Demi Vollering, Juliette Berthet and Célia Gery are phenomenal athletes. They are all in the FDJ United-SUEZ cycling team and all competed in the Tour de France Femmes. Vollering even won it. So you would think they would be inspirational for millions of people worldwide, and especially millions of young girls who now know that they too can be badass cyclists one day.
I hid myself as best I could behind a bush and then the faff began
Except that four days ago, Vollering, Berthet and Gery were fined CHF100 (about £90) by the UCI (International Cycling Union), the world governing body for cycle racing. What had they done? Dastardly pro cycling tactics? Elbowing someone hard in the face, then whining about “white privilege”, as the despicable DiJonai Carrington did to Sophie Cunningham in a recent basketball match?
No. Vollering, Berthet and Gery had lowered their clothing and had a pee. I don’t know what they did exactly as French television cameras get very modest when it comes to cyclists having to attend to bodily functions.
What they did will depend on what they were wearing: usually female pro cyclists wear bib shorts (shorts with stretchy braces) and a jersey with a full zip, but all-in-one bodysuits are becoming more common. Either way they could not do as men do, and whip it out while on the bike while their team-mates shield them from view like a herd on the savannah. Women have to stop, take off probably jersey and shorts, or the entire bodysuit. They have to expose their arses just to take a pee. (They do not have the advantage that a sari confers, for example, a technique a wonderful sanitation activist once called “cover the face, expose the base”.)
And they then get fined for it.
The fine was levied according to article 2.12.007, section 8.6 of the UCI regulations, which states that “unseemly or inappropriate behaviour (in particular undressing or urinating in public at the start or finish or during the race) and damage to the image of sport” gets a CHF100-200 fine. (If the women had dared to pee during the Olympics, it could have been CHF500, or about £450).
Do the multiple pages of regulations give any instructions to men or women about what they are supposed to do with the contents of their bladder on a stage or race that lasts hours when they are drinking constantly? They do not. Instead, UCI just throws out so many fines for urine infractions – to men and women – that one popular cycling podcast has a regular segment called “Urine (you’re in) Trouble.” A statement from the organisers of the Giro d’Italia in May read: “To respect the image of cycling and the Giro d’Italia, the Organiser and the Commissaires’ Panel inform all riders that urinating into a bottle and subsequently discarding it is strictly prohibited.”
I suppose that’s fair enough. Spectators may get a shock when they are tossed a bottle by a passing rider although knowing the fervour of some pro cycling followers, they’d probably keep it in the fridge for years. But let’s have a look at this “image of cycling” thing.
On Sunday, I went on a bike ride and needed a pee. We were on a back road, but cars were still passing. I hid myself as best I could behind a bush and then the faff began. First, I had to take off my cycling jersey, which only had a half zip. Then I had to pull down my shorts and do the necessary. Then I had to retrieve everything that had fallen out of my cycling jersey because no-one cycles without stuffing all the jersey pockets with gels, food, keys, whatever. A mile or so later, I pulled two twigs out of my shorts.
I have no issue with wild peeing. I try to hide from other people, but if they saw me I wouldn’t be ashamed. When there are no toilets on the fells and moors and back roads of north Yorkshire, I have to do something. But I always try to be modest. Did I think, as I scrabbled for my fallen phone, vaseline, flapjack and hair bobble in the vegetation, that I had damaged the image of cycling? No. I just thought: a man wouldn’t have to do this. Not that I’m defending men’s outdoor peeing habits: I regularly get emails from fell race organisers begging male entrants not to pee in people’s gardens on the race route.
At least away from the rarefied world of pro cycling, cycling clothing manufacturers have noticed something: cyclists need to pee, and especially women. After my Sunday faff, I began researching and found that plenty of bib shorts now have something called a “comfort break” feature. The Scottish brand Endura calls theirs a DropSeat™, because that’s the idea. Some shorts now feature a carefully placed zip, or very stretchy folds, or very very stretchy braces. The idea is that you can pull down the shorts from behind without the colossal annoyance of having to undress everything else. Well done, cycling companies. If it only hadn’t taken you 150 years of women cycling to notice.
The DropSeat and its ilk won’t have helped Demi Vollering and her team-mates. For once, the governing bodies and race organisers seem to be equally ignorant about the anatomical pressures facing both sexes. If the UCI doesn’t like women or anyone peeing by the roadside, then it needs to say what it does want. Because it can’t be hundreds of elite athletes holding in their urine in increasing discomfort. We must all remember – women in particular – holding it in at school. The research is insufficient, of course, but enough has been done to show that holding it in (the technical term is “voiding postponement”) can damage focus and concentration, and lead to “urinary and gastrointestinal disorders, dehydration, psychological distress, and academic difficulties,” according to one meta-review.
Pro cyclists, like pro anyone, train according to the “marginal gains” doctrine, whereby something small can have a disproportionate effect on performance. It was popularised by the head of British Cycling, Dave Brailsford, who believed that making a one per cent improvement in many things would lead to a huge improvement. His marginal gains including imposing the use of hand gels, and painting the floor white in transport trucks so that dust (which damaged bike performance) was easier to spot.
Here’s a marginal gain for you, Union Cycliste Internationale. Show the millions of young people who look up to pro riders that you understand that peeing is natural and part of sport. Sport prizes the body: so should you, in all its aspects. Voiding postponement makes riders perform worse. Fining them makes you look vicious. Let them pee.
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