“We’ve only signed one British rider”: Rick Lister on the new logic of British women’s racing
In an extended interview with The British Continental, Smurfit Westrock Cycling Team manager Rick Lister explains how the loss of domestic TV coverage and changes to Tour of Britain selection rules have reshaped recruitment, sponsorship, and survival for his British Continental outfit.
There is a moment in the conversation with Rick Lister that lands quietly, almost casually, but carries more weight than any policy document or press release:
“We’ve only signed one British rider this year.”
It is not said with regret, bravado or defiance. There is no rhetorical flourish, no accusation. It is delivered as a statement of fact – the end point of a series of rational decisions made inside a system that has shifted beneath the feet of British women’s teams.
Lister, the long-time manager of the Smurfit Westrock Cycling Team, is not announcing a philosophical turn away from domestic racing. Nor is he rejecting the British scene. In fact, he repeatedly emphasises the importance of supporting UK races, developing riders, and maintaining a visible presence at home. But professional cycling is not sustained by sentiment. It is sustained by visibility. And in British cycling, visibility – specifically television coverage – has been quietly draining away.
That stark reality stands in contrast to the night that kickstarted the team’s then-young existence, propelling it into the national limelight.
On a mild evening in October 2021, the cobbles of Michaelgate were paved with gold. The British National Circuit Championships had come to Lincoln, Lister’s home city. The finish line sat directly outside the Magna Carta pub – the very place where his partner and star rider, Jo Tindley, had been pulling pints just months earlier.
Jo Tindley wins the 2021 National Circuit Championships in Lincoln. Image: Alex Whitehead/SWpix.com
When Tindley crossed the line to take the jersey, backed by a dominant team performance that strangled the life out of the top-level opposition, it felt like the arrival of a new force in British domestic racing. The crowd, thick with locals who knew Lister and Tindley by name, roared into the night. It was a victory rooted in place, in community, and in the particular grit of the British criterium scene.
It was our first season, so to win the Nationals – and in Lincoln – that was a big thing for us
“It was our first season, so to win the Nationals – and in Lincoln – that was a big thing for us,” Lister recalls, his voice softening at the memory. “Jo actually worked in the pub on the finish line. That’s where she worked. She’d worked there until only a couple of months before and then she decided to stop working and concentrate on winning the Nationals. So yeah, a really, really special night. It takes some beating, that does.”
Five years on, Lister, now 53, remains at the helm of the Smurfit Westrock Cycling Team. He is a survivor in a sport that has a habit of consuming its own. But survival has come at a price. The landscape has shifted significantly since that evening at the Magna Carta. The Tour Series is gone. The cameras have packed up. The domestic calendar has thinned. And Lister – a pragmatist with a racer’s heart – has found himself caught in a peculiarly British paradox: to keep a British team alive, he has had to look increasingly beyond Britain.
Lister (right), with one of his Ribble team bikes. Image: Ribble
From the saddle to the team car
Lister’s entry into team management was not a calculated boardroom manoeuvre, but a slow, organic drift from the saddle to the team car.
His life in cycling began at 15, inspired by a neighbour whose two sons were riders. “They lived over the road from me. That’s how it really started,” Lister says. “I’ve been a bike rider all my life since then, really.”
He spent decades in the bunch before finding himself on the other side of the radio. His apprenticeship was served in the trenches of the women’s scene, shaped by personal relationships and time spent around established set-ups.
“I got into team management through – well, I suppose initially my ex-girlfriend was a bike rider, a professional cross rider,” he explains. “I helped out a bit. Then I got asked by the guys at WNT, when it was a British team, to DS for them.”
From WNT, Lister moved to Ford EcoBoost with Nicky Juniper and Nick Yarworth, before a stint with the Portuguese-registered Velo Performance. By 2021, with the pandemic having upended the sport, he found himself at a crossroads.
I decided to set a team up… I felt I could probably do it – and if I did it my way, I’d do it a better way
It was at that point that Lister decided to set up a team of his own – a project that initially existed independently of his partner, Jo Tindley. The squad, operating under the sprawling name Pro-Noctis – Redchilli Bikes – Heidi Kjeldsen, was already in place when Tindley left CAMS at the start of the season and subsequently joined.
Lister founded the team with a philosophy shaped by what he had seen at close quarters elsewhere in the peloton. He had watched favouritism creep into other set-ups, where managers’ partners or star riders received pristine equipment while others made do.
