While it has made it clear that it doesn’t approve of the language used, Cycling Australia has given a light penalty to the Jayco Bay Series round one winner Chloe Hosking in relation to her criticism of UCI President Pat McQuaid.
Hosking spoke out against the UCI after her victory on January 2nd, saying that McQuaid was ‘a dick’ when asked about how she believed women’s racing is perceived by the UCI.
Cycling Australia's president Klaus Mueller and chief executive Graham Fredericks met the rider in Adelaide and while they concluded she had brought the sport into disrepute and that her language was inappropriate, they made it clear that they agreed with some of what she said about the differences between men’s and women’s cycling.
As a result they gave her a minimal fine of $200 but suspended it for twelve months, provided that there was no further disciplinary incidents in that time.
In fact, Mueller’s comments to the The Age can be interpreted as supportive of some of what she was saying about inequality.
“We took into account the fact that the women, and in particular Chloe, earn bugger all from the sport. And if in fact we imposed an immediate $200 fine that would be a very severe penalty,” he said.
“For the blokes a $200 fine would be a slap on the wrist. And if the guys earning the big bucks did something similar they could expect a much more savage outcome, but Chloe would be on 10,000Euros or something a year, she has to pay for all her own accommodation, all her own living expenses.”
He said that she was very apologetic when they spoke to her this week. “We said to her 'we respect your right to savagely criticise the attitude of the UCI and things that Pat McQuaid has done and said, but you can't attack the messenger. You can attack the message, and we respect her right to do that, but calling someone a dick or a dickhead just doesn’t elevate the discussion at all and she knew that.”
He said that he accepted that introducing a minimum wage was not realistic at this point in time, even though he said that women are paid ‘completely inadequate money.’
Mueller added that the UCI and Cycling Australia could probably both do more to help women’s cycling, but so too should the women themselves. “There's been many occasions where good prize pools have been put up for women and there hasn’t been a commensurate increase in numbers,” he stated.