No Chief Commissaire, not enough marshals: DAP CC Road Race cancelled

The DAP CC Road Race, scheduled for Sunday 17 May at the Ringsfield circuit near Beccles, has been cancelled. In a message sent to entrants through British Cycling’s event system, seen by The British Continental, the organiser confirmed that the event could not run after he had been unable to secure a Chief Commissaire or the required number of accredited marshals. Entrants will be refunded, less the British Cycling system fee. “We have been unable to secure a Chief Comm and the correct number of Accredited Marshals,” an email to entrants said.

The race is a long-standing fixture on the Eastern domestic calendar — an open National B over eight laps of the 15.2 km Ringsfield circuit, a flat, exposed loop where crosswinds tend to decide the outcome more often than the terrain. The 2025 edition was won by Dan Bigham (HUUB WattShop), who soloed to victory in his first domestic road race appearance since returning from Andorra. James Ambrose-Parish (then of TAAP Kalas) took the 2024 edition.

Two other National B fixtures have already fallen from the 2026 calendar. In February, PNE Cycling Club confirmed that its 14-year-old National B near Winchester would not run, after changes to a junction on the Owslebury circuit took it outside British Cycling’s risk-assessment framework. The Severn Bridge Road Race — first run in the 1960s, and once regarded as one of the most prestigious National B events in the country — will also not return this season.

The reasons differ in each case. But the loss of DAP CC lands in a region whose underlying domestic ecosystem is already strained. Bigham, who won the 2025 edition, has himself recently warned about exactly that. Speaking to The British Continental earlier this month about his work to revive Norfolk’s Lotus Cars Cycle Race League, he said losing “key bedrock races” from the domestic calendar risks dragging everything around them down with them.

Richard Allen of VC Baracchi, who handles much of the British Cycling liaison for the race, told The British Continental that the decision to cancel was taken on 13 May, once it was clear there was no prospect of finding the missing officials. British Cycling had been unable to source a second commissaire, and the organisers had been trying to find accredited marshals for months, enlisting British Cycling to cast the net wider, without result. “We can’t afford to lose races from the calendar,” he says. The VC Baracchi Road Race, scheduled for the same day, was cancelled alongside it.

Allen says he had good support from individuals within British Cycling, but that there was a key period of a few days when enquiries went unanswered after one helpful contact became uncontactable. The two races were prepared to go ahead with 25 and 18 pre-entered riders respectively. “In previous years too,” he says, “it had not been straightforward finding accredited marshals.”