A four day Tour of Britain Women has been added to the UCI calendar in the vacant spot previously held by the Women’s Tour.
After the collapse of SweetSpot, the former race promoter of the Women’s Tour, British Cycling committed to staging a women’s event in its place. The national governing body is also poised to stage a men’s Tour of Britain this year after SweetSpot entered liquidation in January, but there was doubt over a women's equivalent taking place in 2024.
BC CEO Jon Dutton recently said that any women’s event this year would almost certainly be shortened due to the federation being in “a race against time” to put solid plans in place.
He said: “We've still got a lot of work to do on the Tour of Britain Women, and it is a race against the clock in terms of those June dates, there may have to be some compromises from what has happened before in terms of duration.”
Both races were previously removed from the UCI calendar but the Tour of Britain Women is now back in its scheduled June date, which was where the Women's Tour once was. No further details are known at this time, including information on potential stages or a proposed route; it still appears to be a "race against time". It is still a Women's WorldTour event, but is now just four days rather than the previous six.
The Women’s Tour was last held in 2022. It was cut from the calendar the following year after SweetSpot’s precarious financial situation first began to bite. Lidl-Trek’s Elisa Longo Borghni, the last winner of the Women’s Tour, has previously said that it would be a hammer blow for the peloton if the race never returned.
She said: “It's not nice if the Women's Tour is not taking place this year too because it's been one of the first races to really raise the level of women's cycling.
“It was slowly becoming one of the races that riders were looking at in their calendar to race. So I will be very very sad [if it does not take place].”
British Cycling’s announcement of its initial plans for both races were met with enthusiasm by Longo Borghini’s Trek teammate Lizzie Deignan, earlier this month.
“I'm really happy to see British Cycling investing to try and make sure these two important UK stage races happen in 2024 and for years to come,” Deignan said. “I hope everyone can get behind this."
It is the second piece of good news for women's elite cycling in the UK on Tuesday. It was revealed this morning that the best team in the world, SD Worx-Protime, would be present at the Ford RideLondon Classique in May.
