2026 Guildford Town Centre Races: preview and startlists
The Lloyds National Circuit Series reaches Guildford’s cobbled High Street on Wednesday 8 July, with both series leaders absent but plenty still at stake. On a short, technical, position-first circuit where the elastic can snap early, Guildford rarely gives riders room to hide.
The Lloyds National Circuit Series reaches Guildford’s cobbled High Street on Wednesday 8 July for Round 4, with both series leaders absent, Milo Wills back to defend his title, Toby Barnes taking one final British swing before returning to France, and Morven Yeoman carrying the sharpest women’s Series threat on the startlist.
Here is our preview.
Featured image: Alex Whitehead/SWpix.com
What is it?
A floodlit criterium around the historic heart of Guildford, organised by Charlotteville CC since 1984 and now one of the most distinctive fixtures in the British circuit racing calendar.
The race is run on a tight, 1-kilometre, part-cobbled circuit through the town centre. It stepped up from National B status in 2023, when an extended course was trialled, and that lap has since become the settled National Circuit Series route. Canyon return as headline sponsor, with the women’s and open Grands Prix carrying the names of Greyfriars Vineyard and Cycle Exchange respectively.
The recent winners’ list tells its own story. In 2024, Eilidh Shaw won the women’s race while Rob Scott soloed to the open title. Last year, Robyn Clay led home a near-clean DAS–Hutchinson sweep in the women’s race, with Madeline Cooper splitting the blue jerseys in second, while Milo Wills won a ten-rider shoot-out in the open race — a result that feels especially relevant this week.
The evening runs from the under-8s through the Foran Construction Local Heroes race to the two National Series Grands Prix, with £2,000 per race in prize money across the top 20. Two intermediate sprints — at roughly 15 and 30 minutes, each flagged a lap out — feed the series sprint classifications. Entry, as always, is free, and the pavements should be packed.
Route
Guildford’s lap is short-course theatre: 1 kilometre on a patchwork of cobbles — setts, strictly speaking, though nobody calls them that — block paviours and tarmac.
The line sits outside Holy Trinity Church at the top of the cobbled High Street. From there, the circuit bears right onto the wider upper High Street for a drag to a tight U-turn by the speed table at the top of town, where the pits are located, before plunging back down the same carriageway on the “wrong” side of the road.
A fast, slightly downhill 90-degree right beside Rymans fires the race into North Street, where a speed table near the top unsettles bikes and nerves. Then comes a sharp left over a chamfered transition kerb, funneling the bunch into the narrow, paved climb of Market Street. One more 90-degree left takes the riders back onto the cobbles for the uphill sprint to the line.
Guildford is not a sprinters’ course in the usual sense. The finish straight is barely 200 metres and rises at five or six per cent on the setts, but the race is often shaped long before the final kick. Positioning matters from the gun. The lap is short, narrow, technical and rhythm-breaking, with repeated corners, surface changes and little room to move up once the race is stretched.
Lose position early and the elastic can snap quickly. Later on, as the strongest riders begin to lap the field, fighting through backmarkers becomes part of the race itself. The winners here are not simply the fastest finishers, but the riders who can stay near the front, handle the course, absorb the accelerations and still have something left for the uphill drag to the line.
With no laps out, a mechanical is likely to be terminal. The Market Street bend offers inches-away viewing; the cobbled run-in outside Trinity is grandstand stuff.
Timings
Time
Race
17.35–17.45
The Spokesman Under 8 Boys and Girls Race
17.55–18.10
The Positano Under 10 & Under 12 Boys and Girls Race
18.15–18.35
The Geared Up Cycles Under 14 & Under 16 Open and Girls Race
18.40–19.10
The Foran Construction Local Heroes Open Race
19.40–20.30
The Greyfriars Vineyard Guildford Women’s Grand Prix
20.40–21.30
The Cycle Exchange Guildford Open Grand Prix
Riders to watch
The Greyfriars Vineyard Guildford Women’s Grand Prix
Morven Yeoman (DAS–Hutchinson) arrives in Guildford third in the Lloyds National Circuit Series, behind absent pair Megan Barker and Jessica Roberts, and top of the women’s sprint competition after three rounds. Her Series has not been straightforward, but it has been revealing: 8th at Colne, where she won both intermediate sprints; a scoreless 23rd at Otley on a night that threatened to dent her momentum; then 3rd at Ilkley two nights later, in the decisive four-rider move behind Anna Morris.
