2026 London Academy Easter Road Race: preview and startlist
The domestic women's junior road season opens in earnest on Sunday 5 April, when Alconbury hosts the London Academy Easter Road Race. The race runs as a National B - open to all women riders - with the first round of the Junior Women's National Road Series embedded within it, meaning juniors and seniors contest the same roads but race for different things
The domestic women’s junior road season opens in earnest on Sunday 5 April, when Alconbury hosts the London Academy Easter Road Race. The race runs as a National B – open to all women riders – with the first round of the Junior Women’s National Road Series embedded within it, meaning juniors and seniors contest the same roads but race for different things. A field of 55 riders has been confirmed, drawn from some of the most prominent junior and development programmes in British women’s racing.
The London Academy Easter Road Race is a new addition to the calendar, born from a practical problem and a productive conversation. Ian Doe, a 65-year-old from the Eastern Region, had identified a gap: the Junior Women’s National Road Series needed a third round, and nobody was stepping up to run it. His solution was to approach London Academy — because, as he put it to King, he was a 65-year-old man and knew he couldn’t promote effectively to young women alone. London Academy said yes. The race exists because someone recognised what he couldn’t do and found the right person to do it with him.
That collaboration shapes the event’s character. The main race brings together elite and junior women in a single National B field — E123 riders and juniors contesting the same roads, with the Junior Women’s National Road Series points decided separately within it. Alongside it runs a support race for 3rd and 4th category riders, which includes a British Cycling-backed initiative placing expert riders behind the field to support anyone who finds themselves off the back. Taken together, the programme is consistent with everything London Academy has built since King founded the team: the sport should be legible, accessible, and kind to people arriving at it for the first time. This is its first edition, so the start line on Sunday is also the beginning of its history.
Image: Rupert Hartley
For King, this is also her first race as an organiser – a fact she has been candid about. She is in her first year as chair of the British Cycling Road Commission, a role that has widened her focus from the culture inside London Academy to the structures of the sport itself: who is in the rooms where decisions get made, who is missing, and what it takes to change that. The Easter Road Race is one expression of the same impulse. Read The British Continental’s interview with King for the full picture.
The main race is the first of three rounds in this year’s Junior Women’s National Road Series. Round two is the Witham Hall 2-Day in Lincolnshire on 18–19 April; round three is the Fenwicks Women’s Road Race in Bath on 1 August. Points earned in Cambridgeshire on Sunday will carry through to the series finale.
Route
The circuit is centred on the B1043 corridor north of Huntingdon, with race headquarters at The Club in Alconbury Weald. Each lap covers 11.2 kilometres; the National B field will complete eight laps for a total of 88 kilometres. After a neutralised roll-out from HQ – joining the course at Alconbury Hill – the flag drops approximately one kilometre in and racing begins in earnest.
The course is largely flat, albeit with a slight sting in the tail. After the start line, riders proceed north before turning left onto Alconbury Hill and again through a series of bends across a three-kilometre section of open road. The route then swings left onto Woodwalton Lane, descending for roughly half a kilometre before continuing south for 3.5 kilometres. The decisive feature comes late: a roundabout exit onto Stangate Hill and a steadily rising finish of approximately 3.3 kilometres to the line. On a circuit this length, that climb will be felt more with each passing lap.
Timings
The race for 3rd and 4th category riders starts at 10:00. The main E123 and Junior National Series race begins at 14:00, with sign-on closing at 13:30.
Contenders
Sunday’s race operates on two levels simultaneously. The overall National B result is contested across the full E123 field but the Junior Women’s National Road Series standings are determined separately, with only junior-category riders eligible to score points. For the seniors, it is a straight race. For the juniors, it is that and something more: the opening move in what could be a season-long series battle.
