"It's at the limit now": Tour of Britain organiser highlights "enormous" costs involved, responds to critics who called route "dull"

Tour of Britain organiser Mick Bennett has responded to the discussion and debate around the route that met the opening days of this year's event, addressing the critics by pointing out the huge organisational, logistical and financial stress that goes into just getting a race on at all.

With Jumbo-Visma's Olav Kooij winning the opening four sprints — and five of the first six stages being decided by bunch finishes, the only exception being Wout van Aert's final kilometre attack after another flat and uneventful day on stage five — there was plenty of noise on social media about the perceived lack of entertainment in this year's route.

However, Bennett responded by pointing out it is "definitely" as hard as it has ever been to organise a bike race in the United Kingdom, pointing out that rising costs, uncertain funding, local authority disinterest, policing requirements, Brexit and Covid have all created something of a perfect storm that has left the racing scene "at the limit".

[Alex Whitehead/SWpix.com]

The Tour of Britain is organised by SweetSpot, whose PR director Peter Hodges earlier this year told road.cc how inflationary pressures have been a crucial issue, his colleague Bennett now telling the BBC that the cost of running the race is around £3 million per year.

"It frightens the death out of me," Bennett said after the latest edition, won by Wout van Aert for the second time. "The costs are just enormous. I've been doing this since 1983… the cost of living has gone up, local governments are being squeezed; if they have to choose between closing a library or a youth club, they're not going to do that [pay for a bike race]."

Responding to the criticism about the route of this year's race, Bennett told Cycling Weekly that "it's hard to hear" and he "can't stand it" because the critics "don't understand the bigger picture that we have had to deal with".

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The Tour of Britain relies on local authorities, already strapped for cash, to pay for the policing required to implement a rolling roadblock across the route, a different and more expensive model to what race organisers in France and Spain deal with.

Bennett continued: "I was saying to colleagues last night, it would be perfect to have a sprint stage, a climbing stage, a sprint stage, a climbing stage, or two sprint stages and then two climbing stages so you can stop the so-called Twitterati from criticising you on social media. I've shut it off now. I just don't respond to it.

"Because the country is in such a difficult financial situation, we're in such a state now that local authorities are being bled of the funds from central and local government [...] the country is in a situation where local authorities are prioritising spending elsewhere, they're going to say, 'well, that's our priority', and we fully understand that.

[SWpix.com/Simon Wilkinson]

"So when you then get a local authority that gives you a decision, right at the last minute, 'yes, we can do this' and they sign an agreement and a contract, and they're key stakeholders to us. You then think, 'well, hang on, we can't have a stage in Suffolk and then one in Cumbria, because there's a two-hour drive limit regulation for the teams'.

"You can't just design the strategy of the race, as you would like it to be given the last-minute signature on the contracts."

The Tour of Britain does not have a title sponsor, nor a leader's jersey sponsor, and added to the financial concerns, "We've had Brexit, we've had Covid, we've had the Queen dying five days in and with three stages to go," Bennett added.

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"Those places paid a lot of money to run the race, and they still want their pound of flesh. We honoured all of those. You can imagine the situation we're in. That's why the Women's Tour had to go, that's why the Tour Series had to go. It was too early in the year to raise the funding to do it."

Commenting on the wider British racing scene, he suggested British Cycling should step in and "really need to look at it". 

"I don't think [it] can contract any more — it's at the limit now. But they have done a good job forming this committee," he said, acknowledging the formation of British Cycling's task force to "support revival" of domestic racing scene.

The committee will be lead by Ed Clancy, who backed Bennett up on the list of "undeniable problems we're facing".

"The crux of it is funding," he suggested. "Policing costs are significant: I believe it cost the Tour of Britain organisers over £500,000 to police the roads this week; the three-week Vuelta a Espana doesn't cost anything I believe.

"There's not a bottomless pit of money — and I think that's playing its part in the elite domestic road scene [...] race organisers can't continue to keep losing money year on year."

What did you make of this year's Tour of Britain? Let us know in the comments...