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Ever wondered what it takes to manage a professional cycling team on the cusp of a major race? Tom Varney, the General Manager of Lifeplus-Wahoo, joins us on The British Continental podcast for an eye-opening discussion on the eve of the Tour of Britain Women. 

Tom discusses the importance of the race for British cycling teams and riders, highlighting the what it means for exposure and sponsorship. We also explore the mix of WorldTour and Continental teams in this year's edition, and why it presents opportunities for the Lifeplus-Wahoo team. 

The conversation touches on Kate Richardson's horror crash just days out from the race when she was knocked off her bike by the driver of a 4x4 vehicle. 

Tom's disappointment at not being selected for the Tour de France Femmes this year is palpable, but hear also reflects on the silver-linings to non-selection. Tom sheds light on how they're revising their calendar, seeking alternative races, and revising the team's approach. The implications on morale and commercial aspects are significant, but the team remains hopeful and forward-focused.

Tom takes us through the team's plans to step up to ProTeam level in 2025 and the hurdles that will need to be overcome to make that happen. We reflect on the growth of UCI Continental teams in the UK .

In the final segment, Tom considers what has enabled the team to continue for so long, and reflects on the team's past successes and achievements as the it nears its ten year anniversary. 

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Stage 9. The last mountain stage, the penultimate stage of the race., and with only a flat final stage to come, this was the last opportunity for the GC riders to get one up on their nearest rivals, the last chance for the mountain goats to earn a potentially career-changing stage win.

There were no killer gradients, no monstrous extreme altitude climbs. But with climbing from the start, three category one climbs, a category three climb, and over 3000 metres of vertical gain, this was no easy stage either. The stage finished with two ascents of the Nevegal climb, and it was on these slopes that the decisive action occurred. 

The early stages of the race were more about whittling down the bunch than establishing breakaways and after about 80 kilometres, only around 45 riders were left in the peloton. As they passed through the town of Belluno there was a fright for the Maglia Rosa Juan Ayuso and our diarist Tom Gloag, who both fell on the cobblestone streets. But they recovered quickly and rejoined the reduced bunch well before the major action began. 

On the first pass on the Nevegal, Trinity Racing drove things, whittling the bunch down yet further and as they crested the summit there were just twenty riders left in the group. Development Team DSM then took up the pace until, in the last 6 kilometres, there were unsuccessful attacks from our diarist Tom Gloag, Asbjorn Hellemose and then Anders Johannessen. It was Yannis Voisard from the Swiss Racing Academy who then seized the moment and his attack stuck, earning him his first ever UCI race win. 

Behind him, Ayuso led in a fractured lead group, with the other Johannessen, Tobias Halland, on his wheel. Tom Gloag crossed the line in sixth just a few seconds later. 

Our other diarist Harrison was the next best Brit in 21st, a minute and 25 seconds behind the stage winner. Ben Healy, who did a lot of work for Tom during the stage, finished 25th.

On GC, Tom remains 4th and looks likely to stay there, barring disaster or a superlative final stage ambush. His teammate Ben Healy, one of the most aggressive riders in this year’s race, now lies 15th, while Harrison has made it into the top 20, sitting 19th overall.

The final stage from San Vito al Tagliamento to Castelfranco Veneto feels a little anti-climatic given its relatively flat nature. It’s unlikely to result in any major GC changes. But with tired legs and a few hills in the middle of the stage, a bunch sprint isn’t a foregone conclusion either. So this could be one for the break, perhaps even Ben Turner, who has continued to look incredibly strong. Let’s see…

We have the pleasure of dispatches from both Harrison and Tom once again in our diary segment. It was an eventful stage for them both. Harrison was on the attack, crashed hard and yet was still at the pointy end of the race right until the final slopes. Tom sounds tired, and understandably so, after throwing the kitchen sink at his GC rivals. Like Harrison, he crashed too, although says he came off pretty lightly. 

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In this edition, we welcome back our now-regular trio Colin Sturgess, Oscar Onley and Steve Lampier, who are joined by WiV SunGod’s young sprinter Jim Brown.

Stage 2 began in Hawich and ended in Duns. The early part of the stage was marked by a six-man break which featured brothers Harry and Charlie Tanfield from Ribble Weldtite Pro Cycling, Saint Piran’s Adam Lewis, Travis Stedman of Team Qhubeka, Ukko Peltonen of Global 6 Cycling, and Sportsbreaks.com sprints competition leader Matthew Teggart (WiV SunGod). 

