2026 South Molton Grand Prix: preview and startlists
The Lloyds National Road Series completes its Devon double-header on Sunday 19 July with the first South Molton Grand Prix — a new race on part-familiar roads with longer distances than its Witheridge predecessor, though women's series leader Morven Yeoman is a doubt through illness.
The Lloyds National Road Series arrives in South Molton on Sunday 19 July for a race that is new in name but not entirely in nature. The South Molton Grand Prix replaces the Witheridge Grand Prix as the South West’s round of the series, absorbing part of last year’s course into a longer, harder test — and it lands at a decisive moment.
The women’s contest has been reshaped before the flag drops: Lucy Lee, third in the standings, has been withdrawn from the latest startlist, while series leader Morven Yeoman is a doubt after illness kept her out of Friday’s Dawlish Grand Prix. In the open competition, the top three — two of them Wheelbase CabTech Castelli teammates — resume a contest that has tightened with every round.
Here is our preview.
Featured image: Olly Hassell/SWpix.com
The British Continental‘s National Road Series previews are powered by Topp Cycling.
What is it?
The South Molton Grand Prix is the successor to the Witheridge Grand Prix, which in 2025 brought the National Road Series to Devon for the first time in decades as part of a new double-header with the Dawlish Grand Prix. That weekend format survives — Dawlish hosted the Rapha Super-League and National Circuit Series on Friday night — but the Sunday road race has moved a few miles north-west, taken a new name, and grown in ambition.
The changes are a direct response to last year. The inaugural Witheridge GP drew criticism from some riders and teams for distances that fell short of National Road Series expectations: around 120 kilometres for the open race and just over 80 for the women’s. For 2026, organiser Richard Wickenden has extended both substantially — 161.3 kilometres for the open race, 113.5 for the women’s — and moved the start to the South Molton Pannier Market, the award-winning market hall last visited by elite racing when the 2018 Tour of Britain passed through en route to a stage finish in Barnstaple. Wickenden has described the event as a celebration of “speed, endurance and local pride”, and the town is leaning into it, with the market square at the centre of the day.
Sunday’s races are Round 6 of the women’s series and Round 5 of the open. The defending winners of the Devon round are not on the provisional startlists: Noémie Thomson, who won at Witheridge last July with a long-range solo in her debut road season, is again absent from the DAS–Hutchinson selection, while Matthew Holmes, winner of the 2025 open race, is not entered.
Route
Both races are built from the same foundation: a 28.3-kilometre triangular circuit around South Molton that serves as the entire women’s course and the finishing circuit of the open race. Whatever happens on Sunday will be decided on the same roads — the difference is what the two fields carry into them.
The circuit runs anti-clockwise: east from South Molton along the valley past Bishops Nympton towards Ash Mill, south through Rose Ash towards Creacombe, then west again through Meshaw and Alswear before climbing back towards the town. The route plot shows around 491 metres of climbing per lap on rural, undulating two-way roads that mix village sections with open 60mph stretches. There is little dead road anywhere on it.
Both races begin with a 1.0-kilometre neutralised roll-out from inside the Pannier Market, leaving via East Street and Broad Street before joining the B3137, with racing proper beginning at the kilometre-zero marker on the edge of town. The finish comes back in South Molton, and the final three kilometres are rolling rather than flat. The East Street Climb then offers a final sting in the tail, a half kilometre rise to the finish that maxes out at over 10%.
The women’s race is the circuit in its purest form: four laps, 113.5 kilometres, over 1,900 metres of climbing. With no separate opening phase, the racing starts on the decisive terrain and stays there — there is nowhere to hide from lap one, and every kilometre raced is a kilometre of the finishing circuit learned.
The open race takes a longer road to the same place: an 11.7-kilometre opening section, then 1.75 laps of the 43.1-kilometre Witheridge circuit — the loop that hosted last year’s race — before joining the South Molton circuit for the final 2.5 laps. The total is 161.3 kilometres, one of the longest days on this year’s National Road Series calendar.
Anyone who raced at Witheridge last summer will remember what those roads are like. Our report from 2025 described a circuit of constant climbing and descending on grippy surfaces, where the field was shelled steadily from the back and the decisive move went clear only on the final lap. Grafting that loop onto the front half of the race means the open field arrives at the finishing circuit with 85-odd kilometres of Witheridge roads already in the legs — a day of steady attrition rather than a single decisive obstacle, where the winning move may owe as much to accumulated fatigue as to any one climb.
