Men’s & Women’s Teams Announced for 2016 Tour de Yorkshire

Tour De Yorkshire 2015 | Selby to York - Stage 2

Tour De Yorkshire 2015 | Selby to York – Stage 2 – ©www.chrismaher.co.uk / CyclingShorts.cc

With a little more than a month to go before the 2016 Tour de Yorkshire, organisers have unveiled the 18 men’s teams and 14 women’s teams which will compete in the race.

The teams were unveiled by Welcome to Yorkshire’s Sir Gary Verity and A.S.O’s Christian Prudhomme at the UK’s largest tourism conference, Y16, in York today.

Full details of the Asda Women’s Tour de Yorkshire Race were also unveiled at Y16, where it was announced that World Champion Lizzie Armitstead will compete.  The race, which begins in her home town of Otley on Saturday 30 April, will be the first time she will have raced on British roads in her World Champions jersey.

In total the Asda Women’s Tour de Yorkshire race will see 14 teams, including eight UCI registered, compete over 135km on exactly the same course as the men, who tackle the route later the same day.

Sir Gary Verity, Chief Executive of Welcome to Yorkshire said, “The inaugural edition of the Tour de Yorkshire was a phenomenal success with riders, teams and over one and a half million spectators enjoying three fantastic days of racing.  This year we have attracted some of the world’s top men’s and women’s teams as well as a very strong British selection, and combined these will no doubt provide an inspirational and enthralling weekend of racing”.

 

Women's Tour De Yorkshire 2015 - ©www.chrismaher.co.uk / CyclingShorts.ccIn total, there are eight British women’s teams:

Wiggle High5

Podium Ambition p/b Club La Santa

Drops Cycling Team

Great Britain national team (for whom Lizzie Armitstead will ride)

Breeze (British Cycling development squad)

Team WNT

Boot Out Breast Cancer Cycling Team

Fusion RT Fierlan

 

And six international teams, who are:

Hitec Products

Cyclance Pro Cycling

Ale’Cippolin

Team Liv-Plantur

Lares Waowdeals

Team Footon Velosport

 

Many of the men’s teams are returning to Yorkshire after the hugely successful first edition of the race in 2015, which was won by Team Sky’s Lars Petter Nordhaug.  Team Sky are among those returning, along with BMC, Giant Alpecin and Lotto NL-Jumbo.

 

Tour De Yorkshire 2015 | Wakefield to Leeds - Stage 3In full, the men’s teams are:

Seven World Teams:

BMC Racing Team (USA)

Dimension Data (RSA)

Orica GreenEdge (AUS)

Team Giant – Alpecin (GER)

Team Katusha (RUS)

Team Lotto NL Jumbo (NED)

Team Sky (GBR)

 

Five UCI Pro Continental teams:

One Pro Cycling (GBR)

Cofidis, Solutions Credits (FRA)

Roompot – Oranje Peloton (NED)

Direct Energie (FRA)

Topsport Vlaanderen-Baloise (BEL)

 

Five UCI Continental teams:

Team Raleigh GAC (GBR)

NFTO (GBR)

Team WIGGINS (GBR)

JLT Condor (GBR)

Madison Genesis (GBR)

Great Britain National Team (GBR)

 

A provisional rider list will be issued in April with riders confirmed closer to the race.

World Champion Lizzie Armitstead to ride Asda Women’s Tour de Yorkshire

British Cycling National Road Race Championships 2015

Lizzie Armitstead – British Cycling National Road Race Championships 2015 ©www.chrismaher.co.uk / CyclingShorts.cc

  • Asda unveiled as the title sponsor of the hugely expanded event
  • There will be full TV coverage of the race
  • Organisers have secured a prize fund of over £50,000 (€63,623), making this the most lucrative race in the world
  • UCI ranking means a mix of international and domestic teams will compete

 

Yorkshire’s own World Champion Lizzie Armitstead is the first rider to announce she will compete in the Asda Women’s Tour de Yorkshire on Saturday 30 April.