Add in 3rd at the City of London Nocturne, victory at the Rapha Lincoln Grand Prix in May, and the fact she skipped the National Circuit Championships before finishing 15th in the road race as the best home-based under-23, and the picture is clear enough. Yeoman has been one of the defining riders of the domestic season. Guildford now gives her a chance to turn presence into pressure: with Barker, Roberts and Morris all absent, a strong result would pull her right into the heart of the title race.
DAS–Hutchinson also have numbers and history. Robyn Clay won here in 2025, Lucy Lee completed the podium in 3rd, and the team made the race their own. Lee returns, as does Sophie Lewis, whose Colne record reads first, second and third across the past three editions — 3rd again last month on the opening night of the series — and whose kick looks well suited to a 200-metre uphill sprint. Katie Scott and Ellie Parry complete a five-rider DAS–Hutchinson squad with more than one way to race.
The team race adds another layer. Handsling Alba Development Road Team lead the women’s team standings after three rounds, with DAS–Hutchinson second and OShea Red Chilli Bikes close behind in third. Guildford therefore matters beyond the individual title: Handsling Alba haveMadeline Cooper, Mari Porton and Arabella Blackburn on the startlist; DAS have Yeoman, Lee, Lewis, Scott and Parry; OShea have Evie Smith, Isabel Mayes, Matilda McKibben and Sannah Zaman. On a course where numbers can help keep leaders out of trouble, those teams should all shape the race.
Cooper is the obvious counterweight to DAS. Runner-up behind Clay twelve months ago, and the only rider to break up the DAS–Hutchinson sweep, she has been in the front group of every round this season: 4th at Colne, 3rd at Otley, and again in the decisive selection at Ilkley on Friday. She was 3rd at Ilkley in 2025 too, in the break that decided that race. Seventh in the Series after three rounds, she has done almost everything except win. Guildford looks like one of her clearest chances yet.
Madeline Cooper and Amelia Tyler (Handsling Alba Development Road Team). Olly Hassell/SWpix.com
Evie Smith (OShea Red Chilli Bikes) should not be overlooked either. Sixth in the Series, she is the second-highest ranked rider on the startlist after Yeoman, and she starts as part of a strong OShea group that also includes Isabel Mayes, 9th overall and second in the sprint competition. Mayes’ sprint standing is particularly relevant on a night with two intermediate sprints and a finish where the final 200 metres only matter if a rider has survived the positioning battle beforehand.
Amy Henchoz (Paralloy RT) keeps arriving at the front of hard races: 2nd at Capernwray behind Morris in April, 2nd at Banbury in May, a stage runner-up at the Peak 2 Day in March, and on the attack early at Otley. She is still waiting for the big win those results have been promising, and a punchy cobbled ramp is not a bad place to collect it.
camsmajaco’s juniors arrive straight from a golden weekend at the junior nationals. Aalia Clay won the junior women’s time trial title near York, crowning a breakout first junior season as the team took both TT jerseys, while Megan Cherry came close in Sunday’s road race after a long solo move. The senior field is a different test, but both bring exactly the front-footed instincts this circuit rewards.
Megan Cherry (camsmajaco). Olly Hassell/SWpix.com
Georgia Lancaster (Loughborough Lightning), 10th in the Series after three rounds, has been one of the most consistent riders in the competition and leads a Loughborough quartet. There are also specialists everywhere. Isabel Darvill (Private Member) is a circuit racer to her bones, with a national circuit championship podium already on her record. Xan Crees (OGT p/b USE), the 2025 British cyclocross champion, has the bike-handling for the setts and the kerbs, and sits level on points with Anna Kay and Emma Jeffers after three rounds. Dannielle Watkinson (Jadan Glasdon p/b Vive le Velo) has shown before that she can be a serious presence in this series. Brother UK–On Form bring seven riders, the biggest squad in the race, with Sian Botteley the experienced head marshalling it.