“I decided to set a team up… I felt I could probably do it – and if I did it my way, I’d do it a better way,” Lister says.
His definition of “better” is rooted in an almost sacrificial sense of equality. “Jo – to be fair – gets the shitty end of the stick when somebody has to go without. It’s usually Jo. Which is quite the opposite of most teams before this.”
Pro-Noctis – Rotor – Redchilli Bikes p/b Heidi Kjeldsen celebrate winning the final Tour Series in 2022. Image: Simon Wilkinson/SWpix.com
That ethos remains the team’s bedrock, even as it has graduated to UCI Continental status. “Everyone gets the same bike. They all get the same groupsets. No favouritism.”
But while the internal culture has held firm, the external world has forced a reinvention.
The vacuum left by television
The team’s initial success was built on the Tour Series: the televised criterium races that brought high-speed racing into British town centres and, crucially, sponsor logos into living rooms via ITV4.
We sold a lot of sponsorship based on – sponsorship, advertising, however you want to word it really – based on the Tour Series
“We sold a lot of sponsorship based on – sponsorship, advertising, however you want to word it really – based on the Tour Series,” Lister admits. “We knew we would be on TV, so we could say to sponsors, potential sponsors, ‘These events are going to be televised. There’s going to be six or eight of them in May. We usually do well at them.’ And the way we rode them, the commentators would talk about us. That was quite a big thing for us.”
When the Series collapsed, so did Lister’s business model. Furthermore, the Tour Series – which held its final round in 2022 – was merely another domino in a long chain reaction. The cancellation of the Tour de Yorkshire (last run in 2019 before being permanently scrapped in 2022), stripped domestic teams of an important platform on terrestrial TV. The domestic National Road Series saw its highlights package axed by British Cycling in 2020, closing another window for teams to showcase sponsors to a national audience. Then RideLondon, once a WorldTour showcase broadcast on the BBC, also vanished from the calendar, last held in 2024.
Jo TIndley on the podium at the 2021 Tour Series. Image: Will Palmer/SWpix.com
Lister is blunt about the void this has left.
“I do genuinely think that British Cycling need to find a replacement for the Tour Series because the sport’s struggling now with that sort of thing,” he says. “What coverage is there for British teams now on TV? There’s none at all, unless we go and do the UCI races.”
What coverage is there for British teams now on TV? There’s none at all, unless we go and do the UCI races
This lack of visibility has created a vicious cycle. No television exposure means fewer British sponsors. Fewer sponsors mean tighter budgets. And tighter budgets, combined with an accelerating arms race elsewhere in the peloton, made standing still impossible. As rival domestic teams stepped up to UCI Continental level, Lister felt he had little choice but to follow – not as a statement of ambition, but as a defensive move to keep his squad together.
Stepping up to UCI Continental status
Lister describes the transition to UCI status in 2024 as a year of survival, where he was “working when I wasn’t at a bike race” just to keep the lights on and the team van fuelled.
g. The team at the 2024 Lloyds Tour of Britain Women. Image: Alex Whitehead/SWpix.com
“We didn’t have the budget we needed to go UCI,” he reflects. “But we had to go UCI because the other teams were all going. I didn’t want to lose all the riders and start from scratch. So we went UCI and we struggled. The funds weren’t really there that we needed. The sponsors all chipped in and did the best they could. But the results weren’t great in 2024 and the calendar certainly wasn’t great.”
We didn’t have the budget we needed to go UCI but we had to … because the other teams were all going. I didn’t want to lose all the riders and start from scratch
That scarcity bled into the transfer market. As Lister tried to rebuild for 2025, he found himself fighting not only financial headwinds, but the whisper network of the peloton. He speaks candidly about the frustration of losing riders not to better offers, but to rumour and speculation from rival camps.
“That pissed me off quite a bit, I’ll be honest,” he says, the irritation still fresh. “Because I don’t do the same about other teams. There were two riders I signed – or were on the verge of signing. I’d sent the contract through, they’d agreed to ride for us, and then they came back saying they’d been told the calendar wasn’t going to be good and they were going elsewhere. That really hurt, because all they had to do was ask.”
He pauses, then adds the coda that underlines the point.
“We actually had a very good calendar in 2025, and we’ve got a very good calendar again for 2026.”
