2026 Rutland–Melton CiCLE Classic: riders to watch and startlist
A new champion is guaranteed: riders to watch and startlist for Sunday's 2026 Rutland–Melton CiCLE Classic, the opening round of the open Rapha Super-League.
A little over twelve months ago, Mathis Avondts came within a handful of metres of winning the Rutland–Melton CiCLE Classic. This Sunday, the Belgian returns in a team that is a week old in name and half a career deep in pedigree — and he is not the only rider on the startlist with a reason to believe.
A riders-to-watch guide to Sunday’s 2026 Rutland–Melton CiCLE Classic, the opening round of the open Rapha Super-League. Our route preview covers the new Canalberg sector, the formalised Oakham finishing circuit, and the 11 off-road sectors and six categorised climbs that shape the race; a provisional startlist follows at the foot of this article, with final confirmation expected after Saturday’s sign-on.
Featured image: Milan Josy/The British Continental
A new champion is guaranteed on Sunday: defending winner Ben Granger, who soloed clear inside the final five kilometres to take his first UCI victory a year ago, is not on this year’s startlist. That leaves Mathis Avondts (Azerion Villa Valkenburg) as the highest-placed 2025 finisher coming back for another go. The 22-year-old from Brasschaat was second here last year, beaten only by Granger’s late move. A sprinter on paper, he made the point over the course of a hard day last April that his finish comes attached to the durability needed to reach a finale on this kind of terrain — he rolled with the punches through the sectors and was in the decisive selection when it mattered. He has started this season in form: in early March he took his first UCI victory at the Ster van Zwolle, finishing off a clean lead-out from teammate Luke Verburg, who is also here. Verburg, a 24-year-old Dutchman whose profile suggests a rider built for this race, was among the names most obviously tipped for CiCLE in the 2025 pre-race coverage; his repositioning as Avondts’s lead-out man adds another layer to the team’s options. Otto Van Zanden, the U23 who was sixth last year and won the King of the Bergs competition by setting the pace in Wymondham on the first laps, carried that form through 2025 with a stage top-five at the Orlen Nations Grand Prix and is back for another go.
Hicks, Granger and Avondts on the podium at the at 2025 edition. Image: Milan Josy/The British Continental
The team around them arrives in Oakham a week old in its current identity. The Dutch UCI Continental outfit formerly known as Parkhotel Valkenburg rebranded to Azerion Villa Valkenburg at the start of this week; Sunday is its first outing in the new kit. The programme has developed WorldTour graduates in recent seasons, including Rick Pluimers, and the six-rider selection here reflects a deliberate blend of experience and youth, built around Avondts. They will be disappointed to leave without the win.
Avondts is not the only podium finisher from 2025 returning to Oakham. Dylan Hicks, third last year for Raptor Factory Racing and riding this weekend for British Cycling South East–Sigma Sports, is a fast finisher with particular form on these roads: he won the Junior edition of the race in 2022 before taking a UCI stage at the 2024 Tour of Hellas and, last season, the Beaumont Trophy. Guesting in from UN Cycling Team x Pyörävarikko, on a Sigma Sports-branded jersey at a race title-sponsored by Sigma Sports, expect him to be visible. If the race comes down to a reduced group, he has the kick and the course-craft to make it count again.
Matt Bostock (RCC Racing) is the reigning open Rapha Super-League champion. The 28-year-old Manxman took the 2025 title while riding for Tekkerz CC and joins Rapha’s new RCC Racing collective for 2026, a squad that also fields two-time Jock Wadley Memorial winner Jacob Vaughan and 2023 National Circuit Race champion Ollie Wood, both also here. Bostock arrives in Oakham off the back of a bronze in the omnium at the UCI Track World Cup in Hong Kong last weekend — form sharp, recovery window tight. If the race ends in a reduced-group sprint, his kick is one of the threats Avondts will have to account for.
