blog posts by women who have been subject to sexist comments and bum-pinching when out for a leisurely ride.

The Sexual Offences Act 2003 is quite clear that, in England, unwanted arse grabs constitute sexual assault. Some women will choose to report these incidents, others will deliver a swift knee to the balls, still others will freeze and do nothing. Maja Leye was forced to stand on a podium and keeping her cool in front of thousands of cycling fans and a TV audience of millions while Sagan played up his “lad” credentials. Because it wasn’t about her – her discomfort, her professionalism, her job – but all about him and his personal brand. It was Sagan being Sagan, that was all. Not workplace harassment at all. Of course the upshot was that the focus at Flanders fell squarely on Sagan – and Marianne Vos, possibly the greatest cyclist of either sex – was entirely sidelined as she celebrated her first ever Flanders victory.

The Sagan assault is part of a deeply macho culture based on historical tales of hard men and suffering, of heroic self-denial and self-imposed monkhood, a brutalising environment where women have been sidelined as podium eye candy. Matt Rendell put his finger on the real issue when he tweeted “Sagan’s carefully thought-out piece of theatrical satire brilliantly focused attention on the absurdity of still having podium girls in 2013.”



The current high regard in which women’s cycling is held has been exceptionally hard won, but the furore over the IDRD-Bogota Humana-San Mateo-Solgar kit shows how the sexual objectification – even of professional riders – is only ever a dodgy kit away. In the real world, as well as the social media one that increasingly dominates our lives, women’s bodies remain fair game and rape threats and revenge porn are now the favourite weapons of internet trolls.

The overtly sexist publicity for a race that started out as a celebration of the opening of a Belgian road will remain stuck in its own little corner of the internet. It won’t cause anything like the same level of offence that a rather ugly women’s cycling kit did – which is itself a sexist issue. After all, how can you objectify a woman who is already objectified? Where’s the fun in that? Because, in the end, the E3 poster is only a joke, right?

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