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news
Giro Rosa 4 copyright anMarton:FlickrWomen’s Tour final stage to start in Harwich, finish in Bury St Edmunds
The Women’s Tour, a new five-day stage race in May of next year created by Tour of Britain organisers Sweetspot, will finish in Bury St Edmunds.
The final stage will start in Harwich, Essex on Sunday May 11 and make its way through the Essex and Suffolk countryside to the West Suffolk market town that’s known for brewing and beet sugar.
The start of the stage will take place alongside the the already well-established Tour of Tendring family ride which attracted nearly 2,000 participants last year.
Peter Halliday, Leader of Tendring District Council said: “This will be a wonderful opportunity for anyone wanting to see theworld’s top riders close up.”
“It is not only a chance to meet them at the stage start in Harwich butthen try to emulate them by getting on their own bikes and riding through some stunningly beautiful villages and countryside in Tendring.”
The finish town has previously hosted stages of the men’s Tour of Britain. Sara Mildmay-White of St Edmundsbury Borough Council said: “I am delighted that Bury St Edmunds will behosting the final stage of The Women’s Tour. We are really looking forward to welcoming cyclists and spectators from allover the country.”
The inaugural Women’s Tour will take place over five stages between Wednesday May 7 and Sunday May 11 2014, beginning in Northamptonshire with an opening stage from Oundle to Northampton.
The race is expected to attract the world’s top female riders, attracted by Sweet Spot’s promise of decent treatment, prize money and TV coverage.
The TV details have not yet been revealed but earlier this year, outlining plans for the race, Sweetspot director Guy Elliott told road.cc that discussions to secure TV coverage each day were well advanced.
“We have already been in discussion with TV and we are confident of having extensive coverage,” he explained. “We don’t want to say which station but we believe that will be a game-changer because we will have daily significant TV coverage.”
Besides organising the Tour of Britain, SweetSpot is also the company behind the Pearl Izumi Tour Series and sister event the Johnson Health Tech Grand Prix Series, both of which enjoy TV highlights showcasing the towns and cities they are held in.
Elliot told road.cc that the backdrop to the stages of the Women’s Tour would be an important element of the TV coverage.
“Our plan is to get an hour’s TV coverage each day. 20-30 minutes of that might be focusing on the riders and their stories, what goes on behind the scenes, how to get into the sport and maybe 30 minutes on the actual racing.”
Leicestershire, Bedfordshire, Essex and Hertfordshire will all host stages of the event, which has a UCI 2.1 ranking, the second-highest possible for a women’s stage race.
Women's Tour schedule
Stage 1, May 7: Oundle to Northampton
Stage 2, May 8: Hinckley to Bedford
Stage 3, May 9: Clacton-on-Sea
Stage 4, May 10: Cheshunt to Welwyn Garden City
Stage 5, May 11: Harwich to Bury St Edmunds
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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5 comments
They could hold a stage in London easily but y'know, kerching and all that, anyway, the more people are exposed to cycling elsewhere the better.
London has enough of a cycling culture already.
no chance it ever finishing in London!!!!
No disrespect to Bury - it's a lovely town and they started one of the Tour of Britain stages there in 2011, which I was going to go to, as they did a few times with the Milk Race. But yeah London (or another major UK city) would have been more fitting for this race. Might partly be the budget at the moment that is keeping it smaller, especially when they want to provide exactly the same race conditions as the men's, including prize money. And they want to extend it in future years, if successful. Still, I probably will be heading over to Bury St Edmunds now instead of Welwyn Garden City to watch it. I hope it attracts the best of the best. Exciting stuff.
Hopefully it'll be finishing in London one day. Last time they shut central London for elite women's cycling it seemed to go down pretty well.
Excellent! Party at the 'rents place in Thetford it is then!