The reigning junior national road race champion, Ruby Isaac (camsmajaco), is the obvious place to start. Isaac won the 2025 national title on this exact circuit last July – a result her coach Dean Downing described as unexpected, given that the course was flat and Isaac’s strongest suit is sustained climbing. That she won here anyway, and convincingly, suggests racing intelligence to go with the physical ability. Coming back to a course you have already won on is a different kind of advantage: she knows where the race accelerates, where to save energy across the eight laps, and exactly how the kicker to the line plays out.
Ruby Isaac warms up before the Women’s CiCLE Classic. Image: Milan Josy/The British Continental
camsmajaco – formed from the merger of Fensham Howes–MAS Design and Tofauti Everyone Active, the team Isaac raced for when she won the national title – bring a European-heavy programme and genuine organisational depth for a junior squad. Alongside Isaac, Seren Thomas gives them a second option: Thomas finished tenth at the 2025 junior national road race and 4th a the MAS Design Yorkshire Classic, demonstrating consistent top-ten ability at the highest domestic junior level. Alongside teammates Rose Lewis and Eloise Ward, Isaac and Thomas will be key riders to watch.
The closest challenger to camsmajaco’s junior series ambitions may well be Aelwen Davies (Shibden Apex RT). Davies finished eighth at last year’s national road race championship – two places behind Isaac – and second at the Welsh Junior Road Race Championship, part of a Shibden 1–2 that underlined the team’s collective strength. 12th place at the Clásica de Jaén Nation’s Cup earlier this season suggests she is a form rider.
Liv CC–Halo Films bring eight riders – the largest single junior contingent in the field – and the numerical advantage will be real on a circuit this length. The Bristol-based team race extensively in Belgium and have the kind of road craft that comes from exposure to continental racing. Rianna Mahoney is perhaps rider to watch in their line-up, a second-year junior with plenty of European racing experience.
Brother UK–On Form go further still, fielding a squad of ten, seven of them juniors. That numerical weight could be a genuine tactical weapon – they can set tempo, respond to every move, and save their best rider for the final kick without burning her too early. The difficulty for any team-based strategy on Alconbury is that eight laps gives the race time to evolve in ways that reward individual acceleration as much as collective organisation. Ava Luce and Abi Clayton are among the junior riders to watch from their large contingent, while Ellen Bennett and Amber Junker-Brameld are both riders who have excelled on similar circuits at Nat B level.
The senior E123 riders cannot score junior series points but will shape the race entirely. Lucy Glover (Smurfit Westrock Cycling Team) is the most dangerous of them. Now 19, Glover made her name at Shibden Apex, becoming the youngest ever winner of a National Circuit Series race, taking the 2023 Dudley Grand Prix as a junior. She is a sprinter, and a flat Cambridgeshire circuit ending in a bunch kick is exactly the terrain that suits her.
Georgia Lancaster (Loughborough Lightning) is another rider with a fearsome finish. She won the 2025 Owen Blower Memorial by timing a sprint on a rising finish – holding her nerve until the exact right moment on an uphill drag before kicking clear. The Alconbury finish asks precisely the same question. Lancaster has also won a round of the British Team Cup, making her one of the more decorated riders in Sunday’s field.
Phoebe Roche (FTP–Fulfil The Potential Racing) is a talented under-23 rider who won a stage of the 2025 Ronde van Wymeswold ahead of a quality field and was also an impressive winner at the Witham Hall Grand Prix. She showed last season she can put herself in the right position at the right time and has a strong kick. If the race comes to a bunch sprint on the kicker, she, Lancaster and Glover will be the senior names to beat.
Hope Inglis (London Academy) carries the home advantage in the most straightforward sense her team’s founder as organiser, and four teammates around her. London Academy’s ethos is built on rider confidence over results-first pressure, and on an eight-lap circuit you know well, that composure can become a tactical edge as the race tires others. Second place in her last Nat B road race, the Maria Thompson Memorial, Inglis is a genuine podium contender.
