Announcing our new cycling podcast host, Abby Mickey
A few weeks ago, we asked for your help in producing the breadth and depth of coverage that women’s cycling deserves. And you stepped up: Over 300 new members, and rising, joined VeloClub.
As promised, that means we’ll be kicking off a new podcast in the coming weeks. It will be hosted by the superb Abby Mickey, who just retired from her pro racing career.
I sat down with Abby in Boulder this week, less than 24 hours after she’d returned from Europe (and from a trip that didn’t end so smoothly – but I’ll let Abby tell that story on a future podcast). We talked about what she wants this podcast to be. How it will be formatted, who she’ll have on as guests, the topics she wants to cover.
She wants to do a multi-part series on an early edition of the women’s Tour de France, and an episode on how incredibly difficult it is to transition out of racing, and segments on nutrition, and racing news. Episodes will be thematic, but also include long-form interviews. I can’t wait for her to get it off the ground.
That conversation reinforced the unifying theory behind this drive, something that I don’t think we’ve communicated particularly well thus far — that focusing on representation and beat reporting will lead to the best, broadest, and deepest coverage. That’s because representation matters, and focus matters. And we want both.
We can cover women’s cycling without putting it in a box. We can have a podcast hosted by a woman without demanding that Abby only talk about “women’s topics,” whatever that even means. The segregation of women’s content was a fatal flaw of our efforts with Ella, from both a commercial and editorial standpoint, because a separate-but-equal doctrine rarely works out equally.
To put this another way, Abby loves women’s racing; she’s certainly going to talk about it in her podcast. But that’s not all she wants to talk about. Bikes are bikes. The best way to talk about all sorts of different bike stuff is to have all sorts of different people talking about bike stuff.
This idea will play out on CyclingTips.com, too. Yes, there will be a box where you can find our latest coverage of women’s racing. But there won’t be a separate website; stories will flow through the marquee slots up top as usual. That puts them in front of more people, and puts all of our coverage on equal footing.
Our next goal is 700 new members. We’re already halfway there. This is a big one: If we reach the target, we’re going to send reporters to the major races on the women’s racing calendar. At many of these events, it would make us the only major cycling outlet providing on-the-ground coverage.
I’m absolutely determined to get us there. But, really, it’s up to all of you. If you’ve been thinking about joining – if you like what we do now and you support what we want to do next – now is the time to join up.
Thanks, as always, for the support.
Caley Fretz
Editor-in-Chief
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