The Leper Colony: Why women's cycling can (and should) go it alone

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I've been avoiding writing about Lance Armstrong for some time. Partly because my legal brain is engaged in a battle with my common sense. “He never tested properly, properly positive” whispers the lawyer in me. But there is such a thing as overwhelming evidence. Men's cycling is hoist on its own petard. They laid down measures of proof that didn't compliment either the nature of doping or the investigative process. They made the bed, and now they're lying in it. I hope Armstrong is the last person to be able to dispute certain doping by leaning on weak people, weak processes and crying witch hunt.

The second reason I've been avoiding writing about Armstrong is that I was a fan. I was 11 when he won his first tour. That year, my friend, wearing a very tight Gan kit, gouged a hole in his knee after he came off on a corner near the bandstand in Bancroft Park. I was on the victory strait and didn't see a thing. To be honest, I was probably being Ulrich, or Zabel, or Pantani. All sad, sad stories.

So it's all baloney. Men cheating, suing, posturing, pointing and escaping real punishment, able to retreat behind a handful of technicalities and some money. There are a few heroes. Emma o'Reilley, Travis Tygart, David Walsh, Paul Kimmage. But too few.

Men's cycling is now a totalitarian state run by tin-pot tyrants. There's a code of omerta, a hierarchy of ridiculous loyalties, big dollars, bad behaviour and craven ambition – all overseen by a bunch of square-jawed baddies. What you're seeing isn't cycling any more – and it hurts to say that, in a year in which Bradley Wiggins, a Kilburn kid, an everyman, won the Tour and the gold.

But as far as I'm concerned the very worst part isn't that we were lied to. Isn't that Armstrong effectively stole from taxpayers and sponsors. Isn't that something that's so much fun got so ugly. The worst part, the most unfair part, is the effect that this is having on women's cycling.

I wish I'd known this when I was 11: There's a female Armstrong too – Kristin Armstrong. She's American. She's a champion. She's a mother. She's an Olympian. She's clean. Her biography won't be a pack of lies. And her team, Exergy-Twenty12 are, according to their directeur sportif, finding themselves tainted by the bad blood on the men's circuit.

Then there's Marianne Vos. The best cyclist of a generation, female or male. A quiet, humble Dutchwoman who after winning the Giro Donne sat with her parents and her cat at a white plastic picnic table and had half a cup of champagne. Then she went to London and gave us a spectacularly exciting road race. Her team, Rabobank, announced last week that they were distancing themselves from cycling. This is code for, in case you're wondering: “you're fired”. Though they have softened their initial stance a little, with an offer of help, the point still stands. Sponsors are throwing the baby away with the bathwater.

Sure, there's technical merit in the argument that doping on the women's circuit isn't as prevalent because the prize money is only just enough to keep you in baked beans.* But that doesn't matter – it's an empty suggestion. Here you have a sport that's exciting, primarily clean and with a potentially massive fan base. In terms of sponsorship, it's an investor's dream. There's no end of apparel; the races are long; they actually go places; pretty much anyone, of any size, weight or age can cycle; its champions are down-home, relatable.

Most women's pro road teams have no male counterpart or parent team. They're a poorly paid hotch-potch of part-time and dedicated athletes. Women's sports have been told to stand on their own for so long and in cycling, they pretty much do. So it's unspeakably outrageous and deeply unfair that they're being affected by the image of a sport that has spent since forever shunning them.

The reality is that we also have a sport which, as Katherine Bertine put it so well, is demanding too much of most of its riders. A sport which drops events, riders, marketing deals and franchises without so much as an explanation. Kristy Scrymgeour, owner and directeur sporftif at Specialized-Lululemon, and Nicola Cranmer, her opposite at Exergy Twenty-12 both expressed unease over the wave of negativity about the men, spilling into women's cycling.

Scrymgeour has the firmest handle on the way forward, saying: “We need to look at [women's cycling] as a separate entity”. She's right – and furthermore, to parse Hillary Clinton, the effort should belong to women.

Following the London Games, there has been a bit of chatter about tie-ins with men's teams to help with funding, same-day events to help with viewers, and so on. But following the Armstrong scandal, I respectfully disagree. Women's cycling needs to completely cut itself off from men's – until the latter can prove itself worthy of our company. Women's cycling needs to stand up and demand better.

One of the main reasons women fall behind men in terms of pay, profession-wide, is that we won't ask for a pay rise. But this time, we need to sell ourselves, to pull sponsors by the arm and say: “you know what, you thought you were sponsoring one thing, all that time, and you were basically sponsoring a leper colony. They're infectious, you've got to wait for them to just die out, leave the island – you can go back later - now come sponsor something that hasn't got bits dropping off it.”

There is certainly a real need for some hardlining right now, because this window, in which the major funds-sponge is in disgrace, is probably not going to come around again. But we need to be cautious. With money comes power, or in sports, that special brand of power known as “acting like a complete tool”. At the same time as securing more private sponsorship, there needs to be a focus on the UCI's efforts for women, and its organisation of the sport – grass roots upwards.

Controls and checks need to be put in place, so that governing bodies can check for all the signs of doping – races speeding up too much, money going funny places, people missing testers. We know what it looks like. There has to be a proper structure to control the expansion of the sport, so that it doesn't fall victim to the same temptations. There's no high-horsing here, no double standard. Women should be presumed just as capable of doping as men.

So how to hardline? Well, a few pointers – and the good news is, you can do it from the comfort of your own home: Keep talking about it to all your friends. I'm pretty sure my family is about to send me a 'cease and desist' order the next time I open my mouth about women's sports. Write to your television network; point out that women can ride bikes without stabilisers and some of them go pretty fast. Explain that it's not about comparisons; it's a different sport, with great characters and so, so much untapped potential. Corner you friends in marketing – we all have them, and we all feel sorry for them – and say that this is the next big thing. You won't be lying: it is.

Check that your local club is operating an equal set-up and if they're not, write to your MP, or your district-whatever. If you're on a women's team, no matter how small, organise an event for sponsors and tell them in no uncertain terms that you are going somewhere, are as clean as a whistle and have great teeth, so you should probably be in an advert for them. And don't, whatever you do, sit back and whine about it, or presume that other women will do it for you. It's what I call the 'Toilet Roll Lesson'. Do not expect that other people are going to buy the loo roll. You will be caught short.

The effort is ours; and it's time we stood on our own. Please be a statistic.

*For example, 3^rd Place in Tour of Flanders will net you €564. Winning a UCI 1.1 one day race brings in €379. 5^th place in a UCI 2.1 stage race is worth €99. A stage win at the Tour de France nets €8,000, and that's on top of your earnings as a rider in a fully-pro set-up.

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• Cycling
• Sports
• Discrimination/Title IX
• Media/Marketing
• Sponsorship
• Anti-Doping
• Sexism
• Road Cycling

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