Teggart dominated the three intermediate sprints to extend his lead in the competition to 12 points. The peloton then sparked into action in the final 30 kilometres as the race took on a trio of late ŠKODA King of the Mountains climbs. Teggart was the last of the break to survive as they hit the first climb of Wanside Rigg, and was briefly joined by Human Powered Health’s Stephen Bassett, who struck out for more KOM points, but the pair were caught just after the summit.

INEOS Grenadiers then controlled the race on the narrow roads across the open moorland onto the second climb, with Jacob Scott (Wiv SunGod) jumping away near the top of Mainslaughter Law to secure enough points to move into the lead of the ŠKODA King of the Mountains competition.

Davide Gabburo (Bardiani CSF Faizanè) went clear on the descent, building a 30-second lead.  The Italian was caught approaching the top of the final climb of Hardens Hill, with German champion Nils Politt (BORA – hansgrohe) driving over the top and briefly going clear before Dylan Teuns (Israel – Premier Tech) countered.

 The Belgian was caught  by Magnus Sheffield (INEOS Grenadiers),  and then a Team DSM-led peloton mopped them up as they raced toward the finish in Duns.

DSM put their sprinter Cees Bol into a good position but an inspired late charge from the Great Britain team looked as if it was going to deliver Jake Stewart to victory, only for the Coventry rider to be pipped by millimetres by a late-charging Bol. Race leader Corbin Strong ((Israel-Premier Tech) finished third to take more bonus seconds on the line.

TRINITY Racing's Luke Lamperti was the best rider from the domestic teams in a very solid 5th, while WiV SunGod's Jim Brown and Saint Piran's Harry Birchill were 9th and 11th respectively. 

Strong still leads the race, extending his lead to 8 seconds, while Jake Stewart is second overall now. 

This year’s race ventures onto English soil for the first time on stage three, which takes place between Durham and Sunderland. It covers a distance of 163.6 kilometres and takes in 2,478 metres of elevation, including the first category Chapel Fell climb, which begins just 40 kilometres into the stage.

Show sponsored by HUNT Bike Wheels.

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Welcome back to The British Continental podcast!

We are absolutely delighted to be reviving our humble podcast this week to bring you another Tour of Britain diaries series.

Throughout the duration of the AJ Bell Tour of Britain, we’ll be taking you inside the race from the perspective of the domestic teams and riders with audio dispatches and interviews with managers, riders and staff. 

For the domestic teams, the Tour of Britain is akin to the Tour de France. By far the biggest event in their racing calendars, a chance to showcase their sponsors, attract new investment and prove themselves against higher-tier opposition, and it’s a shop window too for the riders, keen to put on an eye-catching performance that might bag them a pro contract. 

 This year’s Tour is a bit like a British version of the Race to the Sun – or Paris-Nice as it’s more formally known – in that it starts in the north of the country and then heads south to warmer climes. The 2022 edition starts where the 2021 version finished - in the Scottish coastal city of Aberdeen. It finishes eight days later overlooking The Needles on the Isle of Wight. 

It promises to be another tough edition. There is no team time trial – or any time trial for that matter – this year, meaning hilltop finishes, crosswinds, time bonuses and aggressive racing are likely to be the influential factors deciding the race’s overall winner. Any winner will certainly need good climbing legs. Every stage bar one - Stage 5 - has over 2000 metres of climbing and the race is bookended with hilltop finishes at the Glenshee Ski Centre in Aberdeenshire and The Needles on the Isle of Wight.

Ahead of that first summit finish, we hear from 19-year-old Scotsman Oscar Onley, a stage winner of the Giro Valle d’Aosta earlier this year, who is being given a GC shot by Team DSM at this year’s race.

Saint Piran’s team manager Steve Lampier talks us through his team, including their head-turning new signings, and fires a riposte to social media commentators who have questioned the team’s transfer policy this year.

WiV SunGod’s Jake Scott won two jerseys in last year’s Tour of Britain and was a feature of almost every break. He tells whether jersey-bagging will be another aim of his this year.

And his team manager, Tim Elverson, looks back on a successful year for the team and tells us what success would look like for the team at the race.

And, stop the press, we also have a late entry from Ribble Weldtite Pro Cycling DS Colin Sturgess, who we’re delighted to say will be sending us dispatches throughout the race again this year.

Each of our guests also looks forward to the stage 1  ski centre summit finish. The consensus seems to be that the climb is hard enough to break the peloton up, but not so hard that it will be decisive for GC. They all agree too that the weather could up the ante and make the finish much harder than it looks on paper. 

We want a say a big thanks to HUNT bike wheels who are supporting this Tour of Britain podcast diary series. HUNT have been long-time supporters of The British Continental website – and the domestic scene more generally – so we’re chuffed that they are also backing the podcast this week. Their man Ollie Gray is embedded in the race this week, so he'll be helping to bring us interviews with riders and staff as the week progresses. 

