I think female cheaters would be *more* annoying at a world championship. In races where there are a lot of bop and mop men, I do find that little "packs" will frequently form, and I have to spend a lot of energy pushing out of them (cycling is my strongest discipline). It is really annoying, and it seems that men find it more acceptable to somehow let these packs form. However, at a world championship, you should have the top athletes from both genders, so the guys should be significantly faster. In this instance, I think the women would be making a conscientious choice to be part of the draft pack, which is different than having it accidentally form around you.

I can't say that woman cheaters bug me more than the men (Just for reference I am a male). I think I notice the faster female cheaters more than the male cheaters simply because there are less of them. Case in point, a friend was complaining to me about a girl who sat on his wheel through most of a HIM. He saw her drafting another guy as he came up to pass and she jumped on his wheel. She is a faster racer with some pretty good times. He was complaining to me about it after the race. A few months later this same person came to our tri-club to promote there coaching services (needless to say we did not used them), and the minute she walked through the door his jaw dropped and he said "thats the girl that was drafting me!" Since than a few other people have told us about her drafting without even knowing of the HIM incident. To make matters worse she also does some race directing!

When seeing the title, I thought this was going to be a relationship thread.:-)

The both bug me equally. No special privileges to either side IMO.

My husband just did Clearwater as well. He tells me he not only saw women blatantly drafting but that they were actually chatting while being pulled. That would be pretty damn annoying. However, it would be very hard for a woman rider to pull away from a peloton going 26 mph and falling back isn't always an option.

Cheating sucks no matter who is doing it, in this case though I think it was easier for the men to avoid it.

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Nor do I use punctuation in the way a child sprinkles glitter over a ribbon of glue on construction paper - Trash Talk

It bothers me when men and women cheat in races. I am more verbal with the women that I am competing head to head against if I see them cheating.

Yes! But I think it's just because that's who I'm racing. And because I read rant after rant about how the top AG women all draft. And that is simply not true.

I witnessed some ugly drafting in the last 10 mi of clearwater 07 and don't think I was as far down my AG as I ended up legitimately. So I won't go back. I think races like cheatwater are cheat or don't go. Or go for the PR, because it's fast even when you don't cheat, I guess.

Falling back is ALWAYS an option, and someone that says otherwise is embarrassed that they were cheating. It is hard to get your way out the back of a pack, believe me- but if you want to do it, you can.

I will not go back again. My AG had the worst cheaters- 25-29- about 5-8 of the girls beat most of the pro's!

I agree that not all top women AGers' draft, in MOST races- but at Clearwater, even just looking at the results give you an entirely different story.

He and I talked about this at length both before and after the race. He is a very strong cyclist and had a 2:28 bike split at Timberman (very tough course) so he had no problem pulling away from groups of riders. However the instructions from his coach were not to drop back but to work his way to the front of any peloton that overtook him. How is a woman supposed to do that? I don't think sitting in the middle of a pack of cyclists is acceptable, I'm sure it was frustrating for you to see that happening. He was sort of incredulous himself that it would be that blatant.

But I don't think it means women cheat more often, it's just less likely that they can pull ahead of a group of guys at a national championship. It would be hard to fall back too if you were in a groove and racing well. I'm not saying sit in, just that if they pulled ahead a couple of bike lengths there is still a draft advantage.

It bugs me too when people start saying all the fast times out there were due to drafting. JZ had an amazing bike time and obviously did not draft. It really is a very fast course and Sat there was very little wind.

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Nor do I use punctuation in the way a child sprinkles glitter over a ribbon of glue on construction paper - Trash Talk

Infuriates me because it directly affects me. Makes me furious too for my guy friends and training partners who are racing with integrity too.

A friend of a friend raced in Clearwater. She's 35-39 I believe and a great cyclist, but there is no way that she could have pulled that kinda time w/o some help. I think it would tick me off even then if I'd been racing... different AG and all, but still... drafting on the bike just makes me mad across the board.

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Tiger for Life -- War Eagle!