Lucas Jowett (MyPadRacing p/b ONDO Sports) arrives in Oakham as the open National Road Series leader, having won the first round at the East Cleveland Classic on 12 April — outsprinting Tom Martin and Alex Franks on Saltburn Bank after spending most of the day at the front. The 21-year-old, who typically races abroad, said of East Cleveland that domestic racing “just goes full gas from pretty much the start”. CiCLE, with its early fragmentation on farm tracks, would test that proposition again. Jowett is joined on the MyPadRacing selection by Alex Beldon, guesting in from French elite national team Mayenne–V and B–Monbana, where he landed for 2026 after Muc-Off–SRCT–Storck folded at the end of last year. Beldon had a breakthrough 2025 for SRCT: he finished eighth at the National Road Race Championships against WorldTour opposition, and at this race he was in the winning break before a puncture ended his day. He returns to Oakham knowing what the decisive move on this course looks like from the inside. Also on the selection is Ben Askey, a top-10 finisher at U23 Paris–Roubaix in 2023 and the reigning U23 national cyclocross champion — a rough-terrain specialist whose credentials translate directly to a day like Sunday’s.
Tom Martin at last year’s race. Image: Milan Josy/The British Continental
Tom Martin (Wheelbase CabTech Castelli) was Jowett’s closest challenger at East Cleveland. Seventh in last year’s edition, the 2025 Rás Mumhan overall winner is the experienced anchor for a six-rider Wheelbase selection that also features Thomas Armstrong, the 2025 open National Circuit Series overall champion and maiden National A winner at the Cambridge Criterium in August. Armstrong has started 2026 with intent: at East Cleveland he bridged across with Cameron Mason to join the decisive front group, and will be one of the team’s options if the race fragments before the finale.
Olly Curd (DAS Richardsons) is one of the breakout domestic riders of 2026. He made the decisive 11-rider Somerberg break at last year’s CiCLE for BC South East–Sigma Sports; in March, having moved to DAS for 2026, he won the 42nd Jock Wadley Memorial from a team one-two with Frank Longstaff — DAS’s first-ever Wadley win, with manager Andy Lyons himself a two-time former winner of the race. DAS arrive in Oakham with numbers (six riders, including Cai Davies and Matthew Lord) and a director who knows this kind of day.
JAKROO Handsling Racing bring perhaps the most complete all-round squad in the field. Rowan Baker, winner of the Peaks 2-Day in 2025 and the inaugural East Cleveland Classic in 2024, is the most recognisable name. Alex Franks, third at East Cleveland and at 156 points the highest-ranked rider on The British Continental rankings on the entire startlist, is the form carrier. William Truelove was among the most consistent performers on the domestic scene in 2025 for the Muc-Off–SRCT–Storck outfit that won the team classification here, and joined JAKROO in the winter. If the race breaks up on the sectors, as it tends to, JAKROO are equipped to have options in front.
McKay after the 2023 Rutland-Melton International CiCLE Classic. Image: Joe Cotterill/The British Continental
Atom 6 Bikes–Cycleur de Luxe–Auto Stroo is one of three UCI Continental teams in the field — Australian-registered, Belgium-based, multi-national in roster — and arrives with three British riders in pursuit of a win. James McKay returns to the race where he finished third in 2023, in the rain-soaked edition won by Luke Lamperti. His 2025 season with Wheelbase yielded two of the most prestigious wins on the domestic calendar — the Rapha Lincoln Grand Prix and the Wentworth Woodhouse Grand Prix — before he returned to the UCI ranks with Atom 6. His current form is a question, with a recent crash to recover from, but when he is on, he is one of the riders domestic teams least want to see at the front of the race. Matt King, another fast finisher, hails from nearby Leicester and finished fourth at East Cleveland two Sundays ago — shaping the early five-man move up Saltburn Bank on the opening lap before holding on for the final top-five spot. The rolling terrain of Rutland suits him better than Saltburn, and a win here would be his first on the road since the 2023 East Midlands Championships. George Radcliffe completes the British trio: a UCI race winner whose third place at last year’s Tour of the Reservoir in horrendous conditions suggests the kind of profile that tends to surface when CiCLE fragments. Dane Magnus Lorents Nielsen, new to the team from Team ColoQuick, is another option and boasts a 2024 stage win at the Tour de Bretagne on this palmarès.
