During Women’s Sport Week 2016, BBC Sport will have a special column each day by a notable woman in sport. Four-time Olympic cycling champion Laura Kenny (nee Trott) explains how women’s road racing lags behind in the equality stakes and how changing her diet helped her win gold at Rio 2016.
During my career, men’s and women’s track cycling has always been equal.
We get equal prize money and there are equal events. At the London Olympics in 2012, it was the first time both the men’s and the women’s track schedules were exactly the same and we had the same television air time.
But on the road the situation is a lot different, and it’s here progress still needs to be made.
My older sister Emma was a pro cyclist but it was difficult for her to make money as a road rider, especially as she was a domestique (a support rider) and not a lead rider.
The sport’s world governing body, the UCI, has rules for minimum wages for men – a Pro Tour rider, for example, is guaranteed at least £30,000 a year.
In women’s cycling there is no minimum wage and Emma didn’t get paid thousands like her male counterparts did. She did it because she loved it.