WOLLONGONG, Australia — The French Cycling Federation on Saturday
defended its decision to pay for business seats for male cyclists while its
women’s team flew economy on the long trip to the
World Championships in
Australia.
اضافة اعلان
While the men’s
team, including two-time defending world champion Julian Alaphilippe, traveled
in comfort, the seven women riders as well as the rest of the delegation
including male and female competitors entered in the junior events and the
support staff, were all in the back of the plane.
The first report
in a French newspaper provoked a storm of protest on social media.
Christophe Manin,
French cycling’s national technical director, told AFP that flying the team to
Australia “costs a lot of money.”
“Some countries,
like Ireland, have decided not to participate in the World Championships. We
asked ourselves if we should take all the categories, especially the juniors.
We did it.”
“But we don’t have
the means to put everyone in business,” said Manin, who decided not to make the
trip himself to save money.
He said the
federation had based its decisions on one main criterion: the ability to
compete for medals — and the men had better chances.
“For the men, we’ve
been world champions for the last two years. We are really going there to win,
while we are more of an outsider in the girls’ competition”, he said.
“If we had the mountain bike world
championships in Australia with the same economic choice to make, we would put
the two girls in business and the boys in economy”, he said, because French
women riders Pauline Ferrand-Prevot and Loana Lecomte have better results than
the men.
Team manager
Thomas Voeckler travelled economy for the championships in Wollongong outside
Sydney.
“I am concentrating on the
sport and I have no energy to lose as long as the riders of the French team are
proud to wear the colors of the jersey,” said Voeckler.
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