The 8th edition of the Women’s Tour, Britain’s longest running women’s stage race and a part of the UCI Women’s WorldTour, has started today ahead of its much-anticipated visit to Welshpool on Thursday.
Colchester welcomed 97 riders from 17 teams, including 15 British riders, for the opening leg to Bury St Edmunds, the first of six stages that will take the world’s top riders to finishes in Harlow, Gloucester, Welshpool, and the summit of the Black Mountain in the Brecon Beacons before the overall finish on St Giles’ in Oxford city centre on Saturday.
Thursday’s leg will finish outside the town hall with the route also taking riders through a number of local towns and villages along the way.
Among the field are be a pair of former winners in Coryn Labecki (Team Jumbo - Visma) and Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon//SRAM Racing), with the latter once again eyeing victory, having won the 2017 edition and finished second two years later.
“My goal is to win a stage and fight for the best place,” she said. “Of course, I will adapt it to the team's needs but I would like to feel some pressure for the performance during the race.”
Niewiadoma’s team-mate is Alice Barnes, who finished as the leading British rider in the 2021 race in seventh overall.
“I love racing the Women's Tour,” said Barnes. “I love the crowds that come out. Especially during the week when schools are along the streets cheering for us. I am looking forward to this year as we have a big variation in stages which will make the racing interesting.”
Heading to the Women’s Tour in good form is Team BikeExchange – Jayco rider Alexandra Manley, who won four stages and the overall of the Lotto Thüringen Ladies Tour in Germany last week.
“It’s a WorldTour event and a notoriously hard week of racing”, said Manly. “But we are all ready and eager to race together again. I think we’re all really excited to try and carry the momentum we have from our May race block into this tour.”
Also lining up will be a number of distinctive jerseys, with European road race champion Ellen van Dijk (Trek – Segafredo) joining the national road race champions of Britain (Pfeiffer Georgi, Team DSM), Israel (Omer Shapira, EF Education – TIBCO – SVB), Italy (Elisa Longo Borghini, Trek – Segafredo), Canada (Alison Jackson, Liv Racing Xstra); Czech Republic (Tereza Neumanova (Liv Racing Xstra) and Austria (Kathrin Schweinberger, CERATIZIT – WNT Pro Cycling).
The full rider list for the Women’s Tour can be found on the website here.
Stage one got underway from the Colchester Sports Park at 11am, covering 142.1 kilometres (88.3 miles) to the finish on Angel Hill in Bury St Edmunds, which is expected at around 3pm.
Live coverage is available on the Eurosport Player and GCN+ from 10.55am with highlights on ITV4 at 10pm on Monday (6 June) evening and on demand via the ITV Hub.
About the Women’s Tour
Stages