2026 Riders Collective GP and KLM Taxis Women’s GP: preview and startlists
The national road season ends on Saturday 19 September in Walton, south Leicestershire, where Max Sillifant’s second Riders Collective GP gains a women’s race, a new 4.6-kilometre circuit and the last word on both of The British Continental’s team rankings.
One hundred and two riders, two National B road races, a 4.6-kilometre lap and a pub garden. With the Strade del Vescovo gone from the calendar, the Riders Collective GP and the KLM Taxis Women’s GP are the final national road races of 2026, and both of our team rankings are still open: Ride Revolution Coaching lead JAKROO Handsling Racing by 17 points and bring seven riders to their rivals’ two, while in the women’s race Loughborough Lightning, 38 behind DAS–Hutchinson, have two riders entered and the leaders have none.
Two National B road races run by Max Sillifant’s Riders Collective on the same circuit on Saturday 19 September, and part of the East Midlands Road Race League. The KLM Taxis Women’s GP starts at 10am over 18 laps and 83 kilometres; the Riders Collective Open GP starts at 2.30pm over 26 laps and 120 kilometres. In between, the Ride Fire 100 sportive rolls out at 10.30am on a 100-kilometre loop through Leicestershire and Northamptonshire, timed so that its riders are back in Walton for the closing laps of the open race. Since the Yomp Bonk Crew withdrew the Strade del Vescovo, nothing national follows.
It is the second edition. A year ago Sillifant, then a Team PB Performance rider, took on the Leicester Forest CC Road Race with five weeks’ notice rather than watch it disappear, and what became the EMRRL Riders Collective GP was won by Adam Lewis, then of Team Skyline, who attacked a 12-rider break with a lap and a half to go and finished alone in the rain, around 45 seconds clear. Tom Williams was second and Matthew King third. James Hartley, riding for Cycling Sheffield, had won the 2024 edition in wet and chaotic conditions.
The 2026 race is a different proposition, as Sillifant told us in July. The venue has moved one village along, to Walton, and the day is built around the Dog and Gun pub: sportive riders watch the women’s peloton roll out before setting off themselves, return for the finale, and stay for the evening. There is live music, a campsite in the next village and a charity cake stall for the MS Society. The women’s race is the biggest change, added only once KLM Taxis had agreed to back it, and it carries the same prize money as the open race. “It’s not just about the riders now,” Sillifant said. “It’s about building it for the future.” He races most weekends himself but is not on Saturday’s startlist. He has a race to run.
Both races are the last round of our road rankings. In the open team standings Ride Revolution Coaching lead JAKROO Handsling Racing by 1,353 points to 1,336, with Wheelbase CabTech Castelli third on 1,228 and nobody entered. A National B win is worth 60 points to the rider and, through him, to his team; Ride Revolution have seven riders on the list, JAKROO two. None of the top three in the individual table (Thomas Armstrong, Danylo Riwnyj, Lewis Tinsley) is racing, but Clay Davies, on 324, would climb to third with a win.
The women’s table is closer to a decision than it looks. DAS–Hutchinson lead on 1,020, Loughborough Lightning are second on 982 and FTP–Fulfil The Potential Racing third on 924. DAS–Hutchinson have no rider entered. Lightning have Georgia Lancaster and Rosie Simmons on the startlist, and a fourth place, worth 40 points, would take them past the leaders; FTP bring three riders and need 97 points between them to do the same.
Route
The new circuit is 4.6 kilometres, flat and technical: three semi-tight left-hand corners, around 25 metres of climbing per lap, quiet roads on the back half that run past a largely disused aerodrome, and tarmac relaid within the last couple of years. The women’s race covers it 18 times and the open race 26, roughly 450 and 650 metres of climbing respectively, and at race pace the bunch passes the village about every six minutes. It replaces the 9.7-kilometre Gilmorton circuit used last year, and it was the first road race circuit Sillifant raced as a junior.
A lap this short, with money on the line most times through, does not lend itself to a quiet afternoon. Last year the winning break formed inside 45 minutes on a longer lap; on this one, expect something up the road early and a bunch that has to decide whether it is worth chasing. The corners will count for more than the climbing: holding position at the front of an 80-rider field through three left-handers, 26 times over, is its own kind of attrition. The current forecast is mild, around 19 degrees, with a low chance of rain, which would be a change from last year’s finale.