The race has secured title sponsorship with Asda supermarkets and will take place on exactly the same course as the men’s race being held later that day, on a 135km route from Otley to Doncaster.

Race organisers Welcome to Yorkshire and A.S.O have also announced that the prize fund makes it the most lucrative women’s cycle race in the world, with a total of £50,000 on offer to individuals and teams.

The first prize for this one day race will be £15,000, second will be £10,000 and third, £5,000, with prize money down to 20th place.

 

Otley born Armitstead, who currently tops the women’s world rankings after a series of impressive wins in the season so far, said:

“The Asda Tour de Yorkshire Women’s race will be my first race in the UK in my World Champions jersey and it’s an absolute dream to be starting in my home town.”

 

Speaking of the sponsorship and reasons to support women’s racing, Andy Clarke, Asda President and CEO said:

It’s a privilege to be supporting the Tour de Yorkshire women’s race and helping to raise the profile of women’s sports. In 2014 Asda was the official partner of the Tour Makers for the Yorkshire Grand Départ, which was a resounding success. We’re incredibly proud of our Yorkshire roots and wanted to remain part of this exciting legacy that works to bring communities together in celebration of an amazing sport set against the backdrop of an unbeatable county.”

 

The series of announcements continued today with news that the Asda Women’s Tour de Yorkshire will be broadcast live, on ITV4 and Eurosport.

 

Sir Gary Verity, Chief Executive of Welcome to Yorkshire, said:

Women's Tour De Yorkshire 2015 - ©www.chrismaher.co.uk / CyclingShorts.cc“Today is a hugely significant milestone for women’s racing.  We’ve come good on our promise to expand the women’s race and rather than rest at bringing parity in terms of the men’s route and broadcast coverage, we’ve gone further to offer the world’s most lucrative prize fund. 

 “Together with our sponsors, we’re bringing women’s racing the respect it deserves and I can think of no better way to start our race in Otley than with our very own World Champion on the start line.”

 

The Asda Women’s Tour de Yorkshire Race will see a ceromial start at 8.15am in Otley before the race begins at 8.30am.  The riders are expected to finish between 11.59am and 12.22pm in Doncaster.

Teams for both the men’s and women’s races were also unveiled in York today.

As the women’s race is ranked 1.2 by the world governing body, UCI, it has been able to attract some of the world’s best riders as well as domestic teams. Armitstead will race with the Great Britain Cycling Team.

Race timings were announced last week for the TDY 2016 you can download them below:

 

Further sponsors will be unveiled in the coming weeks.

 

ICON Intelligent Lights Review

ICONIntelligent Lights

Established in 2013, a Northern-Irish based start up company called See.Sense, Kickstarter funded ICON intelligent lights.

I tested the rear ICON light which has two 95 lumen CREE LEDs and retails at £64.99.

The box contained 2 x rubber mounts, USB cable, the light and a simple, clear user guide.

The set of front and rear is £119.99 and the 30% brighter ICON+ is also available at £149.99 for the set.

ICON is primarily designed as a ‘to be seen’ light, giving up to 270 degrees of side visibility.  This is ideal in urban environments. The front ICON has twin LED’s, one with a focused beam, and one with a dispersed beam. According to See.Sense 80% of accidents happen in daylight and the ICON is certainly bright enough to be visible in daylight.

ICONStreet

So what is so clever about it…..?