The Cycle Exchange Guildford Open Grand Prix
Milo Wills (camsmajaco) won here last summer at 17, floating over the granite on the final rise to out-kick Belgian cyclocross international Jente Michels, a week after stunning a ten-rider lead group to win Ilkley. He returns in the colours of the junior super-team, back on a finish that clearly suits him. The circuit has not changed; nor, presumably, has his kick.
Milo Wills (TEKKERZ CC) wins the 2025 Guildford Grand Prix. Image: Alex Whitehead/SWpix.com
The junior story does not end with the defending champion. Evander Wishart (Decathlon CMA CGM Juniors Team) arrives three days after winning the junior national road race title at Beckwithshaw, where he rode the decisive move for nearly two hours and finished it off on the final climb ahead of Finlay Storrie and William Coles — 24 hours after taking silver in the junior time trial. An elite National Series crit on the setts is a different examination, but few riders on the startlist arrive with a bigger result still fresh in the legs.
Then comes the form rider.
Toby Barnes (UV Aube) won Ilkley on Friday the hard way: clear for half the race, 44 seconds in hand at the line, at one point overtaking the lead motorbike. It capped a fortnight of building form — he had animated Otley without reward two nights earlier — and revived the credentials of a rider who won the 2024 Sheffield Grand Prix and spent that season at the sharp end of the series before moving to France. Guildford, he told The British Continental at Ilkley, is his final British race before returning across the Channel. Expect him to race it accordingly.
The riders who have dominated the standings so far are missing: Ollie Wood leads on 134 points, Cameron Mason sits second on 126, and national circuit champion Matt Bostock, winner of the Nocturne and Colne, is also absent. That leaves the Series lead exposed in absentia.
Callum Laborde (Ornata Factory Racing), 3rd overall on 106 points, is the highest-ranked rider on the startlist. He has been the Series’ quiet accumulator: 10th at Colne, 8th at Otley, 7th at Ilkley, and top ten in every round without yet contesting a win. Aaron King (Wheelbase Cabtech Castelli), 4th on 100 points, is also well placed, his 2nd at Colne behind Bostock still one of the rides of the series, even if he has been less visible since.
King shares Wheelbase leadership with Thomas Armstrong, the defending Series champion, who sits 5th overall on 86 points. His season reads like a rider circling a result: 15th at Colne, 6th at Otley leading the chase behind the winning move, and 4th on this circuit last year after animating the race throughout. Wheelbase field only four riders this time, but they arrive as leaders of the team standings, with DAS Richardsons chasing in second.
That team contest matters. DAS bring Oliver Curd, Cai Davies and Olivier Mangham, all of whom sit inside the top 50 after three rounds, while Curd and Davies have both shown they can survive the hard end of National Series races. JAKROO Handsling Racing, fifth in the team standings, bring eight riders, headed by William Truelove, 15th overall, 4th on this circuit in 2024, 3rd at Ilkley in 2025 and 10th at Otley last week, with Oliver Dawson and Dylan Belton Owen among the support.
TEKKERZ CC know precisely how to win in Guildford. They bracketed the podium here in 2025 through Wills, then in their colours, and Oscar Amey, and return with Alec Briggs, 3rd here in 2024, plus Benjamin Tuchner, 6th at Ilkley on Friday and 5th in the sprint standings after three rounds. On a technical course where the intermediate sprints and the final climb both reward position, they are a collective to watch.
The sprint competition gives Daniel Barnes (Wold Top Pactimo) another obvious storyline. He leads that classification by a distance after three rounds, with 42 points to Laborde’s 18, and his 10th at Ilkley showed he can stay in the front end of a hard race as well as hunt the primes. Guildford’s sprints come on a circuit where moving up at the wrong moment is difficult, so Barnes’ ability to race the lap from the front could matter as much as his finishing speed.
