Part Two - Opportunities And Inspiration
Timothy John
"This year’s Women’s Tour will underline the race’s position as the most respected stage race on the women’s professional calendar. Its sixteen teams include all nine with UCI Women’s WorldTour status: the female sport’s highest rank.
"Sophie Wright, who made her breakthrough with a Brother UK-sponsored domestic team, is now a fully-fledged professional with the Italian UCI Women’s WorldTour squad Alé BTC Ljubljana, led by Spanish champion Mavi Garcia and Swiss champion Marlen Russer.
"For Sophie, stars like Great Britain’s defending champion Lizzie Deignan, and the two riders who accompanied her on the podium when the 2019 edition concluded in Pembrey Park - Katarzyna Niewiadoma and Amy Peters - merely add to its appeal."
Sophie Wright
"I guess it just gives the race more value when you have these big names turning up because, again, that’s how you get bigger crowds. This is what we want, really: we want more eyes looking at our racing because this will attract more sponsors, more TV time etc. So having big names is a great thing.
"It’s like hosting an event and having the world’s top singers coming along. It just kind of adds value to the event and a bit more prestige, I guess. It makes it a good race to be part of because if you’re racing with the top riders, you just automatically assume that it’s going to be a great event if they’re putting it on their calendar.
"You’re not going to go to every single race. We have our specific calendars for the specific races we’ll be targeting. It’s coming towards the end of the season. Some riders will finish their seasons early, but you’ve still got the big names coming to the Women’s Tour at the end of the season then it just goes to show that it is a sought-after race."
Timothy John
"For Sophie, racing wheel-to-wheel with the world’s best female riders is simply part of the job. Professional sport can never be described as routine, but having competed at the sport’s highest level since catching the eye of professional squads with her scantling ride for Team GB at the 2018 European Championships, she will be highly familiar with the pace and intensity of the Women’s WorldTour peloton.
"For Becky Storrie, who moved from triathlon to cycling just two years ago, and who began this season competing in British Cycling’s National Road Series for Brother UK-OnForm, the Women’s Tour represents a very steep learning curve. Luckily for this gifted climber, the ease with which she manages even the steepest trajectories applies as much to her career progression as her riding style."
Becky Storrie
“It’s an incredible opportunity. I’m very excited. When you go through the list of those names, it’s incredibly daunting, which I think is only to be expected, especially going back to my first stage race. What a debut stage race to go for. I mean, go big or go home, as they say. I’m just trying to turn those fears into excitement and concentrate on the positives that are going to come out of this experience. Six months ago, if you’d said I was going to be racing in the Women’s Tour, I would’t have believed you.
“I quite enjoy throwing myself in at the deep end. That’s how I learn best. I feel that you’ve just go to sometimes. I feel almost in my situation that I’m making up for lost time. I only joined the sport two years ago. I don’t have time to waste. I’ll take any nuggets of information that anyone’s willing to give me; any advice, I’ll just grasp, and if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work, and I’ll just try again.
“I'm very much a ‘throw me in at the deep end, and I’ll give it my best shot,’ kind of girl."
Timothy John
"A glance at the start list for this year’s Women’s Tour is enough to confirm that deep ends don’t get much deeper in women’s professional cycling. While a harder, hillier course might have better suited both Becky and Sophie, neither will doubt that the depth of talent assembled for this year’s Women’s Tour is as deep as for any race, anywhere. Here’s Mick Bennett."
Mick Bennett
“We’ve got a stellar line-up. It’s just amazing. I think our only absence is Anna Van Der Bergen, who’s no longer racing. The field speaks for itself - it will be an amazing line-up on the start-line in Bicester - but also the fact that we have 26 British women lining-up alongside those stellar riders is descriptive of where the sport has gone. Who thought that we would have 26 British riders on the start line? It shows where the sport has come to. It would have been lovely to have had Zoe Backstedt in the race: the newly-crowned world junior champion.”
Timothy John
"Zoe Backstedt, who pulled on the rainbow jersey of world junior champion just three days before we recorded this podcast, is only the latest in what might accurately be described as a golden generation of British female cycling talent.
"Brother UK has played its part, sponsoring the teams that provided an early platform to riders like Becky, Sophie and the sensational Anna Henderson, surely the rider of the elite women’s road race at the recent world championships, but what is the source for this seemingly inexhaustible well of talent? Here’s Becky."
