World's best cycling teams to descend on Suffolk and Essex for prestigious race

Colchester and Clacton will host the penultimate stage of the Women's Tour, which will see elite riders race from the historic castle town to the Essex Sunshine Coast on Friday, October 8. And then the following day, the final stage goes from Haverhill to Felixstowe.

The Women's Tour is no stranger to the region, with Southwold, Framlingham, Aldeburgh, Ipswich, Bury St Edmunds, and Stowmarket among those seeing stages of the race over recent years.

Rescheduled from its traditional June calendar position due to the Covid pandemic, this year's race will attract an all-star field once again, with all nine of the top division UCI Women’s WorldTour teams confirmed to race.

Among those are SD Worx, the world’s number one team, and the squads of four of the race’s previous overall winners: Trek-Segafredo (Lizzie Deignan, 2019 champion), Team DSM (Coryn Rivera, 2018 champion), Canyon SRAM Racing (Kasia Niewiadoma, 2017 champion) and Ceratizit-WNT Pro Cycling (Lisa Brennauer, 2015 winner).

The Women's Tour passing the former Archant office in Portman Road, Ipswich, in 2018

British interest comes in the form of AWOL O’Shea, CAMS-Basso Bikes – both Women’s Tour debutants – and Drops-Le Col s/b TEMPUR.

This year will mark Drops’ fifth appearance in the event, while the Essex-based CAMS team will be on home soil for the race’s fourth and fifth stages (Shoeburyness to Southend on Thursday, October 7, and Colchester and Clacton-on-Sea on Friday, October 8).

Paul Dundas, leader of Colchester Borough Council, said: “This is a wonderful opportunity to put Colchester on the world’s stage and I’m sure residents, schools, businesses and visitors will turn out in their thousands to cheer them on through the borough.”

The full list of teams competing in the 2021 Women’s Tour is:

· Alé BTC Ljubljana (Italy)

· AWOL O’Shea (Great Britain)

· CAMS-Basso Bikes (Great Britain)

· Canyon SRAM Racing (Germany)

· Ceratizit-WNT Pro Cycling (Germany)

· Drops-Le Col s/b TEMPUR. (Great Britain)

· FDJ Nouvelle-Aquitaine Futuroscope (France)

· Liv Racing (Netherlands)

· Movistar Team (Spain)

· Parkhotel Valkenburg (Netherlands)

· SD Worx (Netherlands)

· Team BikeExchange (Australia)

· Team DSM (Germany)

· Team TIBCO-Silicon Valley Bank (USA)

· Trek-Segafredo (USA)

· Valcar-Travel & Service (Italy)

The top women's cycling teams in the world will head to Essex this year (Image: Archant)