By the end of 2024, the team was facing an existential crisis, with Lister desperately searching for a new title sponsor to keep it alive. Salvation did not come from a local business, but from Smurfit Westrock, an Irish packaging giant with a global footprint, who reduced the team after Lister saw the company’s name on the side of a lorry. The deal has brought greater resource and security, and crucially helped insulate the team from the decline in UK television coverage.
“Luckily for us, Smurfit Westrock are in – I think they’re in about 40 countries,” Lister notes. “The UK scene isn’t such a big thing for them.”
Smurfit Westrock Cycling Team celebrate Lucy Harris’ win at the 2025 ANEXO CAMS Women’s CiCLE Classic. Image: Mathew Wells/SWpix.com
The paradox on the team sheet
The shift in Lister’s strategy – and the clearest expression of the “British paradox” – is most visible in the names on the squad list. If the 2021 squad was a band of local heroes and domestic stalwarts, the 2026 roster reflects the cold arithmetic of modern cycling.
The catalyst is a specific and controversial regulatory change affecting the Women’s Tour of Britain. Following a decision to align Women’s WorldTour participation rules with the men’s circuit, British Continental teams find themselves effectively shut out of their home tour. The move was described as a “slap in the face” to the domestic scene: the premier event in the UK now reserved almost exclusively for the global elite, with local squads excluded unless they can secure a wildcard.
Under the new rules, Continental teams are no longer automatically eligible. Participation now hinges on whether space remains after WorldTour and ProTeams are accommodated, and on discretionary wildcard decisions. For British teams hoping to make the cut, UCI points are one of the few visible markers of competitiveness in an otherwise opaque selection process.
I said, ‘Look, you realise there’s going to be no British teams.’ And they weren’t really that bothered by that
Lister recalls a conversation with British Cycling’s Jonathan Day at the Nationals, hoping for a reprieve – perhaps a reclassification of the race to .Pro level that would allow domestic teams back in. The answer was unequivocal.
“I spoke to Jonathan Day at the Nationals and asked him if they were going to be dropping it down,” Lister says. “His answer was no. I said, ‘Look, you realise there’s going to be no British teams.’ And they weren’t really that bothered by that.”
The implication is clear: participation in 2026 is highly unlikely. “I wouldn’t want to put a tenner on it,” Lister admits.
Jo Tindley at the 2025 Lloyds Tour of Britain Women. Image: Olly Hassell/SWpix.com
That bureaucratic reality has forced a fundamental rethink of recruitment. In order to race in Britain – or even stand a chance of doing so – Lister needs riders who are not British.
“British results don’t really mean anything to the guys organising those events,” he says. “So we had to look at where we could get results in UCI races. That’s what we did. We signed riders from UCI teams – riders from Cofidis, Fenix–Deceuninck, and the Liv AlUla Jayco’s U23 team. We brought in riders with UCI points, so we’ve got a bit more strength on that side.”
We’ve looked to riders with UCI points to help with selection to races
The consequence is a roster that has pivoted sharply away from its roots. In 2025, the squad featured fourteen British riders. For 2026, that number stands at eight. It is not because British riders lack talent, but because the selection logic has changed.
“We’ve only signed one British rider this year,” Lister says. A core of British riders remains, retained from previous seasons, but the intake has effectively stopped. The effect of the UCI’s rule changes is stark: a British Continental team, desperate to race its own national tour, has been incentivised instead to look abroad.
“We retained seven,” Lister clarifies. “But yeah – that’s exactly it. We’ve looked to riders with UCI points to help with selection to races.”
This is where the paradox becomes most apparent. Measures intended to professionalise the sport have also altered the incentives facing domestic teams, subtly reshaping recruitment priorities. For Lister – long associated with supporting British riders – nationality is no longer the organising principle it perhaps once was. Instead, decisions are increasingly shaped by the practical realities of access, selection and survival within an internationalised system.
Living closer to the racing
If the team sheet has become more international, the team’s geography has followed suit. For 2026, the team has established a permanent base in Belgium – a house just 12 kilometres across the border from France, around an hour from the ferry port at Calais. It is a pragmatic response to the costs of racing on the Continent, designed to stem the financial hit of regular hotel bills, but also a way of placing riders closer to the racing that increasingly defines a Continental team’s season.