Riders to watch
KLM Taxis Women’s GP
Twenty-two riders, and none of the top 16 in our women’s rankings among them, which leaves the race open and the form guide short. The two Loughborough Lightning riders start as the ones to beat. Georgia Lancaster, 21, is the highest-ranked rider on the list, 17th on 173 points, won the Florrie Newbery Classic in April and was sixth at the East and West Midlands championships in May; she has been a stagiaire with O’Shea Red Chilli Bikes since August. Rosie Simmons has raced almost everything this year and arrives off seventh at the Maria Thompson Memorial three weeks ago, eighth overall at the Ronde van Wymeswold and 10th at the Lancaster Grand Prix. Between them they give Lightning two cards and a team title to play for.
Sian Botteley (Brother UK–Team OnForm) is the most experienced rider in the field, with two seasons at UCI Continental level behind her, at DAS–Hutchinson–Brother UK and then Smurfit Westrock, and she won the East and West Midlands women’s championship race at the end of May. Hannah Clough (University of Nottingham CC) won the final stage of the Ronde van Wymeswold on Leicestershire roads in June and was fifth overall, a result that reads well for a short, fast lap.
Lucy Havard (Jadan Vive le Velo p/b Glasdon) has four top-10s from her last five ranking races, fourth at the Duncan Murray Wines Road Race the best of them, and Eleanor Dixon (The Hera Project) was third at the Scottish championships in August.
Two riders arrive with a season spent largely abroad and no domestic form to go on, which makes them the hardest to place and the most interesting. Annabel Ramsay (Smurfit Westrock Cycling Team), born in Leicester, has spent 2026 on the UCI calendar: the Ronde de Mouscron in April, the Gracia-Orlová stage race in the Czech Republic and Dwars door het Hageland in June. Millie Salmon is a junior who moved from Shibden Apex RT to the Dutch Grouwels-Watersley R&D programme for 2026, rode the Watersley Ladies Challenge, a Nations Cup-level stage race, against elite fields in July, and was one of the riders to try to chase Megan Cherry at the junior national championships the same month. FTP–Fulfil The Potential Racing bring three riders, the largest squad here.
Riders Collective Open GP
Adam Lewis (APS Pro Cycling) is the defending champion and the favourite, and it is not close. Last year’s win, alone in the rain by three-quarters of a minute, was as emphatic as they come, and what has followed is the best season of his career. He told us in March that the move to the American Continental team was about doing things differently and finally landing a UCI win; on 30 April he did, taking stage three of the Tour of the Gila in New Mexico from a two-man break with team-mate Conn McDunphy, his first at UCI level in eight seasons of trying. He was second on a stage of the Tour de Beauce in Canada in June and inside the top six overall, wore the yellow jersey at the Rás Tailteann after stage two before finishing seventh as McDunphy won the race, and finished a fortnight ago with the Lloyds Bank Tour of Britain, his first since 2022. On British roads he has won the East and West Midlands championship and the Ronde van Wymeswold overall, and was third at the Lancaster Grand Prix. On a circuit with corners rather than climbs, the question is whether anyone can stop him getting away, and whether the teams with numbers are prepared to spend them trying.
The team with the most numbers is Ride Revolution Coaching, seven riders and a 17-point lead in the team rankings to defend, and their leader has the results to be Lewis’s main rival. Clay Davies is the highest-ranked rider on the list on 324 points, with second overall at Totnes–Vire, second at the GA Bennett Road Race, three fifth places and a seventh at the East Cleveland Classic this year; his team say he does it on 10 hours a week around a job in property. Josh Housley gives them a second option, third at the Timmy James Memorial and fifth at East Cleveland. JAKROO Handsling Racing’s hopes of overturning the team lead rest on two riders. Sam Chaplin, 21, won the BUCS road race in May, was fifth overall at the Tour of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a UCI stage race, and has raced the Ronde de l’Oise, the Flanders Tomorrow Tour and the West Bohemia Tour since joining the team in June. Oscar Nisbett, 19, has been on the same French and Czech trips and, as a first-year under-23, is more likely to be the one asked to work. Two against seven is the arithmetic.