Among the domestic squads, Lewis Tinsley (BCC Race Team) is the second-highest ranked rider on the startlist behind Franks, a U23 with 118 points accumulated on the domestic scene. BCC — Bryan Steel’s long-standing development squad — also brings Ben Marsh, who won the 2023 Junior CiCLE Classic and has returned to the programme for 2026 after a year racing in France at Apogé Charente-Maritime. A senior CiCLE debut on the roads he knows. Alex Foster (Cycling Sheffield) is the form rider among the young British contingent: the 20-year-old won Round 2 of the U23 Open National Road Series at the Danum Trophy last Sunday, outsprinting Harrison Dainty after Cycling Sheffield put three riders into the decisive move, and now leads the U23 series.
Danylo Riwnyj (Foran CT) comes in with the sharpest current form of anyone on the startlist: he won the 2026 Rás Mumhan on Easter Monday after a four-day tactical defence of a yellow jersey taken on stage two, completing a Foran programme that targeted the Irish stage race specifically. He added the 65th Wally Gimber Trophy in March, his latest in a steady accumulation of National B wins across the last twelve months. CiCLE, on the other hand, is a step up in distance: his best National Road Series result to date is 11th at the Wentworth Woodhouse Grand Prix last August. The aggression is proven, the team around him — Nathan Levitt, Robin Mould, Thomas Doig, and a squad that has already won a major stage race together this spring — will know how to race for him. The UCI 1.2 test on Sunday will tell us about the range.
Damien Clayton, guesting for Moonglu SpatzWear, is a dark horse. The 33-year-old from Barnsley raced UCI Continental in his Ribble Weldtite Pro Cycling and WiV SunGod days, has a UCI one-day win to his name from the Grand Prix des Marbriers, and was third on the opening stage of the Peaks 2-Day earlier this season. A rider whose experience on rough terrain in an otherwise unassuming team bib is worth paying attention to.
If the race comes down to a reduced group sprint, Avondts is the most credentialled finisher in the field, with Hicks, Bostock, King, and McKay (if fit) also in contention. If it splits earlier — as it often does — JAKROO’s options multiply, Wheelbase can play Martin and Armstrong, and the likes of Jowett, Curd, Riwnyj, Foster, Askey, and Clayton could find themselves in the move that decides it. Sunday will, as CiCLE tends to, sort that out on the road.
We will be at the roadside on Sunday. You can follow along with the action on our Instagram stories from 9.30. Monument Cycling will also run a free ‘watch-party stream’ from 13.30 on its YouTube channel and at tv.monumentcycling.com.
A little over twelve months ago, Mathis Avondts came within a handful of metres of winning the Rutland–Melton CiCLE Classic. This Sunday, the Belgian returns in a team that is a week old in name and half a career deep in pedigree — and he is not the only rider on the startlist with a reason to believe.
A riders-to-watch guide to Sunday’s 2026 Rutland–Melton CiCLE Classic, the opening round of the open Rapha Super-League. Our route preview covers the new Canalberg sector, the formalised Oakham finishing circuit, and the 11 off-road sectors and six categorised climbs that shape the race; a provisional startlist follows at the foot of this article, with final confirmation expected after Saturday’s sign-on.
Featured image: Milan Josy/The British Continental
A new champion is guaranteed on Sunday: defending winner Ben Granger, who soloed clear inside the final five kilometres to take his first UCI victory a year ago, is not on this year’s startlist. That leaves Mathis Avondts (Azerion Villa Valkenburg) as the highest-placed 2025 finisher coming back for another go. The 22-year-old from Brasschaat was second here last year, beaten only by Granger’s late move. A sprinter on paper, he made the point over the course of a hard day last April that his finish comes attached to the durability needed to reach a finale on this kind of terrain — he rolled with the punches through the sectors and was in the decisive selection when it mattered. He has started this season in form: in early March he took his first UCI victory at the Ster van Zwolle, finishing off a clean lead-out from teammate Luke Verburg, who is also here. Verburg, a 24-year-old Dutchman whose profile suggests a rider built for this race, was among the names most obviously tipped for CiCLE in the 2025 pre-race coverage; his repositioning as Avondts’s lead-out man adds another layer to the team’s options. Otto Van Zanden, the U23 who was sixth last year and won the King of the Bergs competition by setting the pace in Wymondham on the first laps, carried that form through 2025 with a stage top-five at the Orlen Nations Grand Prix and is back for another go.
