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Top teams line up for Women’s TourMarianne Vos (CC licensed image by Ludo29880:Flickr)

Top teams line up for Women’s Tour

Orica – AIS, Boels Dolmans, Specialized Lululemon & Wiggle Honda sign up for UK's first UCI elite women's stage race...
by John Stevenson
Mon, Mar 03, 2014 13:34
8

The inaugural Women’s Tour looks set to have a stellar start list as organisers announced today that 11 of the top 14 professional women’s teams will line up for the  first stage in Oundle on Wednesday May 7.

Joining world number one Marianne Vos and her Rabo Liv team will be the likes of Orica – AIS, Boels Dolmans, Specialized Lululemon and the Wiggle Honda team of British Olympians Laura Trott, Joanna Rowsell and Dani King.

Alongside them will be the national side of the world’s number one ranked nation, the Netherlands, plus a Great Britain national team led by Leicestershire’s Lucy Garner.

British domestic team Matrix Fitness–Vulpine also earn an invite, while UnitedHealthcare Pro Cycling’s participation will mean Hannah Barnes racing in her home county of Northamptonshire.

The Optum p/b Kelly Benefit Strategies team will also travel from the USA to race in The Women’s Tour, with the final two teams for the 16-team, 96-rider field to be announced in due course.

Organised by SweetSpot Group, which also promotes the Tour of Britain, the Women’s Tour is the first ever UCI level stage race for women to take place in the UK.

“We are thrilled to be able to bring such a world-class field of teams to ride in the first ever Women’s Tour,” said Guy Elliott of SweetSpot.

“The race has attracted a wonderful field of elite riders from all over the world, which will be one of the strongest fields ever assembled for an elite women’s international race, and a route which will feature some of the most beautiful roads, villages, towns and countryside in Great Britain.”

The current line-up includes teams from eight different nations and organisers are confident teams will send their best riders 5to make up a high-quality field.

Teams announced so far for The Women’s Tour are:

Astana Bepink Women’s Team (Italy)
Boels Dolmans Cycling Team (Netherlands)
Estado de Mexico Faren (Mexico)
Great Britain national team
Hitec Products (Norway)
Lotto Belisol Ladies (Belgium)
Matrix Fitness – Vulpine (Great Britain)
Netherlands national team
Optum P/B Kelly Benefit Strategies (USA)
Orica – AIS (Australia)
Rabo Liv Women’s Cycling Team (Netherlands)
Specialized – Lululemon (USA)
UnitedHealthcare Professional Cycling Team (USA)
Wiggle Honda (Great Britain)

The Women’s Tour will take place over five stages between Wednesday May 7 and Sunday May 11, beginning in Northamptonshire with an opening stage from Oundle to Northampton.

Leicestershire, Bedfordshire, Essex and Hertfordshire will all host subsequent stages in the event, before the final stage finish in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, with highlights of every stage shown on ITV4.

Women's Tour 2014
Women's Tour
Sweetspot
John Stevenson

John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.

He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.

Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.

John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.

He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.

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8 comments

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stevefry789 | 10 years ago
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With regards to the regionality of the event, UCI rules state you can only have 5 stages in your 1st year. This therefore made it impossible for the Women's Tour to be able to cover all parts of Britain as the transfers between stages would have been huge.

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VeloPeo | 10 years ago
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I believe the intention is to move it around the country year on year. The men's tour suffers a lot of criticism from teams/riders due to the big transfers between stages and they've tried to avoid it with the Women's Tour and keep it more compact.

The fact that it's got a very high quality field in their first year suggests they're doing something right. Hope to see it spread its wings to other areas in future years

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dlparr | 10 years ago
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Agree with SamShaw, really isnt a ToB is it? just one small corner of one of the countries within Britain. Still great news though - hope it spreads next year!

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SamShaw replied to dlparr | 10 years ago
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dlparr wrote:

Agree with SamShaw, really isnt a ToB is it? just one small corner of one of the countries within Britain. Still great news though - hope it spreads next year!

Agree. It's a purely selfish point of view that I would have like to have seen the racing first hand.

From a practical point though, spreading the race far and wide would no doubt be much more expensive and disruptive and possibly more difficult to organise (in terms of dealing with different councils & police forces).

The flipside of that argument is: "well they do it for the blokes with the ToB, so women's racing should get the same". There's no easy answer.

What is good is that it's going ahead, there's support from the top cyclists in the world and it'll be shown on TV every night. That's a great step forward.

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SamShaw | 10 years ago
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Great news, looking forward to this, it's just a shame it's a tour of the south east - I'll look forward to the highlights though!

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jollygoodvelo | 10 years ago
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Great news. Should be a brilliant event.

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aslongasicycle | 10 years ago
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We're extremely honoured to be one of three British teams, along with the Great Britain national team and Wiggle Honda.

We didn't know we were going to get it until this morning. Its a huge deal for Vulpine and of course all the riders, who are wildly excited. Stef (Wyman) has done such an amazing job with the team and to persuade ToB to take us.

And now we aim to prove their faith by racing hard. And Vulpine ourselves have some interesting creative plans around the event.

Made up.

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VeloPeo replied to aslongasicycle | 10 years ago
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aslongasicycle wrote:

Stef (Wyman) has done such an amazing job with the team and to persuade ToB to take us.

Massive understatement - hardest working guy in cycling? 1

Really looking forward to this, hoping it gets the press coverage it deserves

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