“The amount of money we spent in hotels last year was phenomenal,” Lister states. The logistical friction of crossing the Channel for every race had become unsustainable. “If we get a morning boat, we’ve got to stay in Ashford. If we get an afternoon boat, we end up getting off the boat and staying in Calais. Now, we get an afternoon boat straight to the house.”
But the base is about more than logistics. It is about adaptation – an attempt to create something resembling a home when racing abroad, replacing the transient, sterile existence of budget hotels with familiarity and routine.
It’s all based around it being a familiar environment for the riders. They’re a lot happier in that sort of thing than in a hotel
“It’s all based around it being a familiar environment for the riders. They’re a lot happier in that sort of thing than in a hotel,” Lister explains. “Riders aren’t locked in rooms in pairs. When I told [the new signings] this is how we do it, they were all really excited. In a house environment it’s more social – they can chat to each other, learn about each other.”
He talks about the grounding effect of “proper food” cooked in a kitchen, rather than meals eaten on the road or in hotel restaurants. The house will become a hub – a revolving door of nationalities united by the calendar.
“We’ve got the American girl, Cassie [Hickey] – she’ll be over there for quite a while. S’annara [Grove] will be there as well. And then obviously the girls from Austria are all coming in and out.”
The team has not abandoned Britain, but the centre of gravity has undeniably shifted. The house in Flanders is an acknowledgement that to succeed in British cycling today, you often have to leave it.
Elena Day in 2025, racing for Loughborough Lightning, following two Smurfit Westrock riders. Image: Mathew Wells/SWpix.com
The climb ahead: 2026
Despite the politics and the logistics, Lister remains optimistic about 2026. The squad is young, punchy and diverse. He highlights Elena Day, a climber whose data suggests significant untapped potential.
“Her numbers are phenomenal when we start looking into the back end of it all,” he says. “She’s had a pretty good cross season so far. Definitely, I think she’s going to be good on the road.”
If we can move riders on to big teams, that’d be good for us
For Lister, the objective is clear: development. He sees his team as a launchpad – a place where riders can prove themselves before stepping on to bigger programmes.
“If we can move riders on to big teams, that’d be good for us.”
There is also a learning opportunity for younger riders mixing with those who have already seen the inside of the sport’s biggest structures.
“We’ve got a rider from Cofidis – it’s a huge team – and also Fenix,” he says. “So it’s interesting, having spoken to them and spent time with them already, how things are done differently.”
Yet for all the international ambition, the pull of Lincoln still lingers. The team will return to the Castle Square cobbles in 2026, hoping to rekindle the magic of 2021 and perhaps repeat the team’s 2024 victory, when Robyn Clay took the top step for Lister’s squad.
“Lincoln’s always a big race for us and it’s always a really hard one to win. It’s only down the road, but it’s a really difficult race to win.”
In a transient sport, five years is a lifetime. Lister is building for the next five, even if the road now leads away from Lincoln and deep into the Belgian heartlands. The geography of his team has changed, the accents in the team house have diversified, but the core mission remains the same: to race hard, to help riders to develop, and to find a way to win.
It’s just that now, to keep the dream of a British team alive, those wins might be more likely to come in a Belgian kermesse than under the shadow of Lincoln Cathedral.
There is a moment in the conversation with Rick Lister that lands quietly, almost casually, but carries more weight than any policy document or press release:
“We’ve only signed one British rider this year.”
It is not said with regret, bravado or defiance. There is no rhetorical flourish, no accusation. It is delivered as a statement of fact – the end point of a series of rational decisions made inside a system that has shifted beneath the feet of British women’s teams.
Lister, the long-time manager of the Smurfit Westrock Cycling Team, is not announcing a philosophical turn away from domestic racing. Nor is he rejecting the British scene. In fact, he repeatedly emphasises the importance of supporting UK races, developing riders, and maintaining a visible presence at home. But professional cycling is not sustained by sentiment. It is sustained by visibility. And in British cycling, visibility – specifically television coverage – has been quietly draining away.
That stark reality stands in contrast to the night that kickstarted the team’s then-young existence, propelling it into the national limelight.
On a mild evening in October 2021, the cobbles of Michaelgate were paved with gold. The British National Circuit Championships had come to Lincoln, Lister’s home city. The finish line sat directly outside the Magna Carta pub – the very place where his partner and star rider, Jo Tindley, had been pulling pints just months earlier.