Ashley Hutchison (TAAP Kalas) is the form rider from last weekend, having won the Nick Clayton Memorial from an eight-rider move on the final lap, his first win of a season he had all but written off. “I’ve had so much bad luck this year, but this result wipes all of that out,” he told us. He was 10th here last year. Thomas Doig (Foran CT) was second at Nick Clayton, having come past Hutchison at 400 metres and faded, and was sixth at the Jock Wadley Memorial in his first season with Foran.
Hutchison beats Doig last weekend. Image: Joseph Lister
Matthew King (Atom 6–Cycleur de Luxe–Auto Stroo Continental Team) has the local claim and the pedigree: born in Leicester, third here last year, fourth at the East Cleveland Classic in April, and third on a stage of the Tour de Guadeloupe in August. His team-mate James McKay, the 2025 Rapha Lincoln Grand Prix winner, was ninth at the Rutland–Melton CiCLE Classic and 11th at the Beaumont Trophy.
William Perrett (DAS Richardsons) won the GA Bennett Road Race in May, was fifth here last year from the break, and is a Rás Tailteann stage winner, soloing into Clifden in 2025 after four years of near misses. Oliver Snodden (Mandene Racing) was in that break too, and this year has won at Evesham Vale and been fourth at the East and West Midlands championships. Jack Hartley (Moonglu SpatzWear) is the Northern regional champion.
Oliver Hurdle (Stolen Goat 4Endurance). Image: Olly Hassell/SWpix.com
Stolen Goat 4Endurance come without Alex Murphy but with a pair of riders who have been in the mix at National Bs all year. Oliver Hurdle was third at the GA Bennett Road Race behind Perrett and Davies and sixth at the East and West Midlands championships; Mohammad Ganjkhanlou was fifth at the Jock Wadley Memorial, 14th at the Rutland–Melton CiCLE Classic and ninth at Nick Clayton on Sunday, leading the chase group home. The team spent part of the late summer at the Midden-Brabant Poort Omloop in the Netherlands, a UCI one-day race, so the legs should be there.
Of the under-23s, Benjamin Arey (O’Neills Spirit Racing Team), 18, was second at the Chas Messenger Trophy earlier this month and rode this race as a junior last year, and Denholm Edwards (Cycling Sheffield) has the more consistent record over the season: third at the Northern regional championships, fifth at the Danum Trophy, 10th at Chas Messenger and 16th at Nick Clayton on Sunday, a rider who finishes rather than one who wins, so far.
One hundred and two riders, two National B road races, a 4.6-kilometre lap and a pub garden. With the Strade del Vescovo gone from the calendar, the Riders Collective GP and the KLM Taxis Women’s GP are the final national road races of 2026, and both of our team rankings are still open: Ride Revolution Coaching lead JAKROO Handsling Racing by 17 points and bring seven riders to their rivals’ two, while in the women’s race Loughborough Lightning, 38 behind DAS–Hutchinson, have two riders entered and the leaders have none.
Featured image: Sarah Swinscoe
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What is it?
Two National B road races run by Max Sillifant’s Riders Collective on the same circuit on Saturday 19 September, and part of the East Midlands Road Race League. The KLM Taxis Women’s GP starts at 10am over 18 laps and 83 kilometres; the Riders Collective Open GP starts at 2.30pm over 26 laps and 120 kilometres. In between, the Ride Fire 100 sportive rolls out at 10.30am on a 100-kilometre loop through Leicestershire and Northamptonshire, timed so that its riders are back in Walton for the closing laps of the open race. Since the Yomp Bonk Crew withdrew the Strade del Vescovo, nothing national follows.
It is the second edition. A year ago Sillifant, then a Team PB Performance rider, took on the Leicester Forest CC Road Race with five weeks’ notice rather than watch it disappear, and what became the EMRRL Riders Collective GP was won by Adam Lewis, then of Team Skyline, who attacked a 12-rider break with a lap and a half to go and finished alone in the rain, around 45 seconds clear. Tom Williams was second and Matthew King third. James Hartley, riding for Cycling Sheffield, had won the 2024 edition in wet and chaotic conditions.
The 2026 race is a different proposition, as Sillifant told us in July. The venue has moved one village along, to Walton, and the day is built around the Dog and Gun pub: sportive riders watch the women’s peloton roll out before setting off themselves, return for the finale, and stay for the evening. There is live music, a campsite in the next village and a charity cake stall for the MS Society. The women’s race is the biggest change, added only once KLM Taxis had agreed to back it, and it carries the same prize money as the open race. “It’s not just about the riders now,” Sillifant said. “It’s about building it for the future.” He races most weekends himself but is not on Saturday’s startlist. He has a race to run.
