Mercato, 5 October: three Britons at one French club, and three juniors to Denmark
Ed Morgan and Tom Williams join David Hird at E. Leclerc Ruffec Top 16, and George Kimber leaves ESEG Douai for Team Bricquebec Cotentin on the back of winning the Tour de la Manche. Jo Tindley stays at Smurfit Westrock, camsmajaco name both 2027 junior squads, Zappi add three more riders, and three British juniors signed for the same Danish team last month without us picking it up.
E. Leclerc Ruffec Top 16 will line up with at least three British riders next season. Edward Morgan and Tom Williams both arrive from CC Villeneuve Saint-Germain, where they have been team-mates all year, and David Hird is staying on for a second season. Further north, George Kimber leaves ESEG Douai for Team Bricquebec Cotentin on the back of winning the Tour de la Manche, which is the sort of first year in France that gets a rider noticed. At home, Jo Tindley, 39 and the national circuit race champion of 2021, is staying with Smurfit Westrock Cycling Team, where she has ridden since the team’s first season.
The junior ranks have been just as busy. camsmajaco have named both their 2027 squads, and we have some catching up to do on three British juniors who joined the same Danish team last month while we were looking the other way. Elsewhere, Maurène Trégouët is leaving O’Shea Red Chilli Bikes after a single year on a British licence, Millie Salmon has found a team, Zappi have a fourth rider for next season, and Mark Donovan is off back to the WorldTour.
Drop us a line at info@thebritishcontinental.co.uk if you have news you want us to add.
Britons abroad
George Kimber (ESEG Douai to Team Bricquebec Cotentin, confirmed 1 October). Kimber is 26 and he came up the long way, entirely at home, racing primarily for Spirit Racing. He went to ESEG Douai for this season after winning the Rás in 2025, and a first year in France does not often go like this. He won a stage and the overall at the Tour de la Manche, then the Grand Prix de Tourteron, the Prix de Serches and the Montagne Verte-Prix David Brunet. Against UCI Class 2 fields he was third at Nogent-sur-Oise and sixth at Pérenchies.
Bricquebec keep turning up in this column. They lose James Hartley to Véloce Club Rouen 76 for next season, and Kimber joins a squad that still has Max Krasinski in it.
Edward Morgan (CC Villeneuve Saint-Germain to E. Leclerc Ruffec Top 16, confirmed 29 September). Five wins this year have taken Morgan to Ruffec, among them the Prix Souvenir René Huel in July. Noah Bleteau was third that day, and has since moved up to Nationale 1 with Team Lockimmo.com. Morgan also won the Prix des Côtes des Crêtes Préardennaises, and he raced at home in June, finishing third overall at the Ronde van Wymeswold, which he won in 2025. Before France his teams included Wales Racing Academy, Spectra Racing and Muc-Off–SRCT–Storck.
Tom Williams (CC Villeneuve Saint-Germain to E. Leclerc Ruffec Top 16, confirmed 5 October). Morgan’s team-mate this year, going to the same place. Williams is 22, and has had a season of some volume: 38 race days, a win at La Gainsbarre in April and third at the Tour du Périgord in August. He has been about a bit for his age, with half of 2025 at the Spanish Continental team Monzon-Incolor-Gub and a trainee spell at Saint Piran in 2024, either side of THRIVA-SRCT and Muc-Off–SRCT–Storck. Ruffec call him powerful and solid, and reckon he will earn his keep on the hard races of the west.
David Hird (E. Leclerc Ruffec Top 16, staying, rider-announced 29 September). Hird says he is staying put for a second season, which would put him, Morgan and Williams in the same team. Hird is 24, and has had a solid season: 52 race days of French amateur racing, the best of them second at the Prix Raymond Pasquier à Villebois-Lavalette in August, and 18th overall at the Three Days of Cherbourg in September. Like James Hartley and Max Krasinski, he rode for Cycling Sheffield before he crossed to France.