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Our latest episode is an extended interview with one of the domestic riders of the season, Jake Scott. 

Now 26, the self-coached Canyon dhb SunGod rider who works part-time in a bike shop to earn a living has had an excellent year. On the road, his standout results include winning the National Road Series, victory at the Beaumont Trophy, 2nd in the Lancaster Grand Prix, 2nd at the Ilkley Cycle Races and 11th at the Heistse Pijl race in Belgium. And on the mountain bike, he won the National MTB Marathon Championships, a result which earned him a ticket to the world MTB Marathon Championships.

Perhaps most notably though, he put in a series of attacking displays at the Tour of Britain, featuring in the break day after day, a feat which earned both the Eisberg Sprints and SKODA King of the Mountains competitions. 

Jake was the very first person we interviewed for this podcast, way back in the heady pre-Covid days of September 2019. Back then it was Greg Trowman who interviewed Jake, and we're pleased to say that Greg dusted off his mic for a reunion. They met up just before Jake’s Beaumont win and his trip to the MTB marathon worlds to record this interview. It’s a long one, but it’s well worth a listen. A fascinating insight into how the last 12 months have been for Jake.

Don't forget, listeners can get 10% off at luxury skincare brand VeloSkin by using the code TBC-10 at veloskin.cc.

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Welcome to episode 8 of our Tour of Britain diaries, the final chapter covering what has been a thrilling edition of the race. 

In this final episode we have some brilliantly thoughtful concluding dispatches from our regular diarists Col Sturgess, Rory Townsend, and Bob Donaldson, plus an interview with Canyon dhb SunGod boss Tim Elverson, neatly bookending things after we published an in-depth interview with Tim on the eve of the race. Our other regular diarist Andy Turner was waylaid today so he send his virtual love across the airwaves to you all instead. 

We want to extend our enormous gratitude to all of our regular and ad hoc diarists and contributors to this Tour of Britain diary series. We’ve had some phenomenal feedback from listeners about these episodes and without our diarists and contributors finding time in their busy days to provide us with such insightful dispatches these shows wouldn’t have been possible. So our thanks go out to each and every one of them.

Stage summary

Stage 8 from Stonehaven to Aberdeen took in 173 kilometres of relatively flat roads, bar the famous climb of Cairn o’Mount, placed early on in the stage. 

Six riders formed the day’s breakaway, which went almost from the gun. These were TRINITY Racing duo Tom Gloag and Ben Healy, SwiftCarbon Pro Cycling’s William Bjergfelt, stage 2 winner Robin Carpenter (Rally Cycling), Michal Paluta (Global 6 Cycling) and Jokin Murguialday from Caja Rural.

The break was allowed little freedom, with several teams eyeing either the stage win or the bonus seconds at the finish. Carpenter and Irish road race champion Healy survived the longest, before being caught in the outskirts of Aberdeen setting up the expected sprint finish.

Alaphilippe led things out for Mark Cavendish (Deceuninck – Quick-Step) before André Greipel (Israel Start-Up Nation) hit the front, only for Wout van Aert (Jumbo Visma) to sweep past them both to take the stage and overall victory, thanks to the ten bonus seconds he got on the line.

Overnight race leader Ethan Hayter (INEOS Grenadiers) finished outside the top ten, missing out on time bonuses and dropping to second overall. As well as the WorldTour pair of Cavendish in third and Gabz Gullaigh (Movistar) in 10th, the top ten featured four domestic team riders. Rory was 6th, his third top ten of the race. Matt Gibson (Ribble Weldtite Pro Cycling) backed up his 3rd place yesterday to finish 7th today, Ollie Peckover (SwiftCarbon Pro Cycling) grabbed his first-ever UCI top ten with 8th and Rory’s teammate Matt Bostock was 9th.

Jacob Scott (Canyon dhb SunGod) completed a remarkable week winning both the ŠKODA King of the Mountains and Eisberg Sprints classification, the jerseys for which he had held since stage 1. He was rewarded for his efforts by being presented with the Overall Combativity Award for the race.

 James Shaw (Ribble Weldtite Pro Cycling) was the best domestic team rider on GC in 14th. Alex Peters (SwiftCarbon Pro Cycling), 21st, and Max Stedman (Canyon dhb SunGod), 25th, were the other two domestic riders in the top 25.

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Welcome to the latest episode of our Baby Giro Diaries! We're getting to the business end of the race now and stage 7 was one that appears to have been a decisive one in setting the GC pecking order for the remaining three stages.

