The Women's Tour is a women's staged cycle race which takes place in Great Britain and has been part of the new UCI Women's World Tour since 2016. Until 2015 it was rated by the UCI as a 2.1 race. Its origins trace back to 2010 when SweetSpot organised their first women’s cycling race, the Horizon Fitness Grand Prix in Stoke-on-Trent. What began as a supporting event for the men’s Tour Series – Britain’s leading televised cycle race series – grew into a key part of the women’s racing scene in Britain, thanks to television coverage on ITV4 in the UK and around the world. In 2018, Britain's leading women's teams took part in the whole series for the first time. The Women’s Tour is organised by the company behind the men’s Tour of Britain, which has been an ever-present on the UCI calendar since 2004. At this event’s national launch in March 2013, SweetSpot MD Chairman Hugh Roberts and director Guy Elliott first announced the company’s intentions to create a standalone stage race for the world’s top female cyclists in Britain – the first event of its kind. As a prelude to the inaugural 2014 Women’s Tour, a women’s one-day race was held on the final day of the 2013 Tour of Britain in London, won by Hannah Barnes. As history would show, SweetSpot’s move was one that the Tour de France and Vuelta a Espana organisers would announce some months later. Just a week after this SweetSpot received the news that the Women’s Tour had been granted a place on the UCI calendar for May 2014, being granted what was the highest possible ranking for a stage race at the time. This put it instantly on a par with the world’s top races for women. The first edition was a widely acclaimed success, attracting the world’s top riders and teams and widespread media coverage for women’s cycling in the UK. While the first edition of the race took place in May, the second edition - 2015 The Women's Tour - moved to a mid-June position, a slot it has held on the UCI calendar ever since. In 2016 the race became a part of the inaugural UCI Women’s WorldTour, the leading series of races for professional women cyclists. In 2017 The Women's Tour finished in London for the first time in race history, with Belgian rider Jolien D'Hoore winning the stage. Wales hosted the race for the first time in 2018, with the final stage taking place between Dolgellau and Colwyn Bay. The Women's Tour expanded to six days for the first time in 2019. The increase in days also heralded a slight shift of event days, as the race ran from Monday to Saturday SweetSpot announced in March 2020 that the planned seventh edition of the race, scheduled to take place between Monday 8 and Saturday 13 June, was postponed owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. The race's Grand Départ in Bicester, Oxfordshire and final stage in Suffolk had already been announced. Organisers said that they "hope to work with the UCI and British Cycling to find an alternative date in the international cycling calendar for the race to take place should conditions permit." On 4 May, the 2020 Tour was cancelled.
Overall winners
Classification leaders jerseys
Women's Tour facts and figures
Overall winners
Five riders have won the six editions of the Women’s Tour since its inaugural 2014 race
Lizzie Deignan is the sole double champion in race history to date: she won the 2016 and 2019 editions.
Coryn Rivera became the first non-European rider to win the race overall when she triumphed in the 2018 edition.
Five different riders won stages in each of the 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 editions of the race.
Fifteen different riders have won stages of the Women’s Tour – the most recent addition to the list being Amalie Dideriksen in Worcester in 2018.
Twelve different nationalities have won stages of the Women’s Tour. Dutch riders have won the most, three ahead of Belgium.
Sarah Roy, Chloe Hosking and Coryn Rivera are the only non-European stage winners in race history to date.
Host venues
On average, 300,000 people watch the Women’s Tour from the roadside each year.
An estimated 125,000 fans watched the race’s finale in London in 2017 – the race used the same 6.2 km circuit around Regent StreetSt James, Piccadilly, Strand and Whitehall that featured in the 2015, 2016 and 2018 Tours of Britain.
Northamptonshire and Suffolk have hosted the race more times than any other county: five.
Wales hosted its first stage when stage five of the 2018 edition took place between Dolgellau and Colwyn Bay. The country then welcomed the final two days of the 2019 race, which took place in Powys and Carmarthenshire.
