This event is a sign of progress – but there is much more to do

female coaches, and the number of women taking part in sportives has also risen. We have trained more women to become commissaries and appointed women to top positions on British Cycling’s board – me included!

But it is a constant battle. More female representation at the top of our sport is fantastic, but to initiate genuine, long-term change, we know we must continue our work to transform our sport from the bottom up. Our female membership sits at 23,000 (which is higher than our total number of members 15 years ago). However, women still make up just 16 per cent of the membership. That is not good enough.

Bridging that gender gap is why we have set up a Women’s Strategy Group – headed up by Jill Puttnam, our head of programme design, and which I chair – to try to find solutions. My hope is that through our work, the group will make itself obsolete because the culture of cycling will have changed to normalise women’s participation.

But there is much to do in the meantime. Our research suggests that so-called ‘churn’ – people being inspired to start cycling but then drifting away again – is much higher amongst women than men. This is due, predominantly, to

Our sport cannot fulfil its potential if we succeed in engaging only half the population