Taking the riders from Sondrio to Lago di Campo Moro, it was a short one at 120 kilometres, But it was also brutal, featuring over 3000 metres of ascent. For hors d'oeuvres, it served up 2 category 2 climbs but without a doubt, the main course was the challenging 28.8-kilometre climb to Lanzada | Lago di Campo Moro. 

It was another stage where the break took a long time to form, with five riders eventually getting away. They reached the foothills of the final climb but by the time they had reached the steepest ramps, they had been caught and overtaken by a new front group of five made up of the Maglia Rosia Juan Ayuso,  Colombia's Jesus Peña and the riders lying 2nd, 3rd and 4th on GC: Tobias Halland Johannessen, Henri Vandenabeele and our diarist Tom Gloag. The imperious Ayuso forced the rhythm, gradually, detaching all but Jesus Peña, who he then dropped with a stinging acceleration, propelling him to his third stage victory of the race.

Peña finished in second, 52 seconds back, while Vandenabeele, Tom and Johannessen finished in that order a further 22 seconds behind.  Ben Healy was 20th, nearly five minutes back, while Harrison was 28th, almost six minutes down.

On GC, Tom remains 4th overall, just five seconds from a podium spot. Healy drops to 9th, and Harrison is up to 23rd. 

Stage 8 from Aprica to Andalo is another short one at 116 kilometres. It's not as fearsome as the one we've just had but has enough climbing to allow more GC action, especially coming on the back of such a tough stage. It will certainly be a tough start, with the opening 30 kilometres all uphill. The stage is then mainly downhill until the final 15 kilometre climb to Andalo. Our preview writer Jospeh Doherty says it’s a little harder than the average grade of 5% suggests thanks to some false flat kilometres that allow riders to recover before the final few clicks to the line.

In our diary section, we hear from Harrison, who had another good day, making more gains on GC. He talks about how his day went and discusses how he'll approach the remaining stages and the balance between riding for GC and looking to make it into the breaks. No entries as we speak from an understandably tired Tom and the continually hectic Callum, but if that changes we will of course stitch their entries into this episode as soon as we can. 

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Welcome to our stage 6 Baby Giro diary episode. Six stages in, four to go, and still plenty of challenges ahead for our diarists to negotiate.

Stage 6 from Bonferraro di Sorga to San Pellegrino Terme was the longest stage of the race at 177 kilometres. The first 144 of those were flat, until the peloton hit the 6% gradient, category 2 Selvino climb. From there it was a fairly technical, fast descent for 16 kilometres before flattening out to the finish.

The racing itself was a fairly straightforward affair. It began at a furious pace, with an average exceeding 51 kilometres an hour for the first two hours, as numerous riders attempted to form a break. Eventually, a break of 13 formed that included Trinity Racing’s Ben Turner. The break was relatively short-lived, however. Asbjorn Hellemose from the Vc Mendrisio struck out on the climb, cresting the peak alone, but he was swept up by a select group of just of around 20 riders – including the main GC riders – on the descent. As they approached the finish, Swiss Racing Academy’s Alois Charrin punched clear to win the stage, with the rest of the lead group crossing the line just a few metres after. 

Both our diarist Tom Gloag and his roommate Ben Healy were in that front group, protecting their respective GC challenges. But Ben Turner slipped out of contention, finishing 8 and a half minutes back. Harrison, meanwhile, was 38th, a minute and 20 seconds behind Charrin.

On the GC, Tom remains in 4th, Ben Healy is in 8th, Harrison jumps up to 32nd, while Ben Turner is now in 38th. Daan Hoeks continues to be Holdsworth-Zappi’s best GC man in 50th overall.

Tomorrow could see much more movement in the general classification. Finishing in Lago di Campo Moro, the stage culminates in a monstrous 28.8 kilometre climb. The opening part is shallow and rolling, but the meat of the climb from Lanzada to about 2 kilometres to go is 12.2 kilometres at an average gradient of 7.6%, and that’s where the real test lies.

As Josephy Doherty said in our race preview, “we’ve had some long climbs and some steep grades so far, but at this length and altitude, the best will rise to the top” and “if you have a bad day here, it’s race over … as there will be nowhere to hide.”

At the time of recording, we’ve only had a dispatch so far from Tom, who once again brings in fellow GC contender Ben Healy for additional ‘insight’. No word from Harrison or Callum so far, we hope they are well. We’ll add their dispatches in once we get them.

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In this episode, we chat to Joss Lowden. Joss is a relatively recent convert to cycling. As she explains in this interview, she didn’t even really like cycling for quite some time, only getting into it after suffering a running injury. A cycling trip to Mallorca in 2016 made her rethink her dislike of the sport. And not long after she bought a TT bike on eBay and promptly broke the local TT course record just a couple of days later. 

