This past March, Tour de France organizers made positive headlines with the announcement that they would abandon the use of “podium girls,” the longstanding but controversial tradition of having models present awards and pose with winners after each stage of the race.
Newsflash: They didn’t. As we’ve seen after the first five stages of this year’s Tour, podium girls are still out there flanking the victors, handing out prizes, and planting kisses. We’d say we’re angry, but we’re not new to the sport. Mostly we’re just disappointed.
Podium girls, also known as hostesses, have long been a common sight in pro cycling. Their signature pose—two conventionally attractive women standing on either side of a male winner, each giving him a kiss on the cheek—makes for photo-ready moments that appear in the media every racing season.
But it’s not a great look for a sport grappling with issues of gender equality. And as a growing chorus of critics complain that podium girls reinforce a sexist culture that reduces women in cycling to their looks and harms the experiences of female competitors and fans, more and more races have done away with the practice.
The Vuelta a España became the first Grand Tour event to end the tradition last year. The Tour de France looked like it was poised to follow suit, which would have left the Giro d’Italia as the only race in the Grand Tour to still use podium girls. But last month, the Tour quietly admitted that it would keep the tradition going. It’s not clear how long the practice will linger.
Smaller races, like Australia’s Tour Down Under, have already ditched podium girls in favor of junior racers and other presenters. The Cyclocross World Cup in Iowa City relies on young fans to give out awards.
Other racing series, however, have attracted nothing but controversy when it comes to podium girls. Peter Sagan—usually known for his fun, hammy media image—was caught on camera groping a hostess during the 2013 Tour of Flanders. Two years later, the Belgian road race E3 Harelbeke came out with a poster that seemed to approve of the offensive butt-grab, prompting a swift and angry backlash:
The trend away from using women as eye candy has spread to other sports as well. In January, Formula 1 announced that it will stop using so-called grid girls during its motor races. Even the UK’s Professional Darts Corporation had walk-on girls as a selling point until this year.
Here’s hoping the Tour takes the issue back into consideration and we see a new race—one that doesn’t use women as window dressing—in 2019.
Original reporting by Molly Hurford
