The Th talking points of this year's race

There’s much to savour in the 16th running of the OVO Energy Tour of Britain, including the appearance of one of the hottest talents in the world, Mathieu van der Poel. We assess the big talking points of this year’s race

01MVDP THE MVP?

The OVO Energy Tour of Britain often attracts top talent - see Chris Froome and Geraint Thomas's appearances last season. And talent doesn’t come any bigger right now than that of Dutchman Mathieu van der Poel, who will come to the race with his Corendon Circus team with a determination to win a stage and a clear focus in becoming World Champion later in the month.

“I’m really happy that the organiser gives our team the chance to participate for the first time and at the same time helps me preparing for the Worlds in the best possible way,” he said. Should he win in Yorkshire he’d be the first man to be the reigning road and cyclo-cross world champion, an astonishing feat achieved by his compatriot, the legendary Marianne Vos in 2006, 2012 and 2013. You wouldn’t put it past the supremely talented Van der Poel, whose magic 2019 Spring Classics campaign came with a crescendo at one of the races of the year, the Amstel Gold Race, where he rampaged through in the finale for a famous win.

How much work went into securing Van der Poel’s entry? “It can work both ways,” says Mick Bennett, Race Director of the Tour of Britain, who suggests that the reputation of the race means it’s not all one-way traffic when attracting star riders. “We contacted his team to see if they’d be interested in riding, they said it depended what his programme of racing was going to be – ie whether he had cyclo-cross or mountain commitments. But it turns out his programme suited the team and the national squad and the rest is history. We’re very excited.”

02WORLDS FAMOUS

For the first time since 1982, and Goodwood, the UCI Road World Championships returns to the UK in Yorkshire (22-29 September). Kicking off just over a week after the Tour of Britain ends, it’s easy to presume that this once-in-a-generation affair will overshadow the annual loop around Britain. Yet the race is more than capable of standing on its own two feet.

It’s a race that’s long been a priming race for riders targeting the Worlds, competing against races being staged at the same time like the three-week Vuelta a España and the one-day WorldTour races in Canada (Micha Kwiatkowski won the Worlds in 2014 having finished second in the Tour of Britain). That’s a scenario likely to happen again, as riders familiarise themselves with the demands of racing on Britain’s lumpy, rough roads.

“To be honest I don’t think it makes much difference that [the Worlds] are in Yorkshire,” says Mick Bennett. “The teams come anyway, because it generally falls two weeks before the Worlds. Wherever they are being staged, we are an eight-day stage race and not a three-week grand tour and not all teams see the Vuelta as good preparation for the World Championships – they see our race as perfect preparation as it’s not too long and they come out of it flying.”

03BOOK OF GENESIS

The 2019 Tour of Britain will (probably) be the final curtain call for one of Britain’s top performing teams of the decade. In June Madison Genesis announced it would be closing its doors at the end of the season after seven years and the Tour of Britain, should they come through the qualification process (which looks likely at time of writing), will be a fitting finale. Though they’ve yet to win a stage there, they’ve been a consistent animator and disruptor, battling with teams who have far more strength in depth. In an open letter about the departure, team founder Dominic Langan cited, along with a desire for Madison to invest in other areas of the cycling market, “frustrations with certain aspects of the UK race scene”. The end of last season saw the demise of several other British Continental teams, most notably JLT-Condor, which had been going in various guises since 2004, and it’s clearly a tricky market for investors to see a return on what is considerable investment. A lack of sponsor visibility is just one of the problems encountered in the domestic road scene.

The Tour of Britain brought in a qualification process in 2016 for the British Continental teams – this year six teams are fighting for four places. But the disappearance of another team threatens the competitiveness of the process, which, while not to everyone’s liking (former Madison Genesis manager Colin Sturgess reckoned it made for negative and defensive racing), does give it a wildcard selection transparency not seen from other major race organisers such as ASO (Tour de France) and RCS Sport (Giro d’Italia).

It’s a race that’s long been a priming race for riders targeting the Worlds, competing against races being staged at the same time

04LONDON FRIDGED

The Tour of Britain’s contract with Transport for London to host a stage on the streets of the capital expired with the 2018 race, which meant SweetSpot, the race organisers, were on the lookout for a new host.

It’s often been the final stage too – aside from 2007, 2008, 2012 and 2017, London has been the climax of the race every year since 2004. But out goes London, for now, and in comes Manchester, the home of British Cycling, which has brought back the race for the first time since the first edition of the revamped race in 2004. Rather than the compact, crit-like London course of multiple circuits, the Manchester stage takes an anticlockwise loop of all 10 Greater Manchester boroughs – and some 2000m of climbing – with a finish on Manchester’s iconic Deansgate.

As with the Tour de France’s Paris finale, the London stage was great news for roadside fans, if less of a spectacle for TV viewers, and always had a hint of the procession about it, with the leader always defending their lead. Race director Mick Bennett will hope that the new location fulfils both criteria – a thrilling spectacle for fans in the city, and the made-for-TV drama of a testing route, which takes in Ramsbottom’s famous Rake, one of the steepest climbs in Britain (23 per cent in places), before a flying finish into Manchester.

“The whole race will go down to the wire with the Manchester finish,” says Bennett. “If there’s anyone within a minute on general classification it’ll still be all to play for. With London, we almost knew it was going to be a procession.

"It’s a shame not to have central London [to finish] but we could never race into it because of the closures that the RideLondon Classic brings, there’s only so much disruption you can do. It’s a shame to lose London but I believe the race has gained by the fact we’ve got flag-to-flag live TV racing all day [in Manchester].”

Organisers will hope for a thrilling spectacle for fans in the city, and the made-for-TV drama of a testing route

05NEWS A GENDER

Women’s professional sport has gone off the chart in popularity in recent times, with the summer football World Cup seemingly a watershed moment. The UK TV record for a women’s football match was increased by almost 300 per cent, as a peak 11.7m tuned in to watch England’s defeat to the USA. Football’s challenge is to capitalise on the media interest – crucial to exposing it to a large audience – once the men’s game kicks off again and hoovers up everyone’s attention. Cycling has faced similar dilemmas, with momentum difficult to cling to. Tour of Britain organiser SweetSpot, however, lead the way in professional cycling when it comes to gender parity. Compare the way Tour de France pays lip service with La Course to the Women’s Tour, which is now one of the premier races on the calendar since it launched. Increased to six days for 2019, the race benefits from having its own place on the calendar (June), rather than a tacked-on, second on the bill of the men’s race, and offers prize money parity across both races ( 90,000 in total, 14,600 for the general classification winners). Problems remain, however, particularly in TV coverage - unlike the men’s race, there’s no live TV coverage of the stages, though there is an hour-long nightly highlights show.

06PLUGGING HOLES IN THE WHOLE

No matter how big the Tour de Yorkshire gets, the Tour of Britain is still the country’s national race. Yorkshire is undeniably grand and varied terrain but it’s no match for the whole of the British Isles, which each year, or at least on a cycle of every two, gives everyone close access to some part of the Tour of Britain. Yet even now, 15 years into the race’s history, the race hasn’t visited everywhere, for various reasons, from the local councils not stumping up the cash to the logistical problems of taking the race to corners of the country and keeping an eight-day race manageable with regard to daily transfers. Next year’s race will correct a glaring omission in the Tour of Britain’s historical parcours – Cornwall. A 170km stage will start the race next September, starting in Penzance and ending in Bodmin. Check out out our feature later in this guide to what the peloton can expect in what is arguably Britain’s toughest terrain to ride a bike.

Tour of Britain organisers SweetSpot lead the way in professional cycling when it comes to gender parity