When Tindley crossed the line to take the jersey, backed by a dominant team performance that strangled the life out of the top-level opposition, it felt like the arrival of a new force in British domestic racing. The crowd, thick with locals who knew Lister and Tindley by name, roared into the night. It was a victory rooted in place, in community, and in the particular grit of the British criterium scene.
“It was our first season, so to win the Nationals – and in Lincoln – that was a big thing for us,” Lister recalls, his voice softening at the memory. “Jo actually worked in the pub on the finish line. That’s where she worked. She’d worked there until only a couple of months before and then she decided to stop working and concentrate on winning the Nationals. So yeah, a really, really special night. It takes some beating, that does.”
Five years on, Lister, now 53, remains at the helm of the Smurfit Westrock Cycling Team. He is a survivor in a sport that has a habit of consuming its own. But survival has come at a price. The landscape has shifted significantly since that evening at the Magna Carta. The Tour Series is gone. The cameras have packed up. The domestic calendar has thinned. And Lister – a pragmatist with a racer’s heart – has found himself caught in a peculiarly British paradox: to keep a British team alive, he has had to look increasingly beyond Britain.
From the saddle to the team car
Lister’s entry into team management was not a calculated boardroom manoeuvre, but a slow, organic drift from the saddle to the team car.
His life in cycling began at 15, inspired by a neighbour whose two sons were riders. “They lived over the road from me. That’s how it really started,” Lister says. “I’ve been a bike rider all my life since then, really.”
He spent decades in the bunch before finding himself on the other side of the radio. His apprenticeship was served in the trenches of the women’s scene, shaped by personal relationships and time spent around established set-ups.
“I got into team management through – well, I suppose initially my ex-girlfriend was a bike rider, a professional cross rider,” he explains. “I helped out a bit. Then I got asked by the guys at WNT, when it was a British team, to DS for them.”
From WNT, Lister moved to Ford EcoBoost with Nicky Juniper and Nick Yarworth, before a stint with the Portuguese-registered Velo Performance. By 2021, with the pandemic having upended the sport, he found himself at a crossroads.
It was at that point that Lister decided to set up a team of his own – a project that initially existed independently of his partner, Jo Tindley. The squad, operating under the sprawling name Pro-Noctis – Redchilli Bikes – Heidi Kjeldsen, was already in place when Tindley left CAMS at the start of the season and subsequently joined.
Lister founded the team with a philosophy shaped by what he had seen at close quarters elsewhere in the peloton. He had watched favouritism creep into other set-ups, where managers’ partners or star riders received pristine equipment while others made do.
“I decided to set a team up… I felt I could probably do it – and if I did it my way, I’d do it a better way,” Lister says.
His definition of “better” is rooted in an almost sacrificial sense of equality. “Jo – to be fair – gets the shitty end of the stick when somebody has to go without. It’s usually Jo. Which is quite the opposite of most teams before this.”
That ethos remains the team’s bedrock, even as it has graduated to UCI Continental status. “Everyone gets the same bike. They all get the same groupsets. No favouritism.”
But while the internal culture has held firm, the external world has forced a reinvention.
The vacuum left by television
The team’s initial success was built on the Tour Series: the televised criterium races that brought high-speed racing into British town centres and, crucially, sponsor logos into living rooms via ITV4.
“We sold a lot of sponsorship based on – sponsorship, advertising, however you want to word it really – based on the Tour Series,” Lister admits. “We knew we would be on TV, so we could say to sponsors, potential sponsors, ‘These events are going to be televised. There’s going to be six or eight of them in May. We usually do well at them.’ And the way we rode them, the commentators would talk about us. That was quite a big thing for us.”
When the Series collapsed, so did Lister’s business model. Furthermore, the Tour Series – which held its final round in 2022 – was merely another domino in a long chain reaction. The cancellation of the Tour de Yorkshire (last run in 2019 before being permanently scrapped in 2022), stripped domestic teams of an important platform on terrestrial TV. The domestic National Road Series saw its highlights package axed by British Cycling in 2020, closing another window for teams to showcase sponsors to a national audience. Then RideLondon, once a WorldTour showcase broadcast on the BBC, also vanished from the calendar, last held in 2024.
Lister is blunt about the void this has left.