Mark Donovan (Pinarello Q36.5 to Visma–Lease a Bike, confirmed 2 October). Donovan is 27 and signs for two years, to the end of 2028, which puts him back in the top division for the first time since 2022. He turned professional with the squad now called Picnic PostNL and spent three seasons there, then joined Q36.5 halfway through 2023 and stayed as it became Pinarello Q36.5. He did not labour the decision. “Team Visma | Lease a Bike is one of the best teams in the world, so when they come and ask you to join the team, there is no need to think twice,” he said.
Domestic
Jo Tindley (Smurfit Westrock Cycling Team, staying, confirmed 5 October). Tindley is 39 and has been with Rick Lister’s team since its first season in 2021, when it raced under the Pro-Noctis name. She will be there again next season. She won the national circuit race championship in Lincoln that first year, going clear early and finishing one minute 12 seconds up on Abi Smith, and this year she was fourth at the East Cleveland Classic and 10th at the ANEXO/CAMS Women’s CiCLE Classic.
Maurène Trégouët (O’Shea Red Chilli Bikes to Tenvels Le Dévoluy, confirmed 30 September). Not British, but she is leaving a British team, which is enough to get her in here. Trégouët is 22 and from Brittany, and she came to O’Shea Red Chilli Bikes this season after three years at Arkéa-B&B Hôtels. She goes to Tenvels Le Dévoluy, a Nationale 1 club that DirectVelo says will apply for Continental status for 2027. Ninth overall at the Région Pays de la Loire Tour was her best day of the season.
Millie Salmon (Grouwels Watersley R&D Cycling Team to The Hera Project, confirmed 28 September). Salmon had been sitting on the tracker as leaving without anywhere to go. Now she has somewhere. She won the Mennock Pass race in Scotland in June.
Zappi Racing Team have now named four riders for 2027: Ben Archer, who was in our last edition, and three since. Jody Mills (Zappi Junior Race Team to Zappi Racing Team, confirmed 29 September) moves up from Zappi’s junior team to the senior one. Thayer Ask (University of Nottingham Cycling Club to Zappi Racing Team, confirmed 2 October) is 19, American, and comes from university racing in Britain rather than a development squad, which is exactly the door Flavio Zappi has always left open: riders write in, and a few of them get a season in Tuscany out of it. Recruitment has not closed. Otis Jones (Zappi Racing Team, staying, confirmed 4 October) is the first of the four staying on rather than arriving. Jones is 19 and Australian, and he turned up in Italy this season from Geelong Cycle Club after a January that had gone well at home: 18th in the time trial and 20th in the road race at the Australian under-23 championships. Europe was harder, as it tends to be. He rode the Ronde de l’Isard, the Gran Premio della Liberazione and the Giro della Provincia di Biella, and his best days were 41st at the Giro delle Valli Aretine and 50th at Bassano-Montegrappa.
Juniors
camsmajaco named both their 2027 junior squads last week, eight men and seven women, and both are smaller than this year’s. Ian Mansel-Thomas points at the UCI. The Junior Road Nations Cup is being reformatted for 2027 and entry limited to national and regional teams, which shuts trade teams like his out of it. He says that matters a great deal to the junior women, whose calendar is thin at the top end to begin with, and barely at all to the men.
Either way the turnover is severe. Seven junior men age out, every one of them born in 2008, and five come up from youth racing. On the women’s side it is five out and three in. Milo and Sam de la Mare and Daniel Davies are the men’s second-year core, and Aalia Clay, who took bronze in the junior time trial at the world championships, heads the four staying with the women.
