British Cycling has provided an update on its efforts to ‘revitalise’ the domestic road racing scene, eight months after the publication of the Elite Road Racing Task Force’s (ERTF) recommendations. The update claims successes but there are a large number of recommendations for which no progress appears to have been made, despite British Cycling’s ambition for ‘immediate progress’ when the ERTF was announced.
Chaired by Olympic champion Ed Clancy, the Task Force proposed 43 recommendations in January, which were published as 16 broad recommendations, to help address challenges facing the sport.
British Cycling’s CEO, Jon Dutton OBE, had promised an update on progress when we interviewed him ahead of this year’s Tour of Britain Women. The governing body’s update is short, listing just eight bullet points describing where progress has been against the ERTF’s 43 recommendations.
It cites securing Lloyds Bank as the title sponsor for major events, successfully delivering both the men’s and women’s Lloyds Bank Tour of Britain, and initiating ‘new training opportunities for event organisers’ as among its successes.
However, there are a large number of recommendations for which no progress seems to have been made – or at least none has been reported in the update. Most noticeable of all, none of the ERFT recommendations directly focused on the National Road Series are cited in the update, implying British Cycling has yet to begin work on implementing any recommendations intended to improve elite road racing.
Furthermore, the update contains erroneous claims about the extent of progress against the recommendations. For example, the update says British Cycling has “successfully supported the delivery of a seven-round National Circuit Series, including the first Beverley Grand Prix since 2017” as evidence of delivery against Recommendation 10. But Recommendation 10 was focused on prioritising locations for races that attract large audience sizes, changing regulations to allow weekend criterium racing, creating more flexibility in the calendar, and enabling crit races close to road races wherever possible. It seems odd to claim that delivering the 2024 National Circuit Series – which is surely business as usual for the governing body – marks progress in implementing this recommendation when the update makes no reference to prioritising locations, changing regulations, creating calendar flexibility or positioning crit races close to road races.
The progress update does recognise the continuing challenges that the domestic scene faces, citing the difficulties presented by current economic pressures, dwindling event organisers, and the complexities of delivering races on public highways remain. The cancellations of the Tour of the Reservoir and Newark Town Centre Races are highlighted as reminders of these ongoing difficulties.
Looking ahead to 2025, British Cycling says it aims to develop a comprehensive marketing strategy in collaboration with Lloyds Bank and further strengthen support for event organisers through new resources, including a ‘Winning Pattern’ playbook for replication across cities.
But there is no mention of the status of the ‘long-term action plan’ for implementing these actions that British Cycling said was underway back in January when the ERTF recommendations were published. There are no timescales for when implementation will happen by, and there is no clarity on when action will begin on the many recommendations not referenced in the update.
We interviewed Jon Dutton OBE today for our podcast to scrutinise him about British Cycling’s progress. We explored the extent to which the Lloyds sponsorship deal will directly benefit the National Road and Circuit Series, whether he feels progress has been fast and comprehensive enough, and much more besides. This interview will be published in the next few days.
We have also begun drafting a scorecard which will rate British Cycling’s progress against implementing the recommendations. Again, this will be published next week.
Read British Cycling’s update here.
Read the published ERTF recommendations here.
Featured image: SWpix.com
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The whole update is at best worthy of simply being filed in the fiction section of the BC library.
– Successful delivery of the ToB’s owes more to the expertise and professionalism of Sweetspot over the past 20 years which BC were happy to plagiarise.
– Although the National Series events are supposedly ‘supported’ by Lloyds in reality they are required to accept 50% branding for that company despite the fact they receive NO funding in return.
This seriously compromises individual organisers abilty to attract sponsors.
– The involvement of Lloyds, which is rumoured to have been introduced initially by Sweetspot rather than BC, also precludes any National series race accepting sponsorship from an alternative financial institution. This has already resulted in the loss of one NS event this year.
– If this was not enough the creation of BC Events Ltd places the governing body in direct competition to its own voluntary organisers for sponsors and venues. That is why BC is the first national governing body of cycling to take on the running of their own national tours. The stated aim to develop direct approaches to local authorities simply dilutes voluntary organisers ability to gain support for their events, which will always be secondary to BC’s own aims to deliver the ToBs.
It was always going to be a fudge and end in a shambles and from what I’ve seen it’s heading in that direction. The ‘task force’ idea was nothing more than a fanciful idea to buy time and just a talking shop. The sport needs a massive cash injection (current BC sponsorship levels are simply woeful) – solve that and then and only then get the past champions and race organisers etc around a table to determine how to spend it to enhance the offering. No more vague strategic plans, task forces and key objectives please until the commercial side of the business gets its act together.