The team around them arrives in Oakham a week old in its current identity. The Dutch UCI Continental outfit formerly known as Parkhotel Valkenburg rebranded to Azerion Villa Valkenburg at the start of this week; Sunday is its first outing in the new kit. The programme has developed WorldTour graduates in recent seasons, including Rick Pluimers, and the six-rider selection here reflects a deliberate blend of experience and youth, built around Avondts. They will be disappointed to leave without the win.
Avondts is not the only podium finisher from 2025 returning to Oakham. Dylan Hicks, third last year for Raptor Factory Racing and riding this weekend for British Cycling South East–Sigma Sports, is a fast finisher with particular form on these roads: he won the Junior edition of the race in 2022 before taking a UCI stage at the 2024 Tour of Hellas and, last season, the Beaumont Trophy. Guesting in from UN Cycling Team x Pyörävarikko, on a Sigma Sports-branded jersey at a race title-sponsored by Sigma Sports, expect him to be visible. If the race comes down to a reduced group, he has the kick and the course-craft to make it count again.
Matt Bostock (RCC Racing) is the reigning open Rapha Super-League champion. The 28-year-old Manxman took the 2025 title while riding for Tekkerz CC and joins Rapha’s new RCC Racing collective for 2026, a squad that also fields two-time Jock Wadley Memorial winner Jacob Vaughan and 2023 National Circuit Race champion Ollie Wood, both also here. Bostock arrives in Oakham off the back of a bronze in the omnium at the UCI Track World Cup in Hong Kong last weekend — form sharp, recovery window tight. If the race ends in a reduced-group sprint, his kick is one of the threats Avondts will have to account for.
Lucas Jowett (MyPadRacing p/b ONDO Sports) arrives in Oakham as the open National Road Series leader, having won the first round at the East Cleveland Classic on 12 April — outsprinting Tom Martin and Alex Franks on Saltburn Bank after spending most of the day at the front. The 21-year-old, who typically races abroad, said of East Cleveland that domestic racing “just goes full gas from pretty much the start”. CiCLE, with its early fragmentation on farm tracks, would test that proposition again. Jowett is joined on the MyPadRacing selection by Alex Beldon, guesting in from French elite national team Mayenne–V and B–Monbana, where he landed for 2026 after Muc-Off–SRCT–Storck folded at the end of last year. Beldon had a breakthrough 2025 for SRCT: he finished eighth at the National Road Race Championships against WorldTour opposition, and at this race he was in the winning break before a puncture ended his day. He returns to Oakham knowing what the decisive move on this course looks like from the inside. Also on the selection is Ben Askey, a top-10 finisher at U23 Paris–Roubaix in 2023 and the reigning U23 national cyclocross champion — a rough-terrain specialist whose credentials translate directly to a day like Sunday’s.
Tom Martin (Wheelbase CabTech Castelli) was Jowett’s closest challenger at East Cleveland. Seventh in last year’s edition, the 2025 Rás Mumhan overall winner is the experienced anchor for a six-rider Wheelbase selection that also features Thomas Armstrong, the 2025 open National Circuit Series overall champion and maiden National A winner at the Cambridge Criterium in August. Armstrong has started 2026 with intent: at East Cleveland he bridged across with Cameron Mason to join the decisive front group, and will be one of the team’s options if the race fragments before the finale.
Olly Curd (DAS Richardsons) is one of the breakout domestic riders of 2026. He made the decisive 11-rider Somerberg break at last year’s CiCLE for BC South East–Sigma Sports; in March, having moved to DAS for 2026, he won the 42nd Jock Wadley Memorial from a team one-two with Frank Longstaff — DAS’s first-ever Wadley win, with manager Andy Lyons himself a two-time former winner of the race. DAS arrive in Oakham with numbers (six riders, including Cai Davies and Matthew Lord) and a director who knows this kind of day.
JAKROO Handsling Racing bring perhaps the most complete all-round squad in the field. Rowan Baker, winner of the Peaks 2-Day in 2025 and the inaugural East Cleveland Classic in 2024, is the most recognisable name. Alex Franks, third at East Cleveland and at 156 points the highest-ranked rider on The British Continental rankings on the entire startlist, is the form carrier. William Truelove was among the most consistent performers on the domestic scene in 2025 for the Muc-Off–SRCT–Storck outfit that won the team classification here, and joined JAKROO in the winter. If the race breaks up on the sectors, as it tends to, JAKROO are equipped to have options in front.