Finally, Caitlin Dimbleby (FTP-Fulfil The Potential-Racing) has not raced much since her breakthrough 2024 which included a win at the RCR Fatcreations Road Race, multiple National Road Series top tens and a brief spell with the Alba Development Road Team. However, her palmares is enough to suggest she can be a threat in any race she enters.
The domestic women’s junior road season opens in earnest on Sunday 5 April, when Alconbury hosts the London Academy Easter Road Race. The race runs as a National B – open to all women riders – with the first round of the Junior Women’s National Road Series embedded within it, meaning juniors and seniors contest the same roads but race for different things. A field of 55 riders has been confirmed, drawn from some of the most prominent junior and development programmes in British women’s racing.
Featured image: Rupert Hartley
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What is it?
The London Academy Easter Road Race is a new addition to the calendar, born from a practical problem and a productive conversation. Ian Doe, a 65-year-old from the Eastern Region, had identified a gap: the Junior Women’s National Road Series needed a third round, and nobody was stepping up to run it. His solution was to approach London Academy — because, as he put it to King, he was a 65-year-old man and knew he couldn’t promote effectively to young women alone. London Academy said yes. The race exists because someone recognised what he couldn’t do and found the right person to do it with him.
That collaboration shapes the event’s character. The main race brings together elite and junior women in a single National B field — E123 riders and juniors contesting the same roads, with the Junior Women’s National Road Series points decided separately within it. Alongside it runs a support race for 3rd and 4th category riders, which includes a British Cycling-backed initiative placing expert riders behind the field to support anyone who finds themselves off the back. Taken together, the programme is consistent with everything London Academy has built since King founded the team: the sport should be legible, accessible, and kind to people arriving at it for the first time. This is its first edition, so the start line on Sunday is also the beginning of its history.
For King, this is also her first race as an organiser – a fact she has been candid about. She is in her first year as chair of the British Cycling Road Commission, a role that has widened her focus from the culture inside London Academy to the structures of the sport itself: who is in the rooms where decisions get made, who is missing, and what it takes to change that. The Easter Road Race is one expression of the same impulse. Read The British Continental’s interview with King for the full picture.
The main race is the first of three rounds in this year’s Junior Women’s National Road Series. Round two is the Witham Hall 2-Day in Lincolnshire on 18–19 April; round three is the Fenwicks Women’s Road Race in Bath on 1 August. Points earned in Cambridgeshire on Sunday will carry through to the series finale.
Route
The circuit is centred on the B1043 corridor north of Huntingdon, with race headquarters at The Club in Alconbury Weald. Each lap covers 11.2 kilometres; the National B field will complete eight laps for a total of 88 kilometres. After a neutralised roll-out from HQ – joining the course at Alconbury Hill – the flag drops approximately one kilometre in and racing begins in earnest.
The course is largely flat, albeit with a slight sting in the tail. After the start line, riders proceed north before turning left onto Alconbury Hill and again through a series of bends across a three-kilometre section of open road. The route then swings left onto Woodwalton Lane, descending for roughly half a kilometre before continuing south for 3.5 kilometres. The decisive feature comes late: a roundabout exit onto Stangate Hill and a steadily rising finish of approximately 3.3 kilometres to the line. On a circuit this length, that climb will be felt more with each passing lap.
Timings
The race for 3rd and 4th category riders starts at 10:00. The main E123 and Junior National Series race begins at 14:00, with sign-on closing at 13:30.
Contenders
Sunday’s race operates on two levels simultaneously. The overall National B result is contested across the full E123 field but the Junior Women’s National Road Series standings are determined separately, with only junior-category riders eligible to score points. For the seniors, it is a straight race. For the juniors, it is that and something more: the opening move in what could be a season-long series battle.