“I do genuinely think that British Cycling need to find a replacement for the Tour Series because the sport’s struggling now with that sort of thing,” he says. “What coverage is there for British teams now on TV? There’s none at all, unless we go and do the UCI races.”
This lack of visibility has created a vicious cycle. No television exposure means fewer British sponsors. Fewer sponsors mean tighter budgets. And tighter budgets, combined with an accelerating arms race elsewhere in the peloton, made standing still impossible. As rival domestic teams stepped up to UCI Continental level, Lister felt he had little choice but to follow – not as a statement of ambition, but as a defensive move to keep his squad together.
Stepping up to UCI Continental status
Lister describes the transition to UCI status in 2024 as a year of survival, where he was “working when I wasn’t at a bike race” just to keep the lights on and the team van fuelled.
“We didn’t have the budget we needed to go UCI,” he reflects. “But we had to go UCI because the other teams were all going. I didn’t want to lose all the riders and start from scratch. So we went UCI and we struggled. The funds weren’t really there that we needed. The sponsors all chipped in and did the best they could. But the results weren’t great in 2024 and the calendar certainly wasn’t great.”
That scarcity bled into the transfer market. As Lister tried to rebuild for 2025, he found himself fighting not only financial headwinds, but the whisper network of the peloton. He speaks candidly about the frustration of losing riders not to better offers, but to rumour and speculation from rival camps.
“That pissed me off quite a bit, I’ll be honest,” he says, the irritation still fresh. “Because I don’t do the same about other teams. There were two riders I signed – or were on the verge of signing. I’d sent the contract through, they’d agreed to ride for us, and then they came back saying they’d been told the calendar wasn’t going to be good and they were going elsewhere. That really hurt, because all they had to do was ask.”
He pauses, then adds the coda that underlines the point.
“We actually had a very good calendar in 2025, and we’ve got a very good calendar again for 2026.”
By the end of 2024, the team was facing an existential crisis, with Lister desperately searching for a new title sponsor to keep it alive. Salvation did not come from a local business, but from Smurfit Westrock, an Irish packaging giant with a global footprint, who reduced the team after Lister saw the company’s name on the side of a lorry. The deal has brought greater resource and security, and crucially helped insulate the team from the decline in UK television coverage.
“Luckily for us, Smurfit Westrock are in – I think they’re in about 40 countries,” Lister notes. “The UK scene isn’t such a big thing for them.”
The paradox on the team sheet
The shift in Lister’s strategy – and the clearest expression of the “British paradox” – is most visible in the names on the squad list. If the 2021 squad was a band of local heroes and domestic stalwarts, the 2026 roster reflects the cold arithmetic of modern cycling.
The catalyst is a specific and controversial regulatory change affecting the Women’s Tour of Britain. Following a decision to align Women’s WorldTour participation rules with the men’s circuit, British Continental teams find themselves effectively shut out of their home tour. The move was described as a “slap in the face” to the domestic scene: the premier event in the UK now reserved almost exclusively for the global elite, with local squads excluded unless they can secure a wildcard.
Under the new rules, Continental teams are no longer automatically eligible. Participation now hinges on whether space remains after WorldTour and ProTeams are accommodated, and on discretionary wildcard decisions. For British teams hoping to make the cut, UCI points are one of the few visible markers of competitiveness in an otherwise opaque selection process.
Lister recalls a conversation with British Cycling’s Jonathan Day at the Nationals, hoping for a reprieve – perhaps a reclassification of the race to .Pro level that would allow domestic teams back in. The answer was unequivocal.
“I spoke to Jonathan Day at the Nationals and asked him if they were going to be dropping it down,” Lister says. “His answer was no. I said, ‘Look, you realise there’s going to be no British teams.’ And they weren’t really that bothered by that.”
The implication is clear: participation in 2026 is highly unlikely. “I wouldn’t want to put a tenner on it,” Lister admits.
That bureaucratic reality has forced a fundamental rethink of recruitment. In order to race in Britain – or even stand a chance of doing so – Lister needs riders who are not British.
“British results don’t really mean anything to the guys organising those events,” he says. “So we had to look at where we could get results in UCI races. That’s what we did. We signed riders from UCI teams – riders from Cofidis, Fenix–Deceuninck, and the Liv AlUla Jayco’s U23 team. We brought in riders with UCI points, so we’ve got a bit more strength on that side.”
