The uncertainty over the way forward for the girls’s Tour of Britain might have stalled the deliberate enlargement of the Ford RideLondon Classique in 2024, in keeping with the race organiser, London Marathon Occasions.
Ford RideLondon had deliberate so as to add a day to the schedule for this 12 months’s version of the Classique, however the demise of SweetSpot, former promoters of the boys’s and girls’s Tour of Britain, and the next deadlock over future scheduling, notably of the ladies’s race, scuppered that aim.
Talking to the RadioCycling podcast and different media, Ford RideLondon Classique technical director Kevin Nash mentioned: “There was uncertainty over what the calendar was doing. To get a timeline to place an additional day into the race, we wanted to know the newest, by October time.”
“We would like to increase the occasion,” race director Scott Sunderland confirmed. “We tried that for this 12 months, to have an additional day. We are going to have a look at this additional with British Biking. We have to work with them on this.”
However the lack of readability in direction of late 2023, over the longer term scheduling and existence of the ladies’s Tour of Britain, prevented the Classique from including additional phases.
“There wasn’t a transparent image of what was going to be taking place with the ladies’s Tour at that time,” Nash defined. “British Biking and the UCI had been reluctant to alter or add to the calendar. We ran out of runway fairly quickly when that announcement did come by way of in the long run.”
This 12 months’s Ford RideLondon Classique (24-26 Might) has attracted an all-star subject that features present world highway champion Lotte Kopecky, high sprinter Charlotte Kool and former British and world champion, Lizzie Deignan, amongst others.
Whereas closing affirmation is awaited that the newly branded Tour of Britain Girls is unquestionably going forward, Deignan is amongst these motivated for the Classique in late Might, which climaxes with a Sunday stage on the Mall in central London.
“I had such an incredible expertise on the Mall in 2012,” she mentioned, of racing to a silver medal within the London 2012 Olympic highway race. “It’s totally nostalgic for me to have the ability to race in RideLondon. It is not typically I really feel that patriotic however in London I do get that goosebumps impact.”
You may hear extra on the newest episode of the RadioCycling podcast.Â
