The advent of the Touring Club de France in the early 1890s strengthened the position of members (men and women) of cycling clubs more interested in leisure riding of all kinds, and gradually helped to make female cycling more acceptable. Cycling developed initially as a leisure and sporting activity that interested the leisured and moneyed classes, aristocratic and bourgeois clubs were set up, which helped to anchor the pastime socially, as well as contributing to the development of rules and regulations. The requirement for sports clubs to be legally set up and approved by the authorities meant that cycling clubs led the way in developing models of organizing such associations. 
As is clear from the history of cycling clubs themselves during this period, the place of women within the club system of sociability and citizenship through sport and leisure was far from strong. Not only were women excluded from full citizenship until female suffrage in 1944, but membership of cycling clubs was often denied to them. Female memberships generally remained inferior in rights and obligations compared with the standard involvement of men or even junior sociétaires (in order to preserve ‘respectability’, women were usually required to be introduced to clubs by husbands, brothers or fathers, and were debarred from taking on administrative roles); and, very few cycling clubs created competitions for female members. 
It was only in the 1890s that cycling as a sport became a proper commercial spectacle, with road and track races attracting huge audiences and involving considerable financial stakes for riders, managers, trainers, promoters, manufacturers and newspapers. The phenomenon of velodrome racing, which developed in the 1880s and rapidly reached its zenith in the 1890s, is a complex case-study of the influences and trends at work in the evolution of cycling as sport and leisure. The brief period during which the velodromes flourished was marked by the rise of professionalism, the decline in the role of clubs in the organization of races, the rise in the importance of the sporting press, the strengthening of links between racers and manufacturers and overall, a democratization of cycling. Cycle racing in the early decades had been organized on public roads or in public spaces such as parks or urban boulevards, but the need had soon developed for permanent facilities. It was thus that early influential clubs built their own race tracks, to be used both for races and training.