LIZZIE Armitstead, a tireless campaigner for women's cycling, wants them to have a minimum wage to bring them in line with their male counterparts.

The 25-year-old from Otley appreciates that women's cycling is moving forward, with the inaugural Friends Life Women's Tour of Britain and the one-day La Course by Le Tour on the Champs Elysees, which has been confirmed for next year, being joined in 2015 by a similar women's race at the end of the Vuelta a Espana.

However, Women's World Cup winner and Commonwealth Games champion Armitstead, who rides for Dutch team Boels-Dolmans, admits that more still needs to be done.

She said: "It's the chicken-and-egg scenario. It's media exposure, it's sponsors. Cycling is a business so we have to be able to offer something to a sponsor, and without exposure that's going to be difficult – but that's where the UCI (International Cycling Union) perhaps has to be a little bit stronger.

"Before we talk about having a three-week Tour de France, which has been a massive talking point this year, we need to talk about professionalism.

"You can't expect a woman who is holding down a part-time job to train for the biggest race in the world. She has to have a minimum wage, and I sometimes I think it is pretty crazy that we don't have that."

The current minimum wage for a UCI World Tour rider, other than a first-year professional, is £35,000, and that will typically be supplemented by bonuses.

Sometimes women riders have to make choices. World time trial champion Emma Pooley, for example, retired from road racing this year to concentrate on the more lucrative triathlons and long-distance running.

She has called on men's professional cycling teams to fund a women's team, and if that happens then there should also be a women's development team beneath that.

And while Brian Cookson, who used to work for Pendle Council, made women's cycling one of the six key pillars of his successful UCI presidential election campaign last year, he admits that financing it is a major issue.

He said: "You can't just develop professional sport by passing rules about minimum wages. There has to be money coming into the sport.

"If companies want to sponsor the sport, they have to feel there is a value in sponsoring the competitors, whether males or females, and so it's important what we do at the UCI level and also at national federation level to get behind women's cycling, support it as much as we can and get as many sponsors as we can.

"We need to raise the media profile so there is more of a value so we can then offer more full-time professional careers to more women than is the case at the moment."

Armitstead, who finished runner-up to Marianne Vos at the 2012 London Olympics, has just finished her most glittering season ever.

She reflected on her World Cup and Commonwealth Games triumphs by saying: "I'm really happy with the season as it's been a massive success for me.

"The Commonwealth Games was a real goal because of what it means to the public and what it means to my family.

"Personally, winning the World Cup was a bigger achievement for me. It's something I thought I'd never achieve in my career because it's all about being consistent in World Cups across the season, and that's never been my strong point up until this season."

However, showing she still has big targets, she added: "Somebody asked me the other day what results would you give up to be world champion, and I said 'all of them'. Maybe not my silver medal from the Olympics but I'd certainly give up the rest. To be cycling world champion is just special."