Lizzie Deignan heads GB’s World Championships charge in Harrogate

In world cycling terms all roads lead to Harrogate this week but in the context of British cycling they have led there for the last quarter‑century. The UCI Road World Championships opened on Saturday with the para-cycling international and over the next eight days the worlds are set to outstrip two hugely successful Tour de France starts in 2007 and 2014, in London and Yorkshire, in both duration and spectator numbers.

The first road world championships in the UK for 37 years are the culmination of a process that began with the Tour de France’s two-day visit in 1994, in front of millions of spectators along the south coast from Dover to Portsmouth. That process has featured a plethora of Olympic medals, the relaunch of the Tour of Britain in 2004, those Tour starts, the foundation of Team Sky in 2010, and the inception of the Women’s Tour in 2014 and the Tour de Yorkshire a year after that.

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To the consternation of some local traders Harrogate, the centre for the racing, will be in lockdown for nine days. The scenes will be familiar in a country that now knows what top-level bike racing looks like: crowds standing up to five or six deep at the roadside, if not for the time trials and other races in midweek then at least for the climax next weekend with the women’s and men’s elite events.

A road world championships on British soil has not been seen since 1982, when Goodwood hosted a mere three races. In nine days 12 events will finish in Harrogate, most of them starting in various corners of Yorkshire and running into the town to tackle a tricky, tight-finish circuit where a series of steep descents, stiff little climbs and blind-exit corners will test nerves and skill, particularly if – as seems possible – the weather intervenes.

The racing will be spectacular and it is now a given that major cycle races in the UK attract vast throngs. However, there are a couple of caveats. British success on two wheels is now taken as a given – hardly surprisingly given the recent record in the Tour de France – but single-day racing is far harder to predict.

Preparing for the world championships, with national teams thrown together almost at the last moment, cannot be compared to the single-minded approach that Team Sky showed to the Tour. British cyclists have won six Tours de France in eight years, plus a Vuelta and a Giro, but in the men’s and women’s world championships they have taken only seven rainbow jerseys, two of them in 1960 and 1967 by the late Beryl Burton, who lived in Harrogate for much of her life. It took a two‑year, uniquely focused campaign to win Mark Cavendish’s gold in 2011.

Historically Britain’s women have always fared better than their male counterparts. In that context Lizzie Deignan, who like Burton is a homespun Yorkshire talent, is the best medal chance but a resurgent Marianne Vos may stop her repeating her 2015 triumph.

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In the men’s elite event another local, the national champion Ben Swift, has a fifth-place finish in 2017 to build on but faces an uphill task, particularly as GB qualified only a six-man team. But Geraint Thomas has withdrawn from Wednesday’s elite men’s time trial, saying he feels short of his best form and will now focus purely on next Sunday’s road race.

The under-23 men have shown fine form this year but their best hope, Tom Pidcock – yet another Yorkshire star – is recovering from a crash. Another up-and-coming rider, Elynor Backstedt, has a strong chance in both the junior women’s events.

“The courses are hard – the women’s race could be in bits by halfway – but the circuit in Harrogate is brilliant,” says the GB team manager, Keith Lambert, a veteran of more than 40 world championships and a mainstay of Yorkshire cycling. “If a rider is sitting more than 30 places back they will be in trouble. With the corners, tricky descents leading into hard climbs, it will string out all the time. If the bunch splits and a rider has to make an effort to close a gap even once, that will compromise their whole race. There is no hiding place.”

Although Yorkshire 2019 will be the biggest cycling extravaganza the UK has seen in terms of duration and spectator numbers, it will soon be superseded. In August 2023 Glasgow and various parts of Scotland will host a new-look multidiscipline world cycling championships, including virtually every side of the sport apart from cyclo-cross – deemed too wintry for August – over three weeks. The UCI plans to do this every four years, with Glasgow the first instalment, and it is likely to put Harrogate in the shade.