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Efforts to get more women on their bikes and involved in time trialling have been reaping rewards in the North East, something that was highlighted at the recent Gosforth Road Club 12-mile time trial in Northumberland.

Ali McLean, Joanne Rea, Tracey Sample and Carol Stutchbury have been working on a strategy all season to encourage more female riders to partake in Northumberland and Durham CA time trials.

“Until Sunday we had been pretty successful with an average of ten females starting each event in our region compared to eight in the previous two years,” explained McLean. “Yesterday however, it all went right.”

Not content with having female timekeepers at both the start and finish, the event attracted a record 20 female starters. This number has only once been surpassed in our region and that was under exceptional circumstances when they hosted the National 10-mile Championships.

The ladies went off consecutively, starting with number one from the host club, Jenny Holland, to number 21 from Team Kirkley Cycles, the eventual winner Joanne Rea.

“We've worked hard to persuade organisers that the best way to foster female participation is to set them off together rather than willy-nilly throughout the field,” McLean added.

“The idea is that we create peer-to peer engagement and that was very much the case yesterday. There was a genuine feeling that this was a distinctly female event with peer-to-peer competition. The buzz before and after the race would appear to confirm that we had achieved just that.”

This remains a work in progress, and the team in the North East have further plans to implement over the winter which will hopefully allow them to build on this year's success.

“The triathlon world has achieved near parity between female and male entrants but it has taken 20 years to do so,” he said. “Here in the North East, our aim is to achieve those levels in half that time. The hard work has only just begun.”