The reigning junior national road race champion, Ruby Isaac (camsmajaco), is the obvious place to start. Isaac won the 2025 national title on this exact circuit last July – a result her coach Dean Downing described as unexpected, given that the course was flat and Isaac’s strongest suit is sustained climbing. That she won here anyway, and convincingly, suggests racing intelligence to go with the physical ability. Coming back to a course you have already won on is a different kind of advantage: she knows where the race accelerates, where to save energy across the eight laps, and exactly how the kicker to the line plays out.
camsmajaco – formed from the merger of Fensham Howes–MAS Design and Tofauti Everyone Active, the team Isaac raced for when she won the national title – bring a European-heavy programme and genuine organisational depth for a junior squad. Alongside Isaac, Seren Thomas gives them a second option: Thomas finished tenth at the 2025 junior national road race and 4th a the MAS Design Yorkshire Classic, demonstrating consistent top-ten ability at the highest domestic junior level. Alongside teammates Rose Lewis and Eloise Ward, Isaac and Thomas will be key riders to watch.
The closest challenger to camsmajaco’s junior series ambitions may well be Aelwen Davies (Shibden Apex RT). Davies finished eighth at last year’s national road race championship – two places behind Isaac – and second at the Welsh Junior Road Race Championship, part of a Shibden 1–2 that underlined the team’s collective strength. 12th place at the Clásica de Jaén Nation’s Cup earlier this season suggests she is a form rider.
Liv CC–Halo Films bring eight riders – the largest single junior contingent in the field – and the numerical advantage will be real on a circuit this length. The Bristol-based team race extensively in Belgium and have the kind of road craft that comes from exposure to continental racing. Rianna Mahoney is perhaps rider to watch in their line-up, a second-year junior with plenty of European racing experience.
Brother UK–On Form go further still, fielding a squad of ten, seven of them juniors. That numerical weight could be a genuine tactical weapon – they can set tempo, respond to every move, and save their best rider for the final kick without burning her too early. The difficulty for any team-based strategy on Alconbury is that eight laps gives the race time to evolve in ways that reward individual acceleration as much as collective organisation. Ava Luce and Abi Clayton are among the junior riders to watch from their large contingent, while Ellen Bennett and Amber Junker-Brameld are both riders who have excelled on similar circuits at Nat B level.
The senior E123 riders cannot score junior series points but will shape the race entirely. Lucy Glover (Smurfit Westrock Cycling Team) is the most dangerous of them. Now 19, Glover made her name at Shibden Apex, becoming the youngest ever winner of a National Circuit Series race, taking the 2023 Dudley Grand Prix as a junior. She is a sprinter, and a flat Cambridgeshire circuit ending in a bunch kick is exactly the terrain that suits her.
Georgia Lancaster (Loughborough Lightning) is another rider with a fearsome finish. She won the 2025 Owen Blower Memorial by timing a sprint on a rising finish – holding her nerve until the exact right moment on an uphill drag before kicking clear. The Alconbury finish asks precisely the same question. Lancaster has also won a round of the British Team Cup, making her one of the more decorated riders in Sunday’s field.
Phoebe Roche (FTP–Fulfil The Potential Racing) is a talented under-23 rider who won a stage of the 2025 Ronde van Wymeswold ahead of a quality field and was also an impressive winner at the Witham Hall Grand Prix. She showed last season she can put herself in the right position at the right time and has a strong kick. If the race comes to a bunch sprint on the kicker, she, Lancaster and Glover will be the senior names to beat.
Hope Inglis (London Academy) carries the home advantage in the most straightforward sense her team’s founder as organiser, and four teammates around her. London Academy’s ethos is built on rider confidence over results-first pressure, and on an eight-lap circuit you know well, that composure can become a tactical edge as the race tires others. Second place in her last Nat B road race, the Maria Thompson Memorial, Inglis is a genuine podium contender.
Finally, Caitlin Dimbleby (FTP-Fulfil The Potential-Racing) has not raced much since her breakthrough 2024 which included a win at the RCR Fatcreations Road Race, multiple National Road Series top tens and a brief spell with the Alba Development Road Team. However, her palmares is enough to suggest she can be a threat in any race she enters.
Provisional startlist
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