British riding talent ‘will be lost’ from ‘broken pathway’, says Harry Tanfield
Tour of Yorkshire stage winner Harry Tanfield says the path for professional road cycling in the UK is “broken” after the last two domestic teams were eliminated.
The 30-year-old Briton, who has competed at the top level on the Road Cycling World Tour, said if domestic professional continental-level teams are not reintroduced, there will be a “drain of talent” in the future and medal hopes will be “affected.” “.
“There are no teams left in the under-23 category,” Tanfield said. He had just lost his contract with St Piran after Cornwall announced it had canceled his contract. their plan ends, external last month.
Until then, the Trinity – for whom Tom Pidcock riding a horse 2020 – Said they would not play in 2025.
“There will be a loss of talent and riders will give up on their dreams early, which will impact hopes of medals at future Olympics,” added Tanfield, who hopes to generate interest from sponsors to assemble a team before the 2025 deadline. A new fleet. Extended by British Cycling.
“It’s like a doomsday cycle,” added Tanfield, whose brother Charlie won an Olympic medal in track and field. “I don’t know what the answer is. The costs keep going up – councils, police. Events are becoming more difficult. Riders have to pay themselves to attend.”
British riders have enjoyed huge success in road cycling over the past decade, including Team Sky’s dominance at the Tour de France. This generation will see 33 riders competing in next year’s World Tour, including 2018 Tour de France winner Geraint Thomas of Ineos Grenadiers and Lidl-Trek’s Tao Geoghegan Hart.
“There’s going to be a lot less volume – there are passengers out there who have been through the system for the past three, five, eight years,” Tanfield said.
“They went through the peak of British cycling between 2013-22. Now that’s all behind us there’s going to be a huge gap.”
The former AG2R La Mondiale and Qhubeka NextHash rider hopes to garner enough interest to form a team to compete in next year’s continental level, the third level of competition after the UCI World Tour and ProTeam calendars that would make any team Eligible for the 2019 competition. Tour of Europe and UK.
UK has lost one or more teams every year since 2021, when it had five teams. Italy currently has 11 continental-level teams. Rwanda has two.
Ineos is currently the only British team competing in the three top global road cycling events, with six British riders on its roster.
There is also no men’s team in the UK reaching ProTeam level.
A spokesperson for British Cycling said: “British Cycling is committed to working with any teams applying for UCI Continental Team status to give them the best chance of competing in the 2025 competition.
“We are providing support to a number of teams ahead of the UCI’s review of their applications and registration dates for next year’s calendar.”