Beyond them, the field is thick with riders who suit Guildford’s technical, position-first violence. Jake Hales (Ride Revolution Coaching), 11th overall, starts as one of the better-placed riders in the standings on the sheet. Alex Murphy (Stolen Goat 4Endurance), winner of the season-opening Portsdown Classic, leads the 4Endurance trio. Danylo Riwnyj (Foran CT), who punched clear of this race last year before being reeled in, also returns, with 2024 Rás Tailteann winner Dom Jackson alongside.
The Lloyds National Circuit Series reaches Guildford’s cobbled High Street on Wednesday 8 July for Round 4, with both series leaders absent, Milo Wills back to defend his title, Toby Barnes taking one final British swing before returning to France, and Morven Yeoman carrying the sharpest women’s Series threat on the startlist.
Here is our preview.
Featured image: Alex Whitehead/SWpix.com
What is it?
A floodlit criterium around the historic heart of Guildford, organised by Charlotteville CC since 1984 and now one of the most distinctive fixtures in the British circuit racing calendar.
The race is run on a tight, 1-kilometre, part-cobbled circuit through the town centre. It stepped up from National B status in 2023, when an extended course was trialled, and that lap has since become the settled National Circuit Series route. Canyon return as headline sponsor, with the women’s and open Grands Prix carrying the names of Greyfriars Vineyard and Cycle Exchange respectively.
The recent winners’ list tells its own story. In 2024, Eilidh Shaw won the women’s race while Rob Scott soloed to the open title. Last year, Robyn Clay led home a near-clean DAS–Hutchinson sweep in the women’s race, with Madeline Cooper splitting the blue jerseys in second, while Milo Wills won a ten-rider shoot-out in the open race — a result that feels especially relevant this week.
The evening runs from the under-8s through the Foran Construction Local Heroes race to the two National Series Grands Prix, with £2,000 per race in prize money across the top 20. Two intermediate sprints — at roughly 15 and 30 minutes, each flagged a lap out — feed the series sprint classifications. Entry, as always, is free, and the pavements should be packed.
Route
Guildford’s lap is short-course theatre: 1 kilometre on a patchwork of cobbles — setts, strictly speaking, though nobody calls them that — block paviours and tarmac.
The line sits outside Holy Trinity Church at the top of the cobbled High Street. From there, the circuit bears right onto the wider upper High Street for a drag to a tight U-turn by the speed table at the top of town, where the pits are located, before plunging back down the same carriageway on the “wrong” side of the road.
A fast, slightly downhill 90-degree right beside Rymans fires the race into North Street, where a speed table near the top unsettles bikes and nerves. Then comes a sharp left over a chamfered transition kerb, funneling the bunch into the narrow, paved climb of Market Street. One more 90-degree left takes the riders back onto the cobbles for the uphill sprint to the line.
Guildford is not a sprinters’ course in the usual sense. The finish straight is barely 200 metres and rises at five or six per cent on the setts, but the race is often shaped long before the final kick. Positioning matters from the gun. The lap is short, narrow, technical and rhythm-breaking, with repeated corners, surface changes and little room to move up once the race is stretched.
Lose position early and the elastic can snap quickly. Later on, as the strongest riders begin to lap the field, fighting through backmarkers becomes part of the race itself. The winners here are not simply the fastest finishers, but the riders who can stay near the front, handle the course, absorb the accelerations and still have something left for the uphill drag to the line.
With no laps out, a mechanical is likely to be terminal. The Market Street bend offers inches-away viewing; the cobbled run-in outside Trinity is grandstand stuff.
Timings
Riders to watch
The Greyfriars Vineyard Guildford Women’s Grand Prix
Morven Yeoman (DAS–Hutchinson) arrives in Guildford third in the Lloyds National Circuit Series, behind absent pair Megan Barker and Jessica Roberts, and top of the women’s sprint competition after three rounds. Her Series has not been straightforward, but it has been revealing: 8th at Colne, where she won both intermediate sprints; a scoreless 23rd at Otley on a night that threatened to dent her momentum; then 3rd at Ilkley two nights later, in the decisive four-rider move behind Anna Morris.