Weather
At the time of writing, the forecast for Sunday is dry and warm — around 24°C with only a small chance of rain, easing slightly from the heat of the past week. That is racing weather rather than survival weather, but on exposed, rolling roads with a race distance north of 160 kilometres for the open field, a warm afternoon will still take its toll. The women’s race, starting at 09:00, should enjoy the cooler half of the day; the open race will run through the warmest hours.
Riders to watch
Women’s race
The women’s National Road Series arrives in Devon with three rounds remaining and its contest reshaped by Lancaster. Morven Yeoman (DAS–Hutchinson) still leads on 194 points, but Lily Martin’s victory in Williamson Park cut the gap to 44 and moved the Loughborough Lightning rider into second on 150, with Yeoman’s teammate Lucy Lee third on 139 and Amy Henchoz fourth on 122. The latest startlist has already thinned that group: Lee has been withdrawn, while Yeoman — who missed Friday’s Dawlish Grand Prix through illness — remains entered but is a doubt for Sunday.
If she is fit to start, Yeoman remains the reference point. The winner of the Rapha Lincoln Grand Prix, third at the CiCLE Classic and the best home-based under-23 at the national road race, she was strong again at Lancaster — she simply met someone stronger on the final climb. A course of repeated 28-kilometre laps with sustained rolling effort should suit her. But the team around her has thinned: with Lee withdrawn and Ellie Parry no longer on the list, DAS–Hutchinson start just three, Yeoman joined by Tamsin Miller — third at Witheridge last year on similar Devon roads — and Katie Scott, winner of the East Cleveland Classic in April and a contender in her own right. Yeoman’s absence, should it come to that, would leave Scott as the team’s best card — and would transform the weekend: a 44-point lead is commanding when you are racing, and vulnerable when you are not.
Lily Martin arrives as the form rider of the series. The Loughborough Lightning under-23 has now won the Banbury Star, the BUCS Road Race Championship and the Lancaster Grand Prix — all three with solo attacks, and the BUCS title won in the Devon heat in May, so she has already proven herself on this county’s roads. At Lancaster she outmanoeuvred two DAS–Hutchinson riders single-handed; on Sunday Lightning bring six.
Lily Martin (Loughborough Lightning). Image: Olly Hassell/SWpix.com
Amy Henchoz (Paralloy RT) has been a fixture near the front all season — second at Capernwray, sixth at Lincoln, second behind Martin at the Banbury Star — and heads a five-rider Paralloy squad. Fourth overall, she is the rider best placed to profit if those above her mark each other out of the race.
Handsling Alba Development Road Team won the team classification at Lancaster and bring three here: Grace Lister, who animated the race and made the decisive six-rider move; Mari Porton, fourth at Dawlish last night; and Holly Ramsey, seventh at Witheridge last year. Izzy Sharp, the former WorldTour rider rebuilding her season, was initially entered but has been withdrawn after missing Dawlish.
Matilda McKibben’s withdrawal leaves O’Shea Red Chilli Bikes with just two riders: Sannah Zaman, who made the front group at Lancaster, and Isabel Mayes, leader of the National Circuit Series sprint competition, who was active at the National Road Championships.
FTP–Fulfil The Potential–Racing, the South West’s own Elite Development Team, enter seven on home roads, headed by Ruby Oakes, fourth at Lincoln and among the riders who lit the race up at Lancaster, and Anna Boniface, who made the six-rider move there.
Among the rest: Lucy Harris (Draft Racing) won the 2025 ANEXO/CAMS Women’s CiCLE Classic and knows how to win big races from a small team; Smurfit Westrock Cycling Team field only two, but Amelia Cebak was in the break at the Tour of the Reservoir; Georgia Huddleston (London Academy) was fourth at Solihull; and Jennifer Powell (Performance Development Team) has been the most aggressive rider of the circuit series’ middle weeks and raced at Witheridge last year. There are eye-catching entries from overseas-registered teams, too, with Esther Wong (Team Farto–BTC) and Grace Reynolds (Megamo Vosger Team) both on the list.