Three of those leaving know where they are going. Leon Atkins (camsmajaco to Lidl–Trek Future Racing), the junior national time trial champion, moves into the American team’s Continental development squad. That one has been coming: Lidl-Trek announced the pathway deal back in April 2025, when Atkins was still at Fensham Howes, and said only that he would join them in the coming years. Megan Cherry (camsmajaco to Simpson Nouvelles) we had in the 22 September round-up. Zoe Roche (camsmajaco to Decathlon CMA CGM, reported) has been riding for the French team’s cyclocross squad since August, and ProCyclingUK has her among the signings for their new women’s road team, which is not confirmed. The other nine, six men and three women, have nothing announced.
Three British first-year juniors are going to the same place next season, and all three were announced last month without us picking them up. That one is on us, so here they are properly. AirTox Carl Ras Junior Women, the Danish development team run by Morten Ravnkilde with Uno-X Mobility as its talent partner, named Olivia Smallshaw (Secret-Training.cc) on 8 September, Olivia Poole (Specialized Youth Development Team) on 14 September and Aisling Charlesworth (Fibrax Fenwick’s Wrexham Cycling Club) on 18 September. Every one of those went out on Instagram and nowhere else, which is increasingly where this part of the sport does its business.
Charlesworth is 15 and has ridden for the Wrexham club since she was four. This year she won the under-17 editions of In Flanders Fields at Ypres and the Ronde van Vlaanderen at Oudenaarde, and took three national youth track titles in Manchester in August, in the elimination, the individual pursuit and the points race. Smallshaw was the one chasing her home in two of those. She came away from the same week with four medals, among them the Madison silver alongside Katie Robertson, who is off to camsmajaco. So the pair of them spent August racing each other and will spend next season on the same team. Poole arrives from somewhere else entirely, as national youth cross-country and short-track mountain bike champion, second at the European youth cross-country championships and third at the British road championships.
All of the above is on Mercato 2027, our tracker of transfers and rider moves, along with everything else we have confirmed. If you missed it, the last edition had Tom Portsmouth and James Hartley heading for French Continental teams and Zappi naming their first rider for 2027.
Featured image: Milan Josy/The British Continental
E. Leclerc Ruffec Top 16 will line up with at least three British riders next season. Edward Morgan and Tom Williams both arrive from CC Villeneuve Saint-Germain, where they have been team-mates all year, and David Hird is staying on for a second season. Further north, George Kimber leaves ESEG Douai for Team Bricquebec Cotentin on the back of winning the Tour de la Manche, which is the sort of first year in France that gets a rider noticed. At home, Jo Tindley, 39 and the national circuit race champion of 2021, is staying with Smurfit Westrock Cycling Team, where she has ridden since the team’s first season.
The junior ranks have been just as busy. camsmajaco have named both their 2027 squads, and we have some catching up to do on three British juniors who joined the same Danish team last month while we were looking the other way. Elsewhere, Maurène Trégouët is leaving O’Shea Red Chilli Bikes after a single year on a British licence, Millie Salmon has found a team, Zappi have a fourth rider for next season, and Mark Donovan is off back to the WorldTour.
Drop us a line at info@thebritishcontinental.co.uk if you have news you want us to add.
Britons abroad
George Kimber (ESEG Douai to Team Bricquebec Cotentin, confirmed 1 October). Kimber is 26 and he came up the long way, entirely at home, racing primarily for Spirit Racing. He went to ESEG Douai for this season after winning the Rás in 2025, and a first year in France does not often go like this. He won a stage and the overall at the Tour de la Manche, then the Grand Prix de Tourteron, the Prix de Serches and the Montagne Verte-Prix David Brunet. Against UCI Class 2 fields he was third at Nogent-sur-Oise and sixth at Pérenchies.
Bricquebec keep turning up in this column. They lose James Hartley to Véloce Club Rouen 76 for next season, and Kimber joins a squad that still has Max Krasinski in it.
