British Cycling CEO Jon Dutton believes the talent pool of young, homegrown riders is only set to get bigger in the years ahead, as the likes of Stevie Williams, Joe Blackmore and Oscar Onley shine at the Tour of Britain Men.
Going into the final weekend of the six-day race, the top four riders in the general classification all hail from the UK. Welshman Williams leads the overall standings, followed by Onley, Mark Donovan and rising star Blackmore, the winner of this year’s Tour de l’Avenir. Twenty-two-year-old Louis Sutton, riding for the Great Britain Cycling Team is in sixth, meaning that GB has five riders in the top 10 alone.
"I think we started off with the biggest, youngest, contingent of British riders ever," Dutton told Cycling Weekly on Friday afternoon. "The names that come through, we can start with Joe Blackmore winning the Tour de l'Avenir. One of my highlights was being in Redcar and seeing Joe outsprint Remco Evenepoel for fourth place. It was fourth place, but it was just just such a statement of intent.
"Then we've got Mark Donovan and then Stevie Williams himself has had just such a brilliant season. And then if you look at the GB team that we've put out, led by Matt Holmes, but just full of young British riders. The future is bright.
"I know we've seen this displacement of talent going onto the continent, but that makes it even more important that we celebrate the Tour of Britain, and we celebrate the British talent when they do come home."
British Cycling faced a race against the odds to stage both of the newly revamped national Tours this year. The Tour of Britain Women took place over four days in June, and was won by the world champion Lotte Kopecky, ahead of GB's Anna Henderson.
Earlier this year, the men’s race was shortened to six stages in order to achieve future parity with both events, the women's event set to expand to the same amount.
Dutton said the sight of huge numbers of spectators on the roadside, as well as the ability to attract high-profile Olympic-medal-winning stars, showed there was an appetite for the race as British Cycling get set to develop the event in the years ahead.
"It was quite astonishing really what we had to go through to put this race on," Dutton explained. "But we believed in it, we've always believed in it, the heritage, history, and also what it's capable of being in the future."
"To get to the start line in Kelso on Tuesday and see such a great line-up, to have Remco Evenepoel joined by Tom Pidcock, and then this plethora of young British talent. To then have navigated through just putting the race route together – we're covering a lot of geography between Kelso and Felixstowe – and then we've just seen the race come alive with the crowds.
"There was a school in South Yorkshire with a crowd of 2,000 students standing by the side of the road, it was just brilliant.
"We're really now set for a great weekend. We really believe in the race, we've shown a great sense of determination, but we couldn't have done it without the rest of the cycling ecosystem, it's been great for everyone to pull together."