Open race
The open race brings together the top three in the series for the second Sunday running. Tom Armstrong (Wheelbase CabTech Castelli) leads on 166 points after the best fortnight of his career: a breakthrough National Circuit Series win at Guildford, then a first National Road Series victory at Lancaster, attacking from a seven-rider group on the final rise into Williamson Park. His teammate Tom Martin sits second on 143 after seventh at Lancaster and the Climber’s Competition there, and the pair’s willingness to trade the leadership — “Tom’s one of my best mates, so I’d have been happy to see him win,” Armstrong said on Sunday — makes Wheelbase doubly hard to race against. Dexter Leeming-Sykes, ninth at Lancaster, and Aaron King deepen a squad that also won the team classification last weekend, though Tim Shoreman and Robert Smart have both been struck from the provisional entry.
Tom Armstrong (Wheelbase Cabtech Castelli) wins. Image: Olly Hassell/SWpix.com
George Radcliffe (Atom 6–Cycleur de Luxe–Auto Stroo Continental Team) is third overall on 124 and finished second at Lancaster, his best domestic result of a season split between the Belgian calendar and National A raids. Sixth at the Tour of the Reservoir before that, he has finished ahead of almost everyone except Armstrong when he has raced here — and a long, attritional course should suit a rider like him.
Then there is the rider who missed Lancaster altogether. Danylo Riwnyj (Foran CT) has won the Wally Gimber Trophy, the Rás Mumhan and the Tour of the Reservoir this season — the last with a 14-kilometre solo — and was ninth at Witheridge last July, so he knows exactly what the middle section of Sunday’s course holds. Foran bring five, including 2024 Rás Tailteann winner Dom Jackson and Ollie Hucks, a stage winner at the Ronde van Wymeswold and 15th at Lancaster.
Harrison Dainty (JAKROO Handsling Racing). Image: Olly Hassell/SWpix.com
JAKROO Handsling Racing enter six — Kennel Hill winner Rowan Baker is a late withdrawal — and can attack the race from every angle: Harrison Dainty, third at the Reservoir and second in the under-23 standings; Oliver Dawson, fourth at the CiCLE Classic; and Sam Chaplin, whose solo BUCS Road Race Championship title in May was won in Devon. Ride Revolution Coaching match them with eight riders, headed by Gabe Dellar, second at the Reservoir, Caleb Pain, 11th at Lancaster after making the key selection, and Clay Davies, fourth in The British Continental road race rankings on a season of relentless accumulation.
Ollie Wood (Rapha Cycling Club) again rides as his team’s lone road entrant, but a Rapha Lincoln Grand Prix winner and second in the Rapha Super-League needs no company to be dangerous. DAS Richardsons’ best cards are Jock Wadley winner Oliver Curd, one of the season’s breakout riders, and Matthew Lord, back to winning ways at the GA Bennett in May.
The under-23 contest deserves its own paragraph. Lewis Tinsley (BCC Race Team), second in the national road race rankings, was fifth at the Reservoir and sixth at Lincoln; Jack Baldie (Pronto Bikes) won the under-23 classification at Lancaster with sixth overall and leads a six-rider Pronto entry; Portsdown Classic winner Alex Murphy (Stolen Goat 4Endurance), ninth at the Reservoir, brings the season’s earliest big-race pedigree; and Dainty and Chaplin complete a genuinely open contest. There is also the intriguing presence of Jed Smithson (Hagens Berman Jayco), racing domestically for the American development squad.
Lewis Tinsley (BCC Race Team). Image: Olly Hassell/SWpix.com
Among the rest, Matthew Gilmour (Nopinz RT) — second at the Portsdown Classic in February and a winner at Chitterne — has the engine for a long day; Henry Hunter (360cycling) made the decisive selection at Lancaster and finished eighth; Alexander Foster (Cycling Sheffield) won the Danum Trophy and was fourth at Lincoln; Oliver Snodden (Mandene Racing), the Evesham Vale winner, was in the race-shaping move at Lancaster;George Peden (Team PB Performance), finishing 13th at Lancaster; and Elliott Colyer (Aero CLCTV), the Totnes–Vire winner and seventh in the national rankings, leading his rider-owned collective.
Timings
The women’s race starts first, with sign-on in the Pannier Market from 07:00, a ceremonial roll-out at 08:55 and the race start at 09:00. The finish is expected at around 12:20, with presentations at approximately 12:45.