I'm not saying that women cheat more often- I actually think they cheat less- my point is that when they do cheat, to me, it seems worse. They aren't just enjoying the benefits of drafting- ie, not doing as much work- they are actually gaining A LOT more speed. I agree that people riding the course solo can have amazing bike splits- it is a fast course, and I'm not saying that everyone who has a fast bike split is drafting. I am just talking about the women who when riding alone, I could pass going 23mph, but then they would catch me because they were in the middle of a peleton that they could never break in front of, going 26+ mph. That makes me more mad than simply drafting.

Checking the results, you can see that some women will average 22mph at the start, and then their average will jump up to 26 mph in the middle and stay elevated- there was no tailwind to do that for them! The men who were in peletons (whether or not they felt like they had a 'choice') stayed at constant speeds. Also, a lot of these women took 20-30min off their best bike split- and that's why I think it's a worse form of cheating than just drafting. Does that make sense?

How do you remedy this though, a female race one day and a male race the next?

I was in your wave as well and felt the same way. I had so many girls blow by me in the second half of the bike who I had passed handily pretty much right out of the water. It was especially frustrating because I'm a strong cyclist and a not so great runner and I pretty much totally lost my advantage at this race by racing clean and shredding my legs before the run. I even had a "why bother" moment in T2 where I thought about dropping out but then just decided to stick with it and at least get a result I could be proud of because I earned it on my own legs.

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my severely neglected blog

I don't think I feel differently either way, with regard to gender (I am female, by the way). But that is my attitude in general, in life - I don't think I see things differently for men vs. women (taken with a grain of salt I guess, given I am currently reading and posting in The Womens:). However, my perspective is that the women can be more obvious, as others have said, because there are fewer of them. At Clearwater I saw a girl I passed easily, hop on a pack that passed me near the finish of the bike, and she was grinning like an idiot, quite pleased with her luck. That made me bitter. At least the men just stared straight ahead and pretended nothing was going on (I think it was some pact they all had). But she sure did look like an idiot when she got dropped in a little. Not even good enough to let the pack do all the work.

At Canada last year, I had a guy passing me mention that I had some guys drafting off me (people I passed who hung on), and yes, I was a little annoyed. But honestly my thought was I am not competing with them (not that it is ok, but their cheating benefit would not directly affect me) and that wow, they sucked, having to cheat off a girl (now, cycling is my strongest sport, so I don't think they sucked that bad - I can hold my own on the bike, but I was not even the biggest person around, and I guess they couldn't hang on anyone else's wheel who was actually a big guy really worth drafting off of); anyway, it made me happy at the time to think about how bad they were.

I have to say the time I was most angry about drafting by a woman was at a more local race, where the pack managed to block a narrow road being used as an out and back at the race, so even if you put in the effort to pass the pack, you actually couldn't do so safely. I did get by once, and the next time they went by, I realized a woman was the one really pulling the pack together - helping orchestrate it and encouraging everyone (vocally) to work together. It didn't help my mentality to know that I had heard she cheated at a running race as well, once, so to see it in action was especially irritating. Had it been a man, I might not have been so angry, but this was a woman, who, depending on the year, is in my age group. I've learned I can beat her on the bike (depending on how much she drafts) but she can run faster than me. But is that because of fresh legs? Hard to tell.

If I notice it more when women do things, I think ultimately it's when they do good. The opposite of all this was at Lake Placid a few years ago, when as I passed a woman on the second loop climbing back to town, we said a few words, and she said it was good to see other women out there at that time - that is, women with strong cycling. And I thought that was pretty cool, and agreed with her. It was cool to look around and see some other women, given how many more men than women were in the race, and (especially in my case with a slow swim) knowing I was a strong cyclist, man or woman. I think a lot of women don't get to their full potential cycling - they just don't push enough or know how to push enough, and I see so much more some women could do. Since I used to be one of those women, I want them to work harder and really ride well (well, maybe not if they are in my age group...:) Of course, then I go somewhere like Clearwater and I see bike times that say "full potential" but I wonder where it really came from.