The consequence is a roster that has pivoted sharply away from its roots. In 2025, the squad featured fourteen British riders. For 2026, that number stands at eight. It is not because British riders lack talent, but because the selection logic has changed.
“We’ve only signed one British rider this year,” Lister says. A core of British riders remains, retained from previous seasons, but the intake has effectively stopped. The effect of the UCI’s rule changes is stark: a British Continental team, desperate to race its own national tour, has been incentivised instead to look abroad.
“We retained seven,” Lister clarifies. “But yeah – that’s exactly it. We’ve looked to riders with UCI points to help with selection to races.”
This is where the paradox becomes most apparent. Measures intended to professionalise the sport have also altered the incentives facing domestic teams, subtly reshaping recruitment priorities. For Lister – long associated with supporting British riders – nationality is no longer the organising principle it perhaps once was. Instead, decisions are increasingly shaped by the practical realities of access, selection and survival within an internationalised system.
Living closer to the racing
If the team sheet has become more international, the team’s geography has followed suit. For 2026, the team has established a permanent base in Belgium – a house just 12 kilometres across the border from France, around an hour from the ferry port at Calais. It is a pragmatic response to the costs of racing on the Continent, designed to stem the financial hit of regular hotel bills, but also a way of placing riders closer to the racing that increasingly defines a Continental team’s season.
“The amount of money we spent in hotels last year was phenomenal,” Lister states. The logistical friction of crossing the Channel for every race had become unsustainable. “If we get a morning boat, we’ve got to stay in Ashford. If we get an afternoon boat, we end up getting off the boat and staying in Calais. Now, we get an afternoon boat straight to the house.”
But the base is about more than logistics. It is about adaptation – an attempt to create something resembling a home when racing abroad, replacing the transient, sterile existence of budget hotels with familiarity and routine.
“It’s all based around it being a familiar environment for the riders. They’re a lot happier in that sort of thing than in a hotel,” Lister explains. “Riders aren’t locked in rooms in pairs. When I told [the new signings] this is how we do it, they were all really excited. In a house environment it’s more social – they can chat to each other, learn about each other.”
He talks about the grounding effect of “proper food” cooked in a kitchen, rather than meals eaten on the road or in hotel restaurants. The house will become a hub – a revolving door of nationalities united by the calendar.
“We’ve got the American girl, Cassie [Hickey] – she’ll be over there for quite a while. S’annara [Grove] will be there as well. And then obviously the girls from Austria are all coming in and out.”
The team has not abandoned Britain, but the centre of gravity has undeniably shifted. The house in Flanders is an acknowledgement that to succeed in British cycling today, you often have to leave it.
The climb ahead: 2026
Despite the politics and the logistics, Lister remains optimistic about 2026. The squad is young, punchy and diverse. He highlights Elena Day, a climber whose data suggests significant untapped potential.
“Her numbers are phenomenal when we start looking into the back end of it all,” he says. “She’s had a pretty good cross season so far. Definitely, I think she’s going to be good on the road.”
For Lister, the objective is clear: development. He sees his team as a launchpad – a place where riders can prove themselves before stepping on to bigger programmes.
“If we can move riders on to big teams, that’d be good for us.”
There is also a learning opportunity for younger riders mixing with those who have already seen the inside of the sport’s biggest structures.
“We’ve got a rider from Cofidis – it’s a huge team – and also Fenix,” he says. “So it’s interesting, having spoken to them and spent time with them already, how things are done differently.”
Yet for all the international ambition, the pull of Lincoln still lingers. The team will return to the Castle Square cobbles in 2026, hoping to rekindle the magic of 2021 and perhaps repeat the team’s 2024 victory, when Robyn Clay took the top step for Lister’s squad.
“Lincoln’s always a big race for us and it’s always a really hard one to win. It’s only down the road, but it’s a really difficult race to win.”
In a transient sport, five years is a lifetime. Lister is building for the next five, even if the road now leads away from Lincoln and deep into the Belgian heartlands. The geography of his team has changed, the accents in the team house have diversified, but the core mission remains the same: to race hard, to help riders to develop, and to find a way to win.
It’s just that now, to keep the dream of a British team alive, those wins might be more likely to come in a Belgian kermesse than under the shadow of Lincoln Cathedral.
Read more in the domestic team guide.
Featured image: Alex Whitehead/SWpix.com
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