The Women's Tour will field a world-class peloton on its return to the racing calendar from October 4 to 9 in Great Britain.
The Women's WorldTour event was cancelled last year and postponed this year due to COVID-19 but will return to field all nine WorldTeams including Trek-Segafredo, the team of defending champion Lizzie Deignan.
“After the challenges that the Women’s Tour has faced since the start of 2020, it is extremely uplifting to know that when we finally return in October our passionate fans will again be able to enjoy watching the world’s best teams and riders along the roadside – all for free, too," said Women’s Tour race director Mick Bennett.
We’ve designed a route that will make sure the battle for overall glory goes down to the final day. Roll on October!"
The Women's Tour is highly regarded as one of the most popular and progressive races on the Women’s WorldTour. After being cancelled last year due to COVID-19 the race was supposed to return in June but was then postponed until October due to the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and a long lockdown during spring in Great Britain.
Organisers, SweetSpot, brought parity to the event’s prize fund, equalling the purse of the men's Tour of Britain, which was set at €97,880 across six days of racing in 2019. They announced in February a five-year plan to offer live coverage of the women’s race, which is required to be part of the top-tier series.
As part of the Women's WorldTour calendar, all nine top-tier teams will participate including SD Worx, the world’s number one ranked team, and the squads of four of the race’s previous overall winners: Trek-Segafredo (Lizzie Deignan, 2019 champion), Team DSM (Coryn Rivera, 2018 champion), Canyon-SRAM (Kasia Niewiadoma, 2017 champion) and Ceratizit-WNT (Lisa Brennauer, 2015 winner).
“Year after year, the Women’s Tour attracts the best teams in the world and 2021 is proving to be no different. Despite the disappointment of last year’s postponement, we know that the riders on show – who will be cheered on by brilliant crowds over six days of racing – will make this latest edition one of the most spectacular yet," Danelle Every, British Cycling’s cycling delivery director.
“After the explosion in cycling participation that we have seen during the pandemic, we hope that this event will be a fantastic showcase to help us nurture the next generation of female talent and to inspire more women and girls across the nation to have a go at a local cycling event whatever their age or ability.
“We’re incredibly proud of how the Women’s Tour has established itself as a mainstay of the UCI Women’s WorldTour calendar and real celebration of incredible female talent, so we are all eagerly anticipating its return in October.”
Route
- Stage 1: Bicester to Banbury
- Stage 2: Walsall
- Stage 3: Atherstone individual time trial
- Stage 4: Shoeburyness to Southend
- Stage 5: Colchester to Clacton
- Stage 6: Haverhill to Felixstowe
16 teams
- Alé BTC Ljubljana (Italy)
- AWOL O’Shea (Great Britain)
- CAMS-Basso Bikes (Great Britain)
- Canyon SRAM Racing (Germany)
- Ceratizit-WNT Pro Cycling (Germany)
- Drops-Le Col s/b TEMPUR. (Great Britain)
- FDJ Nouvelle-Aquitaine Futuroscope (France)
- Liv Racing (Netherlands)
- Movistar Team (Spain)
- Parkhotel Valkenburg (Netherlands)
- SD Worx (Netherlands)
- Team BikeExchange (Australia)
- Team DSM (Germany)
- Team TIBCO-Silicon Valley Bank (USA)
- Trek-Segafredo (USA)
- Valcar-Travel & Service (Italy)
