With the collapse of each remaining British males’s Continental groups on the finish of 2024, former WorldTour racer Harry Tanfield has launched an formidable bid to create a brand new Continental squad forward of the 2025 season.
The group can be the one British UCI males’s group in existence, alongside Ineos Grenadiers, after each present Continental outfits Trinity Racing and Saint Piran fold on the finish of 2024.
Tanfield raced within the WorldTour from 2019 to 2021 for Katusha-Alpecin, AG2R la Mondiale and Workforce Qhubeka-NextHash. He competed for the quickly to be closed Saint Piran in 2024 and hopes to fill the hole now evident within the British racing scene.
“There’s a vibrant future for UK biking. However that thrilling future will occur with out Saint Piran Professional Biking,” learn a press release from the Saint Piran’s administration earlier this week. The group primarily based in Cornwall had their software for UCI Continental standing refused by British Biking.
Trinity Racing has existed as UCI Continental stage group since 2020, offering a pathway to the WorldTour for the likes of Tom Pidcock, Ben Turner (each Ineos Grenadiers) and Ben Healy (EF Training First-EasyPost).
Yorkshireman Tanfield is in a race towards time, with a deadline for elevating funds for the brand new squad approaching rapidly. British Biking have already prolonged this deadline by two weeks as a way to give the group extra time to organize its software.
“I spoke to BC they usually agreed that it could be a two week grace interval. ‘In the event you can come again to us with a very new group that’s not in any approach associated to Saint Piran, then we’d take a look at that software and we’d contemplate it’,” Tanfield informed Cyclingnews on Sunday afternoon, having heard concerning the closure of Saint Piran in a group video name on Tuesday night.
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“We’ve acquired two weeks to attempt to do one of the best we are able to. It’s not like all of the contracts must be achieved by sixth December, nevertheless it’s precept agreements and letters of intent.”
“There’s been lots of people reaching out to help both personally or serving to out with getting me in entrance of individuals to speak to… In the intervening time, clearly time will not be on our facet however we’re simply doing one of the best we are able to within the circumstances.”
The group goals to “bridge the hole” between the home scene within the UK and the upper ranges of the game. Tanfield hopes to lift between £250,000 and £300,000 as a way to fund a race programme which would come with racing in continental Europe and the UK. He says that he has already had some promising conversations in the previous few days.
Regardless of there being a document 34 British racers set to compete within the males’s WorldTour subsequent yr, the closure of Saint Piran and Trinity Racing leaves the home scene at a twenty-year low. Through the peak years of British biking from 2010-2019, there have been at the least 5 UK-based Continental groups working. The final time there have been none was in 2004. 4 British girls’s Continental groups are set to be operational in 2025.
Tanfield thinks it’s necessary for the game that the UK scene has at the least one Continental males’s group.
“I believe it’s actually necessary for the scene. I’ve seen it myself. I got here by the entire system ten years in the past and I went professional due to the UK scene. I owe so much to the scene nevertheless it was a really totally different racing scene in comparison with after I assume again to 10 years in the past versus what it’s now,” Tanfield stated.
“I believe it’s simply actually necessary that there’s an possibility for guys which can be arising from juniors to go overseas they usually can aspire to hitch a group, doubtlessly like this one if it will get began, and provides them the publicity that they should progress additional within the sport.”
