Two-time Olympic gold medallist Katie Archibald, junior world road and time trial champion Zoe Bäckstedt and former champion Pfeiffer Georgi are among the riders set to compete at the British National Road Championships at the end of the month.
The road race is set to take place over challenging roads in north Yorkshire on 25 June, with the elite and under-23 time trials coming on the Wednesday before.
Archibald, who rides for Ceratizit-WNT, has not raced on the road since March 2022, but won three titles at the European Track Championships earlier this year. Bäckstedt, meanwhile, spent her first Spring at Women's WorldTour level with EF Education-TIBCO-SVB.
Georgi, who won the National Championships in 2021, has won two races for DSM in 2023, including the Classic Brugge-De Panne in March, and has helped her teammate Charlotte Kool to multiple wins, including the overall at the RideLondon Classique.
According to a provisional start list released by British Cycling on Wednesday, also at the road race will be defending champion Alice Towers (Canyon-SRAM), who won in Scotland last June. She will also come up against the likes of Anna Henderson (Jumbo-Visma), who came third behind Towers and Georgi last year, and former national champions Alice Barnes (Human Powered Health), Hannah Barnes (Uno-X) and Jess Roberts (Coop-Hitec Products).
“I can’t wait to be back on the start line of the National Championships again this year," Towers said in a press release. "Last year’s race was a day to remember and wearing the jersey all year has been a dream come true – it’s flown by!”
The other WorldTour contenders to take the national champion's bands in Redcar are Olympic track champion Elinor Barker (Uno-X), Claire Steels (Israel-Premier Tech-Roland), Elynor Bäckstedt (Trek-Segafredo), Lizzie Holden (UAE Team ADQ), Millie Couzens and Sophie Wright (Fenix-Deceuninck), Abi Smith (EF Education-TIBCO-SVB), Alex Morrice (Canyon-SRAM) and and Anna Shackley (SD Worx).
Also on the start list is Dame Sarah Storey, with the 16-time Paralympic gold medallist set to take to the road for an 11th time.
Both the men and women will follow an 18.8km loop around Redcar and Saltburn, with the women completing seven laps to cover 132km. The women’s race features 2,826m of climbing over the challenging terrain, with a mix of longer drags and punchy hills.
Storey is also on the start list for the individual time trial, an event she has finished third on three occasions.
In the absence of last year's defending ITT champion Joss Lowden (Uno-X), the favourite will undoubtedly be 2021's winner Henderson, along with previous winner Alice Barnes. Holden, Georgi, Elynor and Zoe Bäckstedt, and Barker are all on the start list for the ITT as well.
For the time trial, the elite women will set a time over two laps of the course, totalling 27.4km.
