Stevie Williams caps breakout season by winning Tour of Britain – the first home champion since 2016
Welsh rider Stevie Williams won the 2024 Tour of Britain to become the first home winner of the race since Steve Cummings in 2016.
Williams, 28, who represented Great Britain in last month’s Olympic road race and is a team-mate of Chris Froome’s at Israel-Premier Tech, beat Scotland’s 21 year-old Oscar Onley (dsm-firmenich PostNL) by 16 seconds in the general classification.
The six-day race, the first under the stewardship of former Ineos Grenadiers and British Cycling coach Rod Ellingworth, began in the Scottish borders on Tuesday and ended in Felixstowe on Sunday, where Slovenia’s Matevz Govekar (Bahrain Victorious) won a frantic final bunch sprint.
The stage had no impact on the overall, with Williams having put himself in pole position with back-to-back stage wins earlier in the week.
The race featured a number of big names, including the Paris Olympic road race and time trial champion Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-Quick Step) and double Olympic mountain bike champion Tom Pidcock (Ineos Grenadiers). Neither was able to finish in the top 10 of the general classification, however, with Pidcock having to abandon the final stage because of a crash with about 35km to go.
‘I’m proud of how the boys rode – it was definitely a team effort’
Williams, who has had a breakout season, winning the Tour Down Under in January and La Flèche Wallonne in April, said he had targeted the race after the Olympics and felt in good form.
“It’s been a good week and we managed to take everything out of a stage race – a couple of stages and the GC so I’m really happy and proud to have this race,” said Williams, who joins Sir Bradley Wiggins and Cummings in having won their home tour in its modern inception.
“I’m proud of how the boys rode all week, they were fantastic. They rode like 10 men. It’s me standing on the podium and winning it but it was definitely a team effort.
“The Tour of Britain on the palmares is great. After the Olympics, it was definitely a target of mine to get back into racing and I knew I was coming here in decent form.
“Luckily, I had the legs to show it and pull it off – but at the end of the day everything has to go right and everything did go right so I’m really happy.”