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 workforce can be the one British UCI males’s workforce in existence, alongside Ineos Grenadiers, after each current 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 Crew 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 vivid future for UK biking. However that thrilling future will occur with out Saint Piran Professional Biking,” learn an announcement from the Saint Piran’s administration earlier this week. The workforce primarily based in Cornwall had their software for UCI Continental standing refused by British Biking.
Trinity Racing has existed as UCI Continental degree workforce since 2020, offering a pathway to the WorldTour for the likes of Tom Pidcock, Ben Turner (each Ineos Grenadiers) and Ben Healy (EF Schooling 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 so as to give the workforce extra time to organize its software.
“I spoke to BC and so they agreed that it might be a two week grace interval. ‘When you can come again to us with a totally new workforce that is not in any approach associated to Saint Piran, then we’d have a look at that software and we’d think about it’,” Tanfield advised Cyclingnews on Sunday afternoon, having heard concerning the closure of Saint Piran in a workforce video name on Tuesday night.
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“We have got two weeks to attempt to do the very best we are able to. It isn’t like all of the contracts must be executed by sixth December, however 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… For the time being, clearly time isn’t on our facet however we’re simply doing the very best we are able to within the circumstances.”
The workforce 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 so as 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 file 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. In the course of the peak years of British biking from 2010-2019, there have been not less than 5 UK-based Continental groups working. The final time there have been none was in 2004. 4 British ladies’s Continental groups are set to be operational in 2025.
Tanfield thinks it is essential for the game that the UK scene has not less than one Continental males’s workforce.
“I believe it is actually essential for the scene. I’ve seen it myself. I got here via the entire system ten years in the past and I went professional due to the UK scene. I owe lots to the scene however it was a really totally different racing scene in comparison with once I assume again to 10 years in the past versus what it’s now,” Tanfield stated.
“I believe it is simply actually essential that there’s an choice for guys which can be developing from juniors to go overseas and so they can aspire to hitch a workforce, doubtlessly like this one if it will get began, and provides them the publicity that they should progress additional within the sport.”