Within 2 minutes of opening the package I had downloaded the app and connected the light with my iphone via Bluetooth. The app allows you to:

  • Check your battery level
  • ICONImage-3Change from flashing light to constant
  • Customise your lights to optimise your brightness/run-time using a simple slider
  • Control multiple lights at once
  • Set auto-on/off, which automatically turns off your light after 3 minutes of inactivity, or if you walk more than 3 metres from your light
  • Turn on theft alert, the light will then send you an alert if anything or anyone disturbs your bike to a range of up to 15 metres
  • Turn on crash alert, if you have a crash, ICON knows and will send a text to your nominated contact for help, which you can cancel if you are ok
  • Download firmware and application updates as new features become available

The battery life is up to 15 hours (5hr charge) on flashing mode and on the light itself there is a mini LED to indicate battery level, green for 75%+ and red for less than 25%. The app gives a more accurate battery level and you can adjust the brightness of your light using the app, so it’s easy to maximise your battery life if you’re running low.

I am not sure I would ever adjust brightness/flashing with app myself, but it was fun initially dazzling the family!

See.Sense say the theft detection is ideal for the coffee stop, but would I leave my bike locked outside cafe with a £120 of lights still attached? And perhaps the alarm should be on the light, not the phone to scare away the thief? Having said that it worked and I did indeed get the alert when the light was moved.

I like the crash alert feature as I often ride alone, but the most impressive thing about the light is that it adapts to its environment, increasing its brightness and flash rate to keep you more visible in riskier situations such as junctions, roundabouts, filtering in traffic and to approaching car headlights. If you are in an urban setting, where there is a higher level of ambient lighting from street lighting and approaching cars at night, ICON will automatically adjust to be less bright. It is the only light in the world that can react to road junctions, filtering traffic, roundabouts and car headlights.

Even more intelligent is the fact that ICON will soon monitor your environment. It can monitor road surfaces, crashes, near-miss events, light levels, temperature levels and routes taken. With your permission data will be uploaded to the cloud and aggregated data can then be shared with councils to provide information for cycling infrastructure provision, pothole repairs and identify hot spot areas where there are a high frequency of  ‘near-miss’ events and crashes.

Philip McAleese, CEO of See.Sense said, “It is our hope that ICON will help to ignite a cycling revolution. Not only does ICON enhance the cycling experience through improved safety and convenience, it also has the potential to empower cyclists to influence their cities through the use of highly accurate, crowd-sourced data. This can create smarter and better cities for everyone.”

It comes with a 12 month warranty and is weather sealed, the website actually shows it being dropped in a jug of water and mine has been soaked several times in winter rain and road spray with no adverse effects.

However after about 6 rides the on/off button became somewhat intermittent requiring a really hard press at an angle to switch the light on as if something is perhaps loose or out of alignment behind it.

The light itself is bulky and doesn’t have the aesthetic appeal of some of the other lights on the market; one rider even went so far as to call it ‘ugly’.

Overall it is bright, functional and easy to fit. It is certainly visible and I even received a couple of complaints about how bright it is! Gadget lovers will like the app and although I hope I never need it, I feel reassured by the crash alert. It will be interesting to see how much data See.Sense is able to collect in the future and how this is used, anything that improves the cycling infrastructure and safety must be a good thing.

Watch this space… Visit seesense.cc website.

 

Team Ford Ecoboost Joined by KALAS Sportswear

ecoboost-1

©www.amwphotography.co.uk

Team Ford Ecoboost are proud to announce the KALAS Sportswear will be the team’s clothing partner for 2016. KALAS have been working closely with the team to produce a striking blue and orange design thats takes elements from Ford’s racing heritage and coupled with the latest materials has delivered a design that stands out in the peloton. The team have been issued a complete range of race and leisure wear that will ensure they can perform to the top of their game whatever the British weather can throw at them.

Team Manager Nick Yarworth

“I first looked at the KALAS range back in September at the Cycling Show at the NEC. I was impressed with the KALAS women’s collection, the variety, the technology used and of course the quality of the product . KALAS have been very helpful from the start, guiding us through the design phase through to the selection of garments. As a team manager I really could not asked for more”.

Team Captain and current National Criterium Champion Nikki Juniper.

