Competitive Opportunities in Cycling
Cycling opportunities can be all over the map, from local club racing all the way to the elite WorldTour rankings, but the further along you go, it seems harder to keep women involved. The races become significantly shorter than the men's races (more than they already may have been), teams shrink, and you spend more time travelling to races over the course of a year than you actually do competing
The Calendar
As an amateur cyclist, you are able to find races all throughout your region, with at least one happening any given weekend from mid-April to late September on the road, and all through the fall and winter for mountain biking and cyclocross. At the UCI Women's WorldTour level, they have 20 events in 2017, spread between early March and mid-September, for a season of 27 weeks and a total of 46 racing days. And unlike the local races for amateurs, many of these races are standalone events for the women. The men, on the WorldTour calendar, have 40 weeks of racing, with over 170 racing days.
The Teams
While the UCI is thrilled with the growth they have seen in the number of women's teams competing over the last few years, it still pales in comparison to the number of men's teams licensed on the circuit. In 2015, the UCI registered 39 professional and semi-professional women's teams, up from 31 in 2014. Alongside those teams were 216 professional and semi-pro men's teams.
Each of the top six UCI Women's WorldTour teams have fewer than 15 riders on their roster, compared to the top six men's teams, who have no fewer than 26 riders each.
The Races
Across the board, women race shorter events than the men. In cyclocross, a sport where you are riding for a set amount of time rather than distance, women's elite races are scheduled to be 10 minutes shorter than the men's races. Same thing with Criterium style racing in the US.
Professional road races can vary even more. One-day races such as Gent-Wevelgem, where there was both a women's and men's event, saw the women racing 100km fewer than the men, even more the following weekend at the Ronde Van Vlanderen.