Although there is a tight deadline to hold both the men’s and women’s Tours of Britain in 2024, British Cycling has declared a rescue operation to take over after the previous promoter filed for bankruptcy.
British Cycling
announced that the women’s and men’s races will still take place on June 4–9, 2024, and September 1–8, 2024, respectively, despite the lack of finalized race routes, sponsorship, or stage information.
Under the new multi-discipline British Cycling Events, which will also include off-road, urban, and track disciplines, the races will be known as the Tour of Britain-Women and Tour of Britain-Men. The races will focus on “tackling inequalities” of social justice, social mobility, social cohesiveness, and inactivity.The takeover plans follow the governing body’s acrimonious split with the Tours’ former promoter, Sweetspot, over £700,000 of unpaid licence fees. The unprecedented situation has created what British Cycling’s chief executive, Jon Dutton, called “an opportunity to build momentum and credibility and to engage with a new audience and communities”.
We gave it a lot of thought as we tried to pull ourselves out of the impossible predicament we were in,” Dutton stated. “Because we are a non-profit organization, all of the money we receive is reinvested in cycling, which is why the outstanding debt is so painful.”
Dutton admitted that the previous financial model, which was largely reliant on local authority financing, is now set to alter but was unable to provide clarity on where future investment may come from. Dutton referred to both events as “multimillion-pound races.”
