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Professional road cycling in Britain has a “broken pathway” after the demise of the final two domestic teams, says Tour de Yorkshire stage winner Harry Tanfield.
The 30-year-old Briton, who has competed at the top level in road cycling’s World Tour, said future “talent will be lost”, and medal hopes will be “impacted” without the reintroduction of teams at the professional domestic Continental level.
“There’s no teams left for riders in the under-23 category,” says Tanfield, who has just lost his contract with Saint Piran after the Cornish team announced the end of their programme last month.
Before that, Trinity – for whom Tom Pidcock rode in 2020 – said they will not compete in 2025.
“Talent will be lost, riders will give up early on their dreams and it will impact medal hopes in further Olympic Games,” added Tanfield, who is hoping to raise interest from sponsors to create a new team for 2025 against a deadline which has already been extended by British Cycling.
“It’s like a doom-loop,” adds Tanfield, whose brother Charlie has won Olympic medals on the track. “I don’t know what the answer is. The costs are spiralling – councils, police. It’s more difficult for the events to be viable. Riders have to pay themselves to enter.”
British riders had a hugely successful spell in road cycling across the previous decade – including Team Sky’s dominance of the Tour de France. As a result of that generation there will be 33 riders competing in the World Tour next year, including 2018 Tour de France winner Geraint Thomas of Ineos Grenadiers and Tao Geoghegan Hart of Lidl-Trek.
“It will decrease a lot – the riders there now have come through the system over the last three, five, eight years,” says Tanfield.
“They have been through the highs of cycling in the UK in the 2013-22 period. Now that’s gone there will be a gaping hole.”
The former AG2R La Mondiale and Qhubeka NextHash rider is hoping to gain enough interest to set up a team to compete at Continental level next year – the third tier of competition behind the UCI World Tour and ProTeam calendars – which would qualify any team for races in Europe and the Tour of Britain.
The UK scene has lost a team or more each year since 2021, when it had five. Italy currently has 11 Continental-level teams. Rwanda has two.
Ineos are currently the only British team in any of the three top tiers of global road cycling competition, with six British riders on their roster.
There is also no British men’s team at ProTeam level.
A British Cycling spokesperson said: “British Cycling is committed to working with any team applying for UCI Continental Team status to give them the best opportunity to compete in 2025.
“We are supporting a number of teams in advance of the UCI’s review of their applications, and also the registration dates for next year’s calendar.”