The open race follows in the afternoon: sign-on from 11:00, roll-out at 13:25, race start at 13:30, and an expected finish at around 17:30, with presentations at approximately 18:15.
How to follow
The British Continental will produce a full report and results after the racing. The Devon National Series Cycling account should have updates over on Instagram.
The Lloyds National Road Series arrives in South Molton on Sunday 19 July for a race that is new in name but not entirely in nature. The South Molton Grand Prix replaces the Witheridge Grand Prix as the South West’s round of the series, absorbing part of last year’s course into a longer, harder test — and it lands at a decisive moment.
The women’s contest has been reshaped before the flag drops: Lucy Lee, third in the standings, has been withdrawn from the latest startlist, while series leader Morven Yeoman is a doubt after illness kept her out of Friday’s Dawlish Grand Prix. In the open competition, the top three — two of them Wheelbase CabTech Castelli teammates — resume a contest that has tightened with every round.
Here is our preview.
Featured image: Olly Hassell/SWpix.com
The British Continental‘s National Road Series previews are powered by Topp Cycling.
What is it?
The South Molton Grand Prix is the successor to the Witheridge Grand Prix, which in 2025 brought the National Road Series to Devon for the first time in decades as part of a new double-header with the Dawlish Grand Prix. That weekend format survives — Dawlish hosted the Rapha Super-League and National Circuit Series on Friday night — but the Sunday road race has moved a few miles north-west, taken a new name, and grown in ambition.
The changes are a direct response to last year. The inaugural Witheridge GP drew criticism from some riders and teams for distances that fell short of National Road Series expectations: around 120 kilometres for the open race and just over 80 for the women’s. For 2026, organiser Richard Wickenden has extended both substantially — 161.3 kilometres for the open race, 113.5 for the women’s — and moved the start to the South Molton Pannier Market, the award-winning market hall last visited by elite racing when the 2018 Tour of Britain passed through en route to a stage finish in Barnstaple. Wickenden has described the event as a celebration of “speed, endurance and local pride”, and the town is leaning into it, with the market square at the centre of the day.
Sunday’s races are Round 6 of the women’s series and Round 5 of the open. The defending winners of the Devon round are not on the provisional startlists: Noémie Thomson, who won at Witheridge last July with a long-range solo in her debut road season, is again absent from the DAS–Hutchinson selection, while Matthew Holmes, winner of the 2025 open race, is not entered.
Route
Both races are built from the same foundation: a 28.3-kilometre triangular circuit around South Molton that serves as the entire women’s course and the finishing circuit of the open race. Whatever happens on Sunday will be decided on the same roads — the difference is what the two fields carry into them.
The circuit runs anti-clockwise: east from South Molton along the valley past Bishops Nympton towards Ash Mill, south through Rose Ash towards Creacombe, then west again through Meshaw and Alswear before climbing back towards the town. The route plot shows around 491 metres of climbing per lap on rural, undulating two-way roads that mix village sections with open 60mph stretches. There is little dead road anywhere on it.
Both races begin with a 1.0-kilometre neutralised roll-out from inside the Pannier Market, leaving via East Street and Broad Street before joining the B3137, with racing proper beginning at the kilometre-zero marker on the edge of town. The finish comes back in South Molton, and the final three kilometres are rolling rather than flat. The East Street Climb then offers a final sting in the tail, a half kilometre rise to the finish that maxes out at over 10%.
The women’s race is the circuit in its purest form: four laps, 113.5 kilometres, over 1,900 metres of climbing. With no separate opening phase, the racing starts on the decisive terrain and stays there — there is nowhere to hide from lap one, and every kilometre raced is a kilometre of the finishing circuit learned.
The open race takes a longer road to the same place: an 11.7-kilometre opening section, then 1.75 laps of the 43.1-kilometre Witheridge circuit — the loop that hosted last year’s race — before joining the South Molton circuit for the final 2.5 laps. The total is 161.3 kilometres, one of the longest days on this year’s National Road Series calendar.
Anyone who raced at Witheridge last summer will remember what those roads are like. Our report from 2025 described a circuit of constant climbing and descending on grippy surfaces, where the field was shelled steadily from the back and the decisive move went clear only on the final lap. Grafting that loop onto the front half of the race means the open field arrives at the finishing circuit with 85-odd kilometres of Witheridge roads already in the legs — a day of steady attrition rather than a single decisive obstacle, where the winning move may owe as much to accumulated fatigue as to any one climb.