“I’m really pleased that we will be using KALAS this year. The company have a great reputation in the industry and their Women’s range is second to none. It was obvious to us that their women’s range was not an afterthought and they have spent a significant amount of time developing that range of products. Its good to see an equal selection of both Women’s and Men’s kit”.

KALAS UK Manager Andrew Crocker

“KALAS have been around for 25 years, however 2016 promises to be our most exciting year to date, both in the UK and across the globe. Being involved with such a talented team of dedicated riders is a privilege. Its great to see a blue chip company such as Ford taking the opportunity to use cycle sport as a vehicle for promotion. Personally I can not wait to see the team battling in the televised crit series”.

Heather Bamforth Shortlisted For Ambassador of Women’s Sport Award

BAGC2016shortlist_Ambassador

 

I have some exciting news…

Our sub Editor Heather Bamforth has been shortlisted for the Ambassador of Women’s Sport Award (#BeAGameChanger Awards 2016) organised by the Women’s Sports Trust. Thanks to all our readers for nominating her. Heather is fighting our corner and flying the banner for women in sport [particularly cycling] and business. Heather is the founder [and trustee] of The Racing Chance Foundation, she is working hard to get women to compete at the grass roots level of cycling while holding down careers, and using the sport to enhance and compliment skill sets that can be utilised in our day to day lives and at work.

 

The shortlist for 2016 is an extremely strong field, Heather lines up with 6 other women; Judy Murray (Tennis Coach) being the high profile name that jumps out at first glance. They’re joined by, Annie Zaidi (previous winner of the Helen Rollason Award and Muslim Women’s Football Coach), Ebony Rainford-Brent (the first black woman to play Cricket for England, now the first woman to be appointed Director of Surrey County Cricket Club), Liz Dimmock (Founder of Women Ahead), Maureen McGonigle (founder of Scottish Women in Sport), Vicky Huyton (founder of The Female Coaching Network).

HeatherProfileSQI spoke to Heather shortly after she got the news and asked how she felt, “Wow! I’m blown away, it’s great to know so many people support and value what you do. It’s a tough shortlist, but if it helps raise the profile of women’s cycling and the work of my charity; The Racing Chance Foundation, what more would I want? Thank you to everyone to voted for me, I am humbled.”

We’ve got our fingers crossed for Heather in the final. We shall keep you posted!

To learn more about the shortlist and the Women’s Sports Trust visit their website: www.womenssporttrust.com

Twitter: @WomenSportTrust

Follow the #BeAGameChanger on Twitter.

 

 

 

Numbers don’t win the race!

Most riders are obsessed with numbers in this Strava crazy world! We are always checking the data, the power, heart rate, time or speed for a session and obviously physical training is vitally important to becoming a successful road racer, but what about the other elements of racing that are often neglected?

 

Psychology

Can you manage your emotions, your thoughts, your pre race nerves, your confidence levels?

Professor Steve Peters rose to fame with his Chimp Paradox Mind Model and is credited with much of the success of British riders in the past few years.  Mental skills, like physical skills need time and effort to develop, how much time do you spend on them?

Simple things such as positive self talk to increase confidence and maintain focus, focused breathing techniques to control nerves and using imagery to visualise successful performances can make a significant difference.

Confidence also comes from setting SMARTER goals that include process goals. It is wonderful to have a goal of winning a specific race or completing a certain TT in a set time (an outcome goal), but often other factors outside your control influence these goals i.e. who else turns up for the race, how hard they have trained and the weather. You therefore need to set other goals or milestones that contribute to your overall goals for the season, or year. Ones that you are in control of, that will contribute to your long term goals and that you can be proud of achieving i.e. to have increased average cadence by X amount by X date, to have developed an effective warm up protocol by Spring or to have increased threshold power by X watts by X date, to have learnt to corner effectively in a bunch by Summer or to increase speed over a known course by X%. Achieving these milestones will bring confidence as you see your progress.

