Relief as Banks links up with German team

THE 2020 season will be remembered as a campaign like no other but, for Lizzy Banks, the highs and lows have been taken to extremes.

Her victory on stage four of the Giro Rosa in September highlighted superb form once racing resumed but, within a month, Banks found herself in limbo when her team folded with little warning – losing its sponsor for the second time in the space of a few months. After a frantic few weeks, Banks has now secured a one- year deal with German team Ceratizit- WNT Pro Cycling for 2021, putting pen to paper with a mix of delight and relief.

“It’s been an incredibly challenging period,” Banks told the PA news agency. “You don’t expect your team to fold but for it to happen twice in a year is a total disaster.”

Banks’s season looks like a microcosm of cycling as a whole this year–drama on the road matched by tension off it as the Covid- 19 pandemic stretches the finances of teams to the limit, but losing the team sponsor for a second time still came as a “huge shock”.

“Suddenly the rug was pulled and your world collapses around you,” said Banks. “You don’t know if you’re going to get paid next year, you don’t know if you’re going to get paid for the rest of this year, and you don’t know if you’re going to race next year.

“How do you get an Olympic spot if you don’t have a team?”

All seven riders affected have found a new home or are finalising one but the experience speaks to bigger challenges facing a sport so heavily reliant on sponsors.