Since then, the now 33-year-old has spells with Aprire Bicycles-HSS Hire, Storey Racing, and Brother-Fusion before joining her current team, Drops-Le Col part way through 2019.  Despite her obvious talent, Joss has had a fair share of challenges since she started racing.  She essentially wrote off her 2018 season with a shoulder injury after a crash at the Tour de Yorkshire and then broke both her shoulder and elbow the following year at the Tour of California. On top of that, Joss’ team Drops lost a whole year of racing due to Covid.

When she has had opportunities to race, however, Joss’ talent has been obvious. In the National Road Series in 2019, for example, she was second in the Klondike Grand Prix and finished 3rd in the Lincoln Grand Prix. She then went one better, winning the South Coast Classic in July. That year she was also 7th in the time trial and the national road championships, won the national 10-mile championship and then finished the season with a memorable bronze in the team time trial at the world

Last year she finished 12th overall in the Setmana Ciclista Valenciana and won the national 25-mile championship. And this season has started well. She finished 11th at the Healthy Ageing Tour and then, just as I was writing this intro, she finished 5th at the hilly Brabantse Pijl race in Belgium.

Joss also made waves back in February when she unofficially broke the women’s hour record, when she went 153m further than the official women's Hour Record held by Italian Vittoria Bussi.

This interview was recorded in two parts, which we've stitched together in (hopefully) seamless fashion. In the first half, Joss recounts some of the key moments in her cycling journey so far, including her introduction to cycling, her injury challenges, her bronze medal at the world championships in Yorkshire and a disappointing 2020. In the second half, she discusses her plans and motivation for breaking the world hour record later this year.

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Our latest episode is with Canyon dhb SunGod's new recruit Damien Clayton.

About a year ago, we published the first instalment of a three-part interview with Damien on our website. The interview traced his remarkable transformation from an architect who barely rode a bike to a UCI race winner.

Back in the summer of 2016, Damien's love affair with the bike began. At that stage he'd  barely ridden more than 10 miles in one go on a bicycle, but a company bike ride from London to Brighton suddenly ignited his interest. He may have done it in gym shorts and on a single-speed bike with next to no experience, but he still found himself first to the top of all the hills, including Ditchling Beacon, the highest point on the South Downs. Afterwards, he bought himself a ‘proper’ road bike and then found himself falling headlong into a love affair with the bicycle.

Just three years later in 2019,  not only had he signed his first contract with a Continental team, Ribble Pro Cycling, he'd also won his first UCI road race, the Grand Prix des Marbriers. After that he won his first National A road race, the Bourne CiCLE Classic, and grabbed some eye-catching results in pro kermesses in Belgium, regularly mixing it with - and finishing ahead of - World Tour riders.

It’s was an astonishing transformation, one we documented fully in our three-part interview. If you haven’t read it yet, we wholeheartedly recommend you do so. 

A few things stood out to us in that interview.

• Damien is an exceptionally driven individual. He’s obsessive about his approach to training, nutrition and recovery. Something we wanted to find out more about.
• He still has bags of potential. He may be 28, relatively old in cycling terms, but nonetheless, new to the sport, he still has plenty to learn and plenty to improve on.
• He has a special relationship with his coach Rory Townsend, a rider he greatly admires and relies on for support and encouragement.

With a contract newly signed to ride with Rory’s team Canyon dhb SunGod in 2021, we were keen to speak to Damien again to find out more about what makes him tick, how far he thinks he can go in cycling and why he’d decided to switch teams. 

A couple of points of order:

First up, the interview was recorded just before Damien found out he’d been selected to race in the Zwift Academy finals. The finals take place on the 19th December and the winner will be offered a contract with Mathieu Van der Poel’s Aplecin-Fenix team. So at the time this was published, it wasn't completely clear which team Damien will end up riding for.

Second, we’re really pleased to announce a new sponsor, VeloSkin. For those that don’t know, Veloskin makes an excellent range of specialist skincare products for cyclists. Their chamois cream, soothing gel, shave cream and post-shave lotion are all made using natural products and are designed for and tested by cyclists. This season they have sponsored Damien’s Ribble Weldtite team and next year they will also be supporting Canyon dhb. We’ve used the products ourselves and can vouch for them. They work brilliantly. 
 
We’ve teamed up with them to offer you 10% off all orders made through their website. All you need to do is head to veloskin.cc and use the code TBC-10, which will give you a 10% discount on your first and future orders with VeloSkin. And better still every order will also support The British Continental. 

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