Thursday, 10th December, 2009
2010 will be a big year for British bike racing. The long-awaited Team Sky oufit will be launched – British Cycling’s big foray in continental professional road racing scene - and it will also be the second year of The Tour Series. In its first season The Tour Series took the UK’s towns and cities by storm and gave the UK circuit-racing scene a huge boost, bringing out the crowds and creating a festival of cycling for those venues that were fortunate enough to be part of this fantastic new series.

Next year will see the series visit venues the length and breadth of the country. Some of the venues will be familiar to some of the 100,000 plus live-audience that followed The Tour Series in 2009, however, there are new additions to the line-up, and these venues – along with the teams selected to race – will be announced in a full press conference for The Tour Series in January.

Tour Series technical director Mick Bennett is a master of city-centre racing, and is highly-charged about the 2010 Tour Series:

“We had a fantastic Tour Series in 2009. After introducing the unique and revolutionary concept of team-based cycle racing to The Series, we saw some of the best racing from this past decade take place on home soil. This year we are looking to bring more of this fantastic racing to our fans and as such we are currently working closely with British Cycling to establish the mid-week racing of The Tour Series within the overall racing calendar and the teams’ schedules so that it does not clash with any other events.

The 2009/10 UK team ‘transfer-market’ has been frenetic, with big-name moves from domestic to continental teams and movement from squad-to-squad across the UK peloton. Next year looks like a year where even more pro teams will enter the ranks. Several new domestic teams have been announced and this will only prove to leave The Tour Series organisers with an even bigger selection job, as the already highly-competitive clambering for the places on The Tour Series will have extra teams looking for one of those berths.

The competition for places on next year’s Tour Series will be furious. We have restricted number of spots and realistically there could be 16 or 17 teams all vying for those places”, added Bennett. “However, no decisions have been made regarding the teams that will contest next year’s Series as of yet.  This process is ongoing and the teams will be informed in the coming months as the selection criteria is agreed upon by The Tour Series organisation”.

2010 will also see a continuation of the fantastic television coverage that was a big part of the 2009 Tour Series’ success. The one-hour shows on ITV4 were a must-see for many cycling fans, and were accliamed for their exciting nature and diverse feature slots. Series organisers are currently finalising next year’s broadcasting contract and expect to be able to announce this in January.

Full details of the 2010 launch date and venue will be released in early January.