Both races are the last round of our road rankings. In the open team standings Ride Revolution Coaching lead JAKROO Handsling Racing by 1,353 points to 1,336, with Wheelbase CabTech Castelli third on 1,228 and nobody entered. A National B win is worth 60 points to the rider and, through him, to his team; Ride Revolution have seven riders on the list, JAKROO two. None of the top three in the individual table (Thomas Armstrong, Danylo Riwnyj, Lewis Tinsley) is racing, but Clay Davies, on 324, would climb to third with a win.
The women’s table is closer to a decision than it looks. DAS–Hutchinson lead on 1,020, Loughborough Lightning are second on 982 and FTP–Fulfil The Potential Racing third on 924. DAS–Hutchinson have no rider entered. Lightning have Georgia Lancaster and Rosie Simmons on the startlist, and a fourth place, worth 40 points, would take them past the leaders; FTP bring three riders and need 97 points between them to do the same.
Route
The new circuit is 4.6 kilometres, flat and technical: three semi-tight left-hand corners, around 25 metres of climbing per lap, quiet roads on the back half that run past a largely disused aerodrome, and tarmac relaid within the last couple of years. The women’s race covers it 18 times and the open race 26, roughly 450 and 650 metres of climbing respectively, and at race pace the bunch passes the village about every six minutes. It replaces the 9.7-kilometre Gilmorton circuit used last year, and it was the first road race circuit Sillifant raced as a junior.
A lap this short, with money on the line most times through, does not lend itself to a quiet afternoon. Last year the winning break formed inside 45 minutes on a longer lap; on this one, expect something up the road early and a bunch that has to decide whether it is worth chasing. The corners will count for more than the climbing: holding position at the front of an 80-rider field through three left-handers, 26 times over, is its own kind of attrition. The current forecast is mild, around 19 degrees, with a low chance of rain, which would be a change from last year’s finale.
Riders to watch
KLM Taxis Women’s GP
Twenty-two riders, and none of the top 16 in our women’s rankings among them, which leaves the race open and the form guide short. The two Loughborough Lightning riders start as the ones to beat. Georgia Lancaster, 21, is the highest-ranked rider on the list, 17th on 173 points, won the Florrie Newbery Classic in April and was sixth at the East and West Midlands championships in May; she has been a stagiaire with O’Shea Red Chilli Bikes since August. Rosie Simmons has raced almost everything this year and arrives off seventh at the Maria Thompson Memorial three weeks ago, eighth overall at the Ronde van Wymeswold and 10th at the Lancaster Grand Prix. Between them they give Lightning two cards and a team title to play for.
Sian Botteley (Brother UK–Team OnForm) is the most experienced rider in the field, with two seasons at UCI Continental level behind her, at DAS–Hutchinson–Brother UK and then Smurfit Westrock, and she won the East and West Midlands women’s championship race at the end of May. Hannah Clough (University of Nottingham CC) won the final stage of the Ronde van Wymeswold on Leicestershire roads in June and was fifth overall, a result that reads well for a short, fast lap.
Lucy Havard (Jadan Vive le Velo p/b Glasdon) has four top-10s from her last five ranking races, fourth at the Duncan Murray Wines Road Race the best of them, and Eleanor Dixon (The Hera Project) was third at the Scottish championships in August.
Two riders arrive with a season spent largely abroad and no domestic form to go on, which makes them the hardest to place and the most interesting. Annabel Ramsay (Smurfit Westrock Cycling Team), born in Leicester, has spent 2026 on the UCI calendar: the Ronde de Mouscron in April, the Gracia-Orlová stage race in the Czech Republic and Dwars door het Hageland in June. Millie Salmon is a junior who moved from Shibden Apex RT to the Dutch Grouwels-Watersley R&D programme for 2026, rode the Watersley Ladies Challenge, a Nations Cup-level stage race, against elite fields in July, and was one of the riders to try to chase Megan Cherry at the junior national championships the same month. FTP–Fulfil The Potential Racing bring three riders, the largest squad here.