Pre race I recommend all my riders follow a set routine that works for them, I even ask them to write it down and plan it out along with a list of kit they need. This ensures there are no last minute panics. Using a set pre race routine and set warm up enables a rider to control their anxiety which in case is too much, experts recommend to use cbd hemp flowers.

During a race the mental skill most required is concentration and the ability to remain focussed at all times, a lapse in concentration could result in disaster. Post race it is vital to identify not just the areas for improvement, but all the things that went well. Try identifying 10 things that you did well each race i.e. did you complete a successful warm up, did you start in a good position, did you maintain a good position in the bunch, where you aware of the attacks, did you find a safe wheel to follow, did you hydrate well etc etc. Look for the positives; this is where confidence comes from! Always following the same process allows an athlete to get into the racing mindset. The British Cycling 20 minute warm is perfect for most events.

 

Technical Skills

Racing Skills Session for 700cc at Hillingdon Cycle Circuit

Racing Skills Session for 700cc at Hillingdon Cycle Circuit

Last year the Surrey League took the decision to make it compulsory for riders to attend two accredited race training sessions if they were planning to race in the league as a novice/Cat 4 racer. This year the South East Road Race League has done the same and it seems likely that other race organisers will follow suit.

These sessions cover a variety of technical skills for racing before progressing to some tactical skills including mock racing which is followed by a classroom session to discuss racing and training.

Having run a few of these sessions now, including some women’s only sessions, I truly believe riders at all levels can benefit from them. In the outside session we build the confidence to ride in close proximity to other riders, leaning on other riders, touching other riders, being in a bunch and moving through a bunch of riders.

Cornering in a bunch is very different to being cornering solo and being able to choose your line. Sessions like this give the opportunity to practise at speed in a safe environment. British Cycling has a great series of videos called Race Smart including one on Cornering in a Bunch which are well worth a look.

Women Only Session at Redbridge Cycle Circuit

Women Only Session at Redbridge Cycle Circuit

Technique for mass starts and sprint finishes are covered and practised; in a race you only get to do each of these once and they are not the sort of things you should be practising with your mates on the open road! Often the main area for improvement on the mass starts is being able to clip your second foot in quickly without looking down, this is simple to practise on every ride and can make a huge difference to both your confidence on the start line and to the start itself.

 

All riders enjoy working on their strengths, the things they naturally excel at, but identifying and dedicating time to our weaknesses will pay dividends come race day!

The Sprint for the Line!

The Sprint for the Line!

Knowledge really is power; do you know the demands of the races you are targeting? What is the circuit like? Is it a narrow circuit with tight corners, a wide circuit, an open road, is it hilly, where is the start/finish. If you are unable to ride the course or circuit pre race can you look at You Tube footage from previous races, look at Google Earth to get an idea of the layout, ask team mates or club mates what the circuit is like or even ask on social media. This will help you decide what skills you need to focus on most i.e. cornering or starts for town centre crits!

The excellent Race Smart videos cover everything from packing your bag to racing in high winds, but of course there is no substitute for getting out and practising so riders of all levels can benefit from this type of session.

 

Tactical Skills

Tactical skills are developed with experience, in your first few races really focus on observing the race, who did what, when and why? Where were the attacks? Was this a good place to attack? Did it work? Why? What happened in the race? How did you respond? How did others respond?

Watch other races live or on TV and see if you can work out what riders are doing and why? Observe how different tactics are used by individuals versus teams?

Then try some out! It is difficult to plan precisely, but have a strategy for the race or the course. Will you sit in the bunch and conserve energy as you know your strength is sprinting? Will you attack over the crest of a hill when other riders are easing off? Which attacks will you respond too? Where do attacks commonly happen on this circuit or course?

Early season races that are not your top priority for the year are good place to be brave and try out some tactics and see what might just work for you or your team.

So in 2016 will you develop your mental skills, your technical skills and your tactical skills alongside your physical training? You can bet the winners will be…….

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