A FEW hours before the men’s Tour de France arrived in Paris on July 27th 2014, a group (or peloton) of women cyclists dashed up the Champs Elysees. It was the inaugural race of La Course, a one-day event organised by the people behind the Tour de France, and the latest attempt to launch a women’s version of the main competition. Previous efforts have foundered because of a lack of interest among sponsors and the public. The difficulty of creating a women’s Tour illustrates a wider phenomenon: with a few exceptions, professional women’s sport is much less popular than the male equivalent. Why?