Riders Collective Open GP
Adam Lewis (APS Pro Cycling) is the defending champion and the favourite, and it is not close. Last year’s win, alone in the rain by three-quarters of a minute, was as emphatic as they come, and what has followed is the best season of his career. He told us in March that the move to the American Continental team was about doing things differently and finally landing a UCI win; on 30 April he did, taking stage three of the Tour of the Gila in New Mexico from a two-man break with team-mate Conn McDunphy, his first at UCI level in eight seasons of trying. He was second on a stage of the Tour de Beauce in Canada in June and inside the top six overall, wore the yellow jersey at the Rás Tailteann after stage two before finishing seventh as McDunphy won the race, and finished a fortnight ago with the Lloyds Bank Tour of Britain, his first since 2022. On British roads he has won the East and West Midlands championship and the Ronde van Wymeswold overall, and was third at the Lancaster Grand Prix. On a circuit with corners rather than climbs, the question is whether anyone can stop him getting away, and whether the teams with numbers are prepared to spend them trying.
The team with the most numbers is Ride Revolution Coaching, seven riders and a 17-point lead in the team rankings to defend, and their leader has the results to be Lewis’s main rival. Clay Davies is the highest-ranked rider on the list on 324 points, with second overall at Totnes–Vire, second at the GA Bennett Road Race, three fifth places and a seventh at the East Cleveland Classic this year; his team say he does it on 10 hours a week around a job in property. Josh Housley gives them a second option, third at the Timmy James Memorial and fifth at East Cleveland. JAKROO Handsling Racing’s hopes of overturning the team lead rest on two riders. Sam Chaplin, 21, won the BUCS road race in May, was fifth overall at the Tour of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a UCI stage race, and has raced the Ronde de l’Oise, the Flanders Tomorrow Tour and the West Bohemia Tour since joining the team in June. Oscar Nisbett, 19, has been on the same French and Czech trips and, as a first-year under-23, is more likely to be the one asked to work. Two against seven is the arithmetic.
Ashley Hutchison (TAAP Kalas) is the form rider from last weekend, having won the Nick Clayton Memorial from an eight-rider move on the final lap, his first win of a season he had all but written off. “I’ve had so much bad luck this year, but this result wipes all of that out,” he told us. He was 10th here last year. Thomas Doig (Foran CT) was second at Nick Clayton, having come past Hutchison at 400 metres and faded, and was sixth at the Jock Wadley Memorial in his first season with Foran.
Matthew King (Atom 6–Cycleur de Luxe–Auto Stroo Continental Team) has the local claim and the pedigree: born in Leicester, third here last year, fourth at the East Cleveland Classic in April, and third on a stage of the Tour de Guadeloupe in August. His team-mate James McKay, the 2025 Rapha Lincoln Grand Prix winner, was ninth at the Rutland–Melton CiCLE Classic and 11th at the Beaumont Trophy.
William Perrett (DAS Richardsons) won the GA Bennett Road Race in May, was fifth here last year from the break, and is a Rás Tailteann stage winner, soloing into Clifden in 2025 after four years of near misses. Oliver Snodden (Mandene Racing) was in that break too, and this year has won at Evesham Vale and been fourth at the East and West Midlands championships. Jack Hartley (Moonglu SpatzWear) is the Northern regional champion.
Stolen Goat 4Endurance come without Alex Murphy but with a pair of riders who have been in the mix at National Bs all year. Oliver Hurdle was third at the GA Bennett Road Race behind Perrett and Davies and sixth at the East and West Midlands championships; Mohammad Ganjkhanlou was fifth at the Jock Wadley Memorial, 14th at the Rutland–Melton CiCLE Classic and ninth at Nick Clayton on Sunday, leading the chase group home. The team spent part of the late summer at the Midden-Brabant Poort Omloop in the Netherlands, a UCI one-day race, so the legs should be there.
Of the under-23s, Benjamin Arey (O’Neills Spirit Racing Team), 18, was second at the Chas Messenger Trophy earlier this month and rode this race as a junior last year, and Denholm Edwards (Cycling Sheffield) has the more consistent record over the season: third at the Northern regional championships, fifth at the Danum Trophy, 10th at Chas Messenger and 16th at Nick Clayton on Sunday, a rider who finishes rather than one who wins, so far.
Startlists
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