fadsfasfasfadsf wrote:
Sounds stupid but why not do them at the same time? The infrastructure is there already...we do it with marathons.
Well, you can't LITERALLY do them at the same time like the marathon (mixed fields) because cycling is so much more tactical. If the women are just trying to hang on to the men's peloton it's a completely different kind of race. You really don't want them sprinting against the men, the only reason sprinting is remotely safe in the first place is because only the top few guys really go for it. If you have women trying to sprint from the back of the pack you're really going to have a bad time. Lots of reasons why it's a bad idea.
You could maybe start the women 1 hour after the men, but then you need to shut down the roads twice as long (they're not shut down all day). A 5 hour stage for the men will take 6 or 7 hours for the women (partly due to strength, partly due to the depth of the field -- the women's peloton doesn't stick together as well). So they'll typically be finishing 2-3 hours later if they start 1 hour after. The men are usually projected to finish around 5-6PM, which means the women could be finishing after dark. No good. So you would have to have the men start a couple hours earlier, which might lower viewership. If you want the women to start before the men, they might have to start 3 hours before the men begin, which would be pretty early in the morning.
The logistics at the tops of the mountain stages would also be a big problem. Sometimes you have to get to the hotel by going back the way you came up the mountain, and it usually takes a long time to get down the mountain because you have to wait for everyone to finish, and there are also a lot of people and support guys and journalists up there. For the women to finish right afterwards would be really tough on people who need to get down (they wouldn't be able to), and it would be harder to make space for everything that needs to get up there.
A better solution might be to have the women ride the same stages the next day.
They used to have a women's tour, but lack of interest led to its demise. You can read about it a bit here for instance (first google hit):
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/jul/06/marianne-martin-tour-de-france-feminin-cycling