The Tour of Britain has a long history of showcasing the best young British cyclists, and the 2024 edition – relaunched by the governing body after the demise of long-time organisers SweetSpot – will be no exception. The inclusion in this year’s race, which begins on Tuesday, of one of this year’s breakthrough stars on the world stage, 21-year-old Joe Blackmore, could prove as memorable as the debut in 2013 of future Tour of Spain winner Simon Yates, or the 2005 debut of an assertive young sprinter from the Isle of Man, Mark Cavendish.
The rise of Blackmore, the young man from Sidcup, has been seamless since he began taking road racing seriously at the start of last year, the graph of his progression not so much a curve as a near-vertical line. The latest leap came just over a week ago, when he became the first British cyclist to win the Tour de l’Avenir, the week-long “Tour de France of the future” for under-25s, which has been going since 1961 and has been a showcase for talents such as Tadej Pogacar, Laurent Fignon and Miguel Induráin.
“Joe is the real deal,” says British Cycling’s directeur sportif John Herety, who was taking teams to the race back in the 90s when a top-20 stage placing was viewed as a major result. “You can’t say yet that he’s a future Tour de France winner; he’s definitely proven his worth in one-week races, the question now is how will he climb after eight or nine days in a Grand Tour? Can he improve? Probably. It’s a question of being given the appropriate racing to see if he’s a three-week rider.”
Blackmore had been a member of the Great Britain mountain bike programme when he made his first international appearance at last year’s Tour of Rwanda, finishing sixth overall; he went back and won the race this spring, adding two other stage races plus the under-23 Liège-Bastogne-Liège classic. That result earned him a place on the Israel-Premier Tech team, who put him on a three-year deal ahead of British team Ineos, who were also keen to get his signature.
“He’s quiet, he doesn’t say much, but he’s extremely smart tactically,” says Herety. “The day he won the yellow jersey at the Tour de l’Avenir, he let the other riders in the move fight each other and just bided his time.” On the final stage of the Avenir, finishing up the vertiginous Colle delle Finestre, he again rode astutely to defend his lead. “He knew just what he was doing, waited for the final two kilometres when he knew he could go into the red,” Herety adds.
Blackmore remains on the GB mountain bike squad – he rode the under-23 world championships on Saturday – and his background in off-road racing is not unusual, with racers at the top of the road race firmament such as Mathieu van der Poel, Wout van Aert and Tom Pidcock also coming from an off-road racing background. The women’s Olympic mountain bike champion Pauline Ferrand-Prévot recently announced that she will return to road racing to target the Tour de France Femmes. “The mountain biking definitely helps,” says Herety, “I think riders learn how to put the power down, going close to the edge without paying for it on one day or the next.”
As well as Blackmore, Israel-Premier Tech have another Briton who will be closely watched this week: Welshman Stevie Williams, who came close to winning the race last year with a daring solo attack on the final stage and landed a major win this spring at the Flèche Wallonne Classic. The biggest race favourites are the Olympic road and time-trial champion Remco Evenepoel and his French teammate at the Soudal-QuickStep team, Julian Alaphilippe, double world champion and winner of the British Tour in 2018, both of whom use the race to begin their preparation for the world road race championships in Zurich on 29 September. Ineos also bring a strong lineup led by Olympic mountain bike champion Pidcock.
Cut back to six days, the Tour of Britain will stick largely to the east side of England after an opening stage in the Scottish borders, with stage finishes in Redcar, Barnsley, Newark and Northampton before a flat finale on Sunday in Felixstowe. On paper, Saltburn bank on stage two could be decisive while some stiff Yorkshire climbs feature on stage three.
