Podium girls for Tour Down Under and grid girls at Adelaide 500 kissed off by the state government in 2016
Podium girls kiss winner Rohan Dennis of the UniSA team during the 2012 Tour Down Under event and, inset, one of the grid girls at the Adelaide 500 motor race.
Main image by Tim de Waele/TDWSport.com
The South Australian government in 2016 replaced winners’ podium girls for its sponsored Tour Down Under professional cycling event and its funding for grid girls at Adelaide 500 V8 motor car race.
The Tour Down Under podium girls, who kissed the race stage and jersey winners, were replaced with state junior cycling champions.
South Australian sports minister Leon Bignell said the decision to stop using models at the Tour Down Under and the Adelaide 500 was part of a drive to improve body image. Bignell said it was “not a good spend of taxpayers’ money when we’re putting money in one area of government to help young women (with body image problems) and in another area we’re paying for other young women to dress up in skimpy outfits.”
Bignell said that “what we actually want to do is inspire girls and young women who come to the motor racing to be car drivers or to be mechanics or to be engineers.”
A model agency director called the South Australia government decision sad but South Australian Unions secretary Joe Szakacs said that it would not limit employment options for models: “There's certainly no lack of opportunity for women to participate in modelling and fashion. What I think this does is make a very clear statement that there is a much more constructive, productive and influential role that women can and should play in delivering these events.”
Past and present grid girls have told The Advertiser in Adelaide they’ve never felt “objectified or sexualised” and their ambassadorial roles have helped many of them into careers beyond the race.Veteran grid girl Jeska, who has worked at the event for more than 10 years, said she felt comfortable wearing their outfits which had become “much more corporate” over the last five years: “We’re wearing more clothes than half the people walking around (Rundle) Mall today.”
In 2020, the Tour de France cycling race administrators decided to no longer use two podium girls to assist – and kiss – stage winners and jersey winners after each stage of the race. Instead, one female and one male host would take part in the podium protocols. The practice of using grid girls in Formula 1 motor racing was also stopped in 2018.