Add in 3rd at the City of London Nocturne, victory at the Rapha Lincoln Grand Prix in May, and the fact she skipped the National Circuit Championships before finishing 15th in the road race as the best home-based under-23, and the picture is clear enough. Yeoman has been one of the defining riders of the domestic season. Guildford now gives her a chance to turn presence into pressure: with Barker, Roberts and Morris all absent, a strong result would pull her right into the heart of the title race.
DAS–Hutchinson also have numbers and history. Robyn Clay won here in 2025, Lucy Lee completed the podium in 3rd, and the team made the race their own. Lee returns, as does Sophie Lewis, whose Colne record reads first, second and third across the past three editions — 3rd again last month on the opening night of the series — and whose kick looks well suited to a 200-metre uphill sprint. Katie Scott and Ellie Parry complete a five-rider DAS–Hutchinson squad with more than one way to race.
The team race adds another layer. Handsling Alba Development Road Team lead the women’s team standings after three rounds, with DAS–Hutchinson second and OShea Red Chilli Bikes close behind in third. Guildford therefore matters beyond the individual title: Handsling Alba have Madeline Cooper, Mari Porton and Arabella Blackburn on the startlist; DAS have Yeoman, Lee, Lewis, Scott and Parry; OShea have Evie Smith, Isabel Mayes, Matilda McKibben and Sannah Zaman. On a course where numbers can help keep leaders out of trouble, those teams should all shape the race.
Cooper is the obvious counterweight to DAS. Runner-up behind Clay twelve months ago, and the only rider to break up the DAS–Hutchinson sweep, she has been in the front group of every round this season: 4th at Colne, 3rd at Otley, and again in the decisive selection at Ilkley on Friday. She was 3rd at Ilkley in 2025 too, in the break that decided that race. Seventh in the Series after three rounds, she has done almost everything except win. Guildford looks like one of her clearest chances yet.
Evie Smith (OShea Red Chilli Bikes) should not be overlooked either. Sixth in the Series, she is the second-highest ranked rider on the startlist after Yeoman, and she starts as part of a strong OShea group that also includes Isabel Mayes, 9th overall and second in the sprint competition. Mayes’ sprint standing is particularly relevant on a night with two intermediate sprints and a finish where the final 200 metres only matter if a rider has survived the positioning battle beforehand.
Amy Henchoz (Paralloy RT) keeps arriving at the front of hard races: 2nd at Capernwray behind Morris in April, 2nd at Banbury in May, a stage runner-up at the Peak 2 Day in March, and on the attack early at Otley. She is still waiting for the big win those results have been promising, and a punchy cobbled ramp is not a bad place to collect it.
camsmajaco’s juniors arrive straight from a golden weekend at the junior nationals. Aalia Clay won the junior women’s time trial title near York, crowning a breakout first junior season as the team took both TT jerseys, while Megan Cherry came close in Sunday’s road race after a long solo move. The senior field is a different test, but both bring exactly the front-footed instincts this circuit rewards.
Georgia Lancaster (Loughborough Lightning), 10th in the Series after three rounds, has been one of the most consistent riders in the competition and leads a Loughborough quartet. There are also specialists everywhere. Isabel Darvill (Private Member) is a circuit racer to her bones, with a national circuit championship podium already on her record. Xan Crees (OGT p/b USE), the 2025 British cyclocross champion, has the bike-handling for the setts and the kerbs, and sits level on points with Anna Kay and Emma Jeffers after three rounds. Dannielle Watkinson (Jadan Glasdon p/b Vive le Velo) has shown before that she can be a serious presence in this series. Brother UK–On Form bring seven riders, the biggest squad in the race, with Sian Botteley the experienced head marshalling it.