Weather
At the time of writing, the forecast for Sunday is dry and warm — around 24°C with only a small chance of rain, easing slightly from the heat of the past week. That is racing weather rather than survival weather, but on exposed, rolling roads with a race distance north of 160 kilometres for the open field, a warm afternoon will still take its toll. The women’s race, starting at 09:00, should enjoy the cooler half of the day; the open race will run through the warmest hours.
Riders to watch
Women’s race
The women’s National Road Series arrives in Devon with three rounds remaining and its contest reshaped by Lancaster. Morven Yeoman (DAS–Hutchinson) still leads on 194 points, but Lily Martin’s victory in Williamson Park cut the gap to 44 and moved the Loughborough Lightning rider into second on 150, with Yeoman’s teammate Lucy Lee third on 139 and Amy Henchoz fourth on 122. The latest startlist has already thinned that group: Lee has been withdrawn, while Yeoman — who missed Friday’s Dawlish Grand Prix through illness — remains entered but is a doubt for Sunday.
If she is fit to start, Yeoman remains the reference point. The winner of the Rapha Lincoln Grand Prix, third at the CiCLE Classic and the best home-based under-23 at the national road race, she was strong again at Lancaster — she simply met someone stronger on the final climb. A course of repeated 28-kilometre laps with sustained rolling effort should suit her. But the team around her has thinned: with Lee withdrawn and Ellie Parry no longer on the list, DAS–Hutchinson start just three, Yeoman joined by Tamsin Miller — third at Witheridge last year on similar Devon roads — and Katie Scott, winner of the East Cleveland Classic in April and a contender in her own right. Yeoman’s absence, should it come to that, would leave Scott as the team’s best card — and would transform the weekend: a 44-point lead is commanding when you are racing, and vulnerable when you are not.
Lily Martin arrives as the form rider of the series. The Loughborough Lightning under-23 has now won the Banbury Star, the BUCS Road Race Championship and the Lancaster Grand Prix — all three with solo attacks, and the BUCS title won in the Devon heat in May, so she has already proven herself on this county’s roads. At Lancaster she outmanoeuvred two DAS–Hutchinson riders single-handed; on Sunday Lightning bring six.
Amy Henchoz (Paralloy RT) has been a fixture near the front all season — second at Capernwray, sixth at Lincoln, second behind Martin at the Banbury Star — and heads a five-rider Paralloy squad. Fourth overall, she is the rider best placed to profit if those above her mark each other out of the race.
Handsling Alba Development Road Team won the team classification at Lancaster and bring three here: Grace Lister, who animated the race and made the decisive six-rider move; Mari Porton, fourth at Dawlish last night; and Holly Ramsey, seventh at Witheridge last year. Izzy Sharp, the former WorldTour rider rebuilding her season, was initially entered but has been withdrawn after missing Dawlish.
Matilda McKibben’s withdrawal leaves O’Shea Red Chilli Bikes with just two riders: Sannah Zaman, who made the front group at Lancaster, and Isabel Mayes, leader of the National Circuit Series sprint competition, who was active at the National Road Championships.
FTP–Fulfil The Potential–Racing, the South West’s own Elite Development Team, enter seven on home roads, headed by Ruby Oakes, fourth at Lincoln and among the riders who lit the race up at Lancaster, and Anna Boniface, who made the six-rider move there.
Among the rest: Lucy Harris (Draft Racing) won the 2025 ANEXO/CAMS Women’s CiCLE Classic and knows how to win big races from a small team; Smurfit Westrock Cycling Team field only two, but Amelia Cebak was in the break at the Tour of the Reservoir; Georgia Huddleston (London Academy) was fourth at Solihull; and Jennifer Powell (Performance Development Team) has been the most aggressive rider of the circuit series’ middle weeks and raced at Witheridge last year. There are eye-catching entries from overseas-registered teams, too, with Esther Wong (Team Farto–BTC) and Grace Reynolds (Megamo Vosger Team) both on the list.