Becky Storrie
“I don’t think I could point to what’s driving it, but when you list those incredible women that we have, they're role models for young girls or just people wanting to join the sport. It’s all about having people to look up to at the end of the day; people to be like.
"The world championships were incredible to watch. We had such a strong Great Britain women’s team. Obviously, being a cyclist, I’m biased, but I just thought it was brilliant But I’m sure, even not being a cyclist, there were lots of young girls out there or young boys saying: ‘Wow! Look how far women’s cycling has come.’ Just all the role models that we have: how can you not be inspired?”
Timothy John
"Becky is right to identify the inspirational aspect of women’s road racing or indeed any road racing. Professional cycling suffers chronic commercial instability as a result of being free-to-view from the roadside, but what it loses in revenue it more than recoups in its ability to excite, enthral and inspire.
"Phil Jones saw stage five of the recent Tour of Britain from inside a Neutral Service p/b Brother UK support vehicle and reports that the crowds that some had feared would not return after its Covid-enforced absence came in their thousands. Now, he hopes, they’ll turn out in similar numbers for The Women’s Tour.
Phil Jones
“It was absolutely bonkers. It really was. I mean, there were hundreds of thousands of people at the sides of the roads. It was incredible. Particularly around the sprint stages and the climbs, the crowds were just wonderful: the noise, the excitement, the fancy dress. All of the things that we love to see, it was there. You’ll have seen some of the riders really playing up to that, encouraging the crowds as they went through at the front and in the break. They were loving it.
“For me, seeing it all come back again was just so good, and I really, really hope that we see with the /Women’s Tour, likewise those same crowds come out. Normally with the Women’s Tour, you’re looking at around something in the region of 300,000 people by the side of the road. It’s a very, very significant professional racing event here in the UK, and I want to encourage everybody to get out and see it.”
Timothy John
“If the scale of the support creates an indelible impression on those inside the vehicles of the race convoy, imagine how much more inspiring it must be for the riders in the peloton. The athletes are unquestionably the stars of this travelling show. Little wonder then that the team buses parked in the start and finish towns hold such a magnetic attraction for the fans. Sophie, who views the sense from the inside out and a seat on the other side of the tinted glass, takes her responsibilities seriously.”
Sophie Wright
“I like to take time for the fans, I guess, because if you can inspire just one person, it’s great, especially these young riders, or whoever. The fans can be five years old or eighty-five years old. We’re all sharing the same passion. That’s the great thing with cycling and road racing: anyone can turn up at the side of the road and cheer; just stand outside their houses.
“I love it too when you’re going past the schools and you can just hear this massive roar from the kids. Maybe, they go home and they say: ‘Today we watched a race come past. I want to get a race bike.’ It’s great to think that we can inspire people because, ok, at the end of the day, we’re doing our job, but this is what we love. At the end of the day, if we can inspire people along the way, then, brilliant.”
Timothy John
“It’s interesting to hear Sophie describe the roar that greets the peloton whenever it passes a school. Road cycling’s ability to inspire children, and in an age where the pressures on young people are often intolerably high, is heartening,
“Race Director Mick Bennett, bearing the burden of ultimate responsibility for the safety of everyone participating in the Women’s Tour - crowds, riders, convoy drivers and moto pilots - can seem a tough operator when the race is on, but even he is not immune to cycling’s emotional and inspirational appeal.”
Mick Bennett
“What got me into cycling at a late stage, when I was sixteen or seventeen, was I went out to watch the then-Milk Race, That inspired me, and I didn’t really have a bike. I thought: ‘This looks amazing.’ And it was the whole day.
“I very often use the example of a school child getting up very early in the morning, having prepared their lunch for the day with their parents, and saying: ‘I’m going to school today. For a school project, I’ve designed a jersey, and I’m going to carry that poster at the side of the road, and I’m going to show that.’
“No one might even see that poster but the fact that they’ve prepared for the one, two, three days prior to going out to stand at the side of the road just to see this whole, colourful caravan go by, to me is inspirational.
“Even when I see it, I think that child has stood for the whole day at the side of the road. And you see whole flocks of them stood there in their school uniforms, which have been neatly pressed. And the teachers are there and extra barriers.
“I wave at them, and they scream. They’ve no idea who’s in the care or what he is, but the motorbike caravan goes through: 30-odd police bikes. Lights going, sirens going, high-fives. You wave out of the car, and it’s like being a pop star [laughs]. It’s so uplifting. I’ve even forgotten the question, I’ve got so carried away. “