{"id":106,"date":"2018-05-11T17:00:25","date_gmt":"2018-05-12T00:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/?p=65549"},"modified":"2018-05-11T17:00:25","modified_gmt":"2018-05-12T00:00:25","slug":"amgen-tour-of-california-to-kick-off-in-long-beach-without-podium-girls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/amgen-tour-of-california-to-kick-off-in-long-beach-without-podium-girls","title":{"rendered":"Amgen Tour of California to Kick Off in Long Beach Without Podium Girls"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Photo from last year&#8217;s tour, from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pg\/AmgenTourofCalifornia\/\">Amgen Tour of California<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Spectators of the first stage of the Amgen Tour of California, a circuit race taking place in Long Beach on Sunday, should not expect to see any scantily-clad models offering kisses and prizes to winning cyclists.<\/p>\n<p>President of the Amgen Tour of California Kristin Klein announced today during a press conference with tour riders that the premier stage race will discontinue having hostesses, commonly known as \u201cpodium girls\u201d, present awards to stage winners during the podium ceremonies that follow.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Klein also announced the @AmgenTOC will eliminate hostesses and the conventional winners\u2019 kiss from podium celebrations. <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/LongBeachPost?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@LongBeachPost<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Asia Morris (@hugelandmass) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hugelandmass\/status\/995051304467628033?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">May 11, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>\u201cAEG, the company that owns and operates the Amgen Tour of California, we always want to do the right thing,\u201d Klein told the <em>Post<\/em>. \u201cAs you probably heard today we made the decision to actually have equal prize money for the women and the men, as well.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The decision follows La Vuelta a Espana\u2019s decision in 2017 to be the first Grand Tour to stop using hostesses, followed by the Tour de France\u2019s announcement of plans to do away with the controversial tradition, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thetimes.co.uk\/edition\/sport\/tour-de-france-plan-to-drop-podium-girls-t5mt07qng\">The Times<\/a>\u00a0reported in early March.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think that there has been an increase in overall support for women\u2019s cycling all over the world, just in terms of adding additional races, so I think we have been at the forefront of that,\u201d Klein added. \u201c<span style=\"font-size: 1rem;\">I feel like it\u2019s been a topic of conversation for years now and this was just the year that we made the decision that there\u2019s not a necessity for them anymore.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/amgen-tour-of-california-announces-world-class-teams-confirmed-for-2018-edition\/<\/p>\n<p>While Klein wouldn\u2019t give her opinion on whether the tradition is steeped in sexism, plenty of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.outsideonline.com\/2286396\/enough-podium-girls-already\">others<\/a> have. What has long been a conversation within the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bicycling.com\/racing\/a20049127\/tour-de-france-podium-girls\/\">cycling community<\/a> surrounding podium girls and what they represent seems to be producing more than just opinions, and especially in the last year, has started to make waves as actionable items.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes, we started off as a men\u2019s race, but it was very important to us at AEG to make sure that we were supporting the women\u2019s as well,\u201d said Klein. \u201cWe\u2019ve been supporting women\u2019s racing since 2008. I feel like[&#8230;] we\u2019re always at the front end of trying to do the right thing and make these decisions, and hopefully everyone will continue to follow and we\u2019ll continue to be a leader.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Amgen Tour of California will continue to implement their stage management team and partners to ensure the podium celebrations run smoothly, Klein said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>President of the Amgen Tour of California Kristin Klein announced today that the premier stage race will discontinue having hostesses, commonly known as \u201cpodium girls\u201d, present awards to stage winners during the podium ceremonies that follow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":16453,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[49],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-amgen-tour-of-california","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/136"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=106"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}