Open race
The open race brings together the top three in the series for the second Sunday running. Tom Armstrong (Wheelbase CabTech Castelli) leads on 166 points after the best fortnight of his career: a breakthrough National Circuit Series win at Guildford, then a first National Road Series victory at Lancaster, attacking from a seven-rider group on the final rise into Williamson Park. His teammate Tom Martin sits second on 143 after seventh at Lancaster and the Climber’s Competition there, and the pair’s willingness to trade the leadership — “Tom’s one of my best mates, so I’d have been happy to see him win,” Armstrong said on Sunday — makes Wheelbase doubly hard to race against. Dexter Leeming-Sykes, ninth at Lancaster, and Aaron King deepen a squad that also won the team classification last weekend, though Tim Shoreman and Robert Smart have both been struck from the provisional entry.
George Radcliffe (Atom 6–Cycleur de Luxe–Auto Stroo Continental Team) is third overall on 124 and finished second at Lancaster, his best domestic result of a season split between the Belgian calendar and National A raids. Sixth at the Tour of the Reservoir before that, he has finished ahead of almost everyone except Armstrong when he has raced here — and a long, attritional course should suit a rider like him.
Then there is the rider who missed Lancaster altogether. Danylo Riwnyj (Foran CT) has won the Wally Gimber Trophy, the Rás Mumhan and the Tour of the Reservoir this season — the last with a 14-kilometre solo — and was ninth at Witheridge last July, so he knows exactly what the middle section of Sunday’s course holds. Foran bring five, including 2024 Rás Tailteann winner Dom Jackson and Ollie Hucks, a stage winner at the Ronde van Wymeswold and 15th at Lancaster.
JAKROO Handsling Racing enter six — Kennel Hill winner Rowan Baker is a late withdrawal — and can attack the race from every angle: Harrison Dainty, third at the Reservoir and second in the under-23 standings; Oliver Dawson, fourth at the CiCLE Classic; and Sam Chaplin, whose solo BUCS Road Race Championship title in May was won in Devon. Ride Revolution Coaching match them with eight riders, headed by Gabe Dellar, second at the Reservoir, Caleb Pain, 11th at Lancaster after making the key selection, and Clay Davies, fourth in The British Continental road race rankings on a season of relentless accumulation.
Ollie Wood (Rapha Cycling Club) again rides as his team’s lone road entrant, but a Rapha Lincoln Grand Prix winner and second in the Rapha Super-League needs no company to be dangerous. DAS Richardsons’ best cards are Jock Wadley winner Oliver Curd, one of the season’s breakout riders, and Matthew Lord, back to winning ways at the GA Bennett in May.
The under-23 contest deserves its own paragraph. Lewis Tinsley (BCC Race Team), second in the national road race rankings, was fifth at the Reservoir and sixth at Lincoln; Jack Baldie (Pronto Bikes) won the under-23 classification at Lancaster with sixth overall and leads a six-rider Pronto entry; Portsdown Classic winner Alex Murphy (Stolen Goat 4Endurance), ninth at the Reservoir, brings the season’s earliest big-race pedigree; and Dainty and Chaplin complete a genuinely open contest. There is also the intriguing presence of Jed Smithson (Hagens Berman Jayco), racing domestically for the American development squad.
Among the rest, Matthew Gilmour (Nopinz RT) — second at the Portsdown Classic in February and a winner at Chitterne — has the engine for a long day; Henry Hunter (360cycling) made the decisive selection at Lancaster and finished eighth; Alexander Foster (Cycling Sheffield) won the Danum Trophy and was fourth at Lincoln; Oliver Snodden (Mandene Racing), the Evesham Vale winner, was in the race-shaping move at Lancaster;George Peden (Team PB Performance), finishing 13th at Lancaster; and Elliott Colyer (Aero CLCTV), the Totnes–Vire winner and seventh in the national rankings, leading his rider-owned collective.
Timings
The women’s race starts first, with sign-on in the Pannier Market from 07:00, a ceremonial roll-out at 08:55 and the race start at 09:00. The finish is expected at around 12:20, with presentations at approximately 12:45.
The open race follows in the afternoon: sign-on from 11:00, roll-out at 13:25, race start at 13:30, and an expected finish at around 17:30, with presentations at approximately 18:15.
How to follow
The British Continental will produce a full report and results after the racing. The Devon National Series Cycling account should have updates over on Instagram.
Provisional startlists
Women’s race
Open race
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