The Cycle Exchange Guildford Open Grand Prix
Milo Wills (camsmajaco) won here last summer at 17, floating over the granite on the final rise to out-kick Belgian cyclocross international Jente Michels, a week after stunning a ten-rider lead group to win Ilkley. He returns in the colours of the junior super-team, back on a finish that clearly suits him. The circuit has not changed; nor, presumably, has his kick.
The junior story does not end with the defending champion. Evander Wishart (Decathlon CMA CGM Juniors Team) arrives three days after winning the junior national road race title at Beckwithshaw, where he rode the decisive move for nearly two hours and finished it off on the final climb ahead of Finlay Storrie and William Coles — 24 hours after taking silver in the junior time trial. An elite National Series crit on the setts is a different examination, but few riders on the startlist arrive with a bigger result still fresh in the legs.
Then comes the form rider.
Toby Barnes (UV Aube) won Ilkley on Friday the hard way: clear for half the race, 44 seconds in hand at the line, at one point overtaking the lead motorbike. It capped a fortnight of building form — he had animated Otley without reward two nights earlier — and revived the credentials of a rider who won the 2024 Sheffield Grand Prix and spent that season at the sharp end of the series before moving to France. Guildford, he told The British Continental at Ilkley, is his final British race before returning across the Channel. Expect him to race it accordingly.
Then the stakes.
The riders who have dominated the standings so far are missing: Ollie Wood leads on 134 points, Cameron Mason sits second on 126, and national circuit champion Matt Bostock, winner of the Nocturne and Colne, is also absent. That leaves the Series lead exposed in absentia.
Callum Laborde (Ornata Factory Racing), 3rd overall on 106 points, is the highest-ranked rider on the startlist. He has been the Series’ quiet accumulator: 10th at Colne, 8th at Otley, 7th at Ilkley, and top ten in every round without yet contesting a win. Aaron King (Wheelbase Cabtech Castelli), 4th on 100 points, is also well placed, his 2nd at Colne behind Bostock still one of the rides of the series, even if he has been less visible since.
King shares Wheelbase leadership with Thomas Armstrong, the defending Series champion, who sits 5th overall on 86 points. His season reads like a rider circling a result: 15th at Colne, 6th at Otley leading the chase behind the winning move, and 4th on this circuit last year after animating the race throughout. Wheelbase field only four riders this time, but they arrive as leaders of the team standings, with DAS Richardsons chasing in second.
That team contest matters. DAS bring Oliver Curd, Cai Davies and Olivier Mangham, all of whom sit inside the top 50 after three rounds, while Curd and Davies have both shown they can survive the hard end of National Series races. JAKROO Handsling Racing, fifth in the team standings, bring eight riders, headed by William Truelove, 15th overall, 4th on this circuit in 2024, 3rd at Ilkley in 2025 and 10th at Otley last week, with Oliver Dawson and Dylan Belton Owen among the support.
TEKKERZ CC know precisely how to win in Guildford. They bracketed the podium here in 2025 through Wills, then in their colours, and Oscar Amey, and return with Alec Briggs, 3rd here in 2024, plus Benjamin Tuchner, 6th at Ilkley on Friday and 5th in the sprint standings after three rounds. On a technical course where the intermediate sprints and the final climb both reward position, they are a collective to watch.
The sprint competition gives Daniel Barnes (Wold Top Pactimo) another obvious storyline. He leads that classification by a distance after three rounds, with 42 points to Laborde’s 18, and his 10th at Ilkley showed he can stay in the front end of a hard race as well as hunt the primes. Guildford’s sprints come on a circuit where moving up at the wrong moment is difficult, so Barnes’ ability to race the lap from the front could matter as much as his finishing speed.
Beyond them, the field is thick with riders who suit Guildford’s technical, position-first violence. Jake Hales (Ride Revolution Coaching), 11th overall, starts as one of the better-placed riders in the standings on the sheet. Alex Murphy (Stolen Goat 4Endurance), winner of the season-opening Portsdown Classic, leads the 4Endurance trio. Danylo Riwnyj (Foran CT), who punched clear of this race last year before being reeled in, also returns, with 2024 Rás Tailteann winner Dom Jackson alongside.
Startlists
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