There's probably only one women's race each year that I make a real point of following, and that's the Giro Rosa. So why has it been downgraded (something to do with TV?) and what are the implications?
Yes, it seems to be mainly that patience has run out with the crap TV coverage. It should have been fixed for the 2019 edition to have remained in the World Tour calendar. There were accusations that it got special treatment as the nearest thing to a Grand Tour for women.
Frustration was expressed during the race with it being nicknamed "The Invisible Race" in articles like
https://cyclingtips.com/2020/09/the-giro-rosa-the-nearly-invisible-race/
https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/news/giro-rosa-behind-closed-doors-with-no-live-tv/ar-BB18WGlQ suggests that there was expected to be some live coverage pretty much right up until this year's race started. I wonder if UCI allowed them to get away with 20 minutes instead of the required 45 due to the health crisis and calendar clashes, but the organisers EASD still bait-and-switched them at the last minute.
As I understand it, the main implications are that the World Tour teams won't be obliged to enter, the UCI won't be publishing highlights and no World Tour Championship points will be awarded.
The stage races on next year's World Tour calendar are Tour of Chongming Island (3 days), Itzulia (3), Vuelta a Burgos (4), Tour of Britain (6), Tour of Norway (4), Boels Tour (6) and Ceratizit Madrid Challenge (3). Amongst other changes, the RideLondon Classique returns after being downgraded for 2020 (and then cancelled anyway) but with a date of 30 May instead of its usual late July which is expected to clash with the Tokyo Olympics - the first such move, as the Rio Olympics started on 5 August so did not clash.
My absence from this thread was mainly because I was watching the pathetic 3-5 minute highlights shows published on youtube by PMG in the evening (PMG) and UCI the following morning (with interviews in English not in the PMG one), so by the time I've seen both, the next stage has started and I won't open a spoilers thread. The RAI Sport 50-minutes highlights show was encrypted the time I tried, which is usually done to restrict coverage to Italy (where they can get decoder cards) but I don't understand why they would do that when it didn't seem to have been sold for any other country. Also, I didn't really want to watch 2 hours cycling each night this month, so I would have been choosing between the Giro and Tour anyway, depending on which seemed likely to be most exciting. It all adds up to less "buzz" about the race and the Women's World Tour.
I wonder if this is the Women's version of the ASO-UCI conflict during the creation of the Men's World Tour, where one race organiser thinks they're bigger than the rules, playing out with less money?
but "pmg sports" on youtube has 5 and 55min highlights, plus I suspect the UCI channel will have highlights a couple of days late again like last year