Atom 6 Bikes–Cycleur de Luxe–Auto Stroo is one of three UCI Continental teams in the field — Australian-registered, Belgium-based, multi-national in roster — and arrives with three British riders in pursuit of a win. James McKay returns to the race where he finished third in 2023, in the rain-soaked edition won by Luke Lamperti. His 2025 season with Wheelbase yielded two of the most prestigious wins on the domestic calendar — the Rapha Lincoln Grand Prix and the Wentworth Woodhouse Grand Prix — before he returned to the UCI ranks with Atom 6. His current form is a question, with a recent crash to recover from, but when he is on, he is one of the riders domestic teams least want to see at the front of the race. Matt King, another fast finisher, hails from nearby Leicester and finished fourth at East Cleveland two Sundays ago — shaping the early five-man move up Saltburn Bank on the opening lap before holding on for the final top-five spot. The rolling terrain of Rutland suits him better than Saltburn, and a win here would be his first on the road since the 2023 East Midlands Championships. George Radcliffe completes the British trio: a UCI race winner whose third place at last year’s Tour of the Reservoir in horrendous conditions suggests the kind of profile that tends to surface when CiCLE fragments. Dane Magnus Lorents Nielsen, new to the team from Team ColoQuick, is another option and boasts a 2024 stage win at the Tour de Bretagne on this palmarès.
Among the domestic squads, Lewis Tinsley (BCC Race Team) is the second-highest ranked rider on the startlist behind Franks, a U23 with 118 points accumulated on the domestic scene. BCC — Bryan Steel’s long-standing development squad — also brings Ben Marsh, who won the 2023 Junior CiCLE Classic and has returned to the programme for 2026 after a year racing in France at Apogé Charente-Maritime. A senior CiCLE debut on the roads he knows. Alex Foster (Cycling Sheffield) is the form rider among the young British contingent: the 20-year-old won Round 2 of the U23 Open National Road Series at the Danum Trophy last Sunday, outsprinting Harrison Dainty after Cycling Sheffield put three riders into the decisive move, and now leads the U23 series.
Danylo Riwnyj (Foran CT) comes in with the sharpest current form of anyone on the startlist: he won the 2026 Rás Mumhan on Easter Monday after a four-day tactical defence of a yellow jersey taken on stage two, completing a Foran programme that targeted the Irish stage race specifically. He added the 65th Wally Gimber Trophy in March, his latest in a steady accumulation of National B wins across the last twelve months. CiCLE, on the other hand, is a step up in distance: his best National Road Series result to date is 11th at the Wentworth Woodhouse Grand Prix last August. The aggression is proven, the team around him — Nathan Levitt, Robin Mould, Thomas Doig, and a squad that has already won a major stage race together this spring — will know how to race for him. The UCI 1.2 test on Sunday will tell us about the range.
Damien Clayton, guesting for Moonglu SpatzWear, is a dark horse. The 33-year-old from Barnsley raced UCI Continental in his Ribble Weldtite Pro Cycling and WiV SunGod days, has a UCI one-day win to his name from the Grand Prix des Marbriers, and was third on the opening stage of the Peaks 2-Day earlier this season. A rider whose experience on rough terrain in an otherwise unassuming team bib is worth paying attention to.
If the race comes down to a reduced group sprint, Avondts is the most credentialled finisher in the field, with Hicks, Bostock, King, and McKay (if fit) also in contention. If it splits earlier — as it often does — JAKROO’s options multiply, Wheelbase can play Martin and Armstrong, and the likes of Jowett, Curd, Riwnyj, Foster, Askey, and Clayton could find themselves in the move that decides it. Sunday will, as CiCLE tends to, sort that out on the road.
We will be at the roadside on Sunday. You can follow along with the action on our Instagram stories from 9.30. Monument Cycling will also run a free ‘watch-party stream’ from 13.30 on its YouTube channel and at tv.monumentcycling.com.
Provisional startlist
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