Edward Morgan (CC Villeneuve Saint-Germain to E. Leclerc Ruffec Top 16, confirmed 29 September). Five wins this year have taken Morgan to Ruffec, among them the Prix Souvenir René Huel in July. Noah Bleteau was third that day, and has since moved up to Nationale 1 with Team Lockimmo.com. Morgan also won the Prix des Côtes des Crêtes Préardennaises, and he raced at home in June, finishing third overall at the Ronde van Wymeswold, which he won in 2025. Before France his teams included Wales Racing Academy, Spectra Racing and Muc-Off–SRCT–Storck.
Tom Williams (CC Villeneuve Saint-Germain to E. Leclerc Ruffec Top 16, confirmed 5 October). Morgan’s team-mate this year, going to the same place. Williams is 22, and has had a season of some volume: 38 race days, a win at La Gainsbarre in April and third at the Tour du Périgord in August. He has been about a bit for his age, with half of 2025 at the Spanish Continental team Monzon-Incolor-Gub and a trainee spell at Saint Piran in 2024, either side of THRIVA-SRCT and Muc-Off–SRCT–Storck. Ruffec call him powerful and solid, and reckon he will earn his keep on the hard races of the west.
David Hird (E. Leclerc Ruffec Top 16, staying, rider-announced 29 September). Hird says he is staying put for a second season, which would put him, Morgan and Williams in the same team. Hird is 24, and has had a solid season: 52 race days of French amateur racing, the best of them second at the Prix Raymond Pasquier à Villebois-Lavalette in August, and 18th overall at the Three Days of Cherbourg in September. Like James Hartley and Max Krasinski, he rode for Cycling Sheffield before he crossed to France.
Mark Donovan (Pinarello Q36.5 to Visma–Lease a Bike, confirmed 2 October). Donovan is 27 and signs for two years, to the end of 2028, which puts him back in the top division for the first time since 2022. He turned professional with the squad now called Picnic PostNL and spent three seasons there, then joined Q36.5 halfway through 2023 and stayed as it became Pinarello Q36.5. He did not labour the decision. “Team Visma | Lease a Bike is one of the best teams in the world, so when they come and ask you to join the team, there is no need to think twice,” he said.
Domestic
Jo Tindley (Smurfit Westrock Cycling Team, staying, confirmed 5 October). Tindley is 39 and has been with Rick Lister’s team since its first season in 2021, when it raced under the Pro-Noctis name. She will be there again next season. She won the national circuit race championship in Lincoln that first year, going clear early and finishing one minute 12 seconds up on Abi Smith, and this year she was fourth at the East Cleveland Classic and 10th at the ANEXO/CAMS Women’s CiCLE Classic.
Maurène Trégouët (O’Shea Red Chilli Bikes to Tenvels Le Dévoluy, confirmed 30 September). Not British, but she is leaving a British team, which is enough to get her in here. Trégouët is 22 and from Brittany, and she came to O’Shea Red Chilli Bikes this season after three years at Arkéa-B&B Hôtels. She goes to Tenvels Le Dévoluy, a Nationale 1 club that DirectVelo says will apply for Continental status for 2027. Ninth overall at the Région Pays de la Loire Tour was her best day of the season.
Millie Salmon (Grouwels Watersley R&D Cycling Team to The Hera Project, confirmed 28 September). Salmon had been sitting on the tracker as leaving without anywhere to go. Now she has somewhere. She won the Mennock Pass race in Scotland in June.
Zappi Racing Team have now named four riders for 2027: Ben Archer, who was in our last edition, and three since. Jody Mills (Zappi Junior Race Team to Zappi Racing Team, confirmed 29 September) moves up from Zappi’s junior team to the senior one. Thayer Ask (University of Nottingham Cycling Club to Zappi Racing Team, confirmed 2 October) is 19, American, and comes from university racing in Britain rather than a development squad, which is exactly the door Flavio Zappi has always left open: riders write in, and a few of them get a season in Tuscany out of it. Recruitment has not closed. Otis Jones (Zappi Racing Team, staying, confirmed 4 October) is the first of the four staying on rather than arriving. Jones is 19 and Australian, and he turned up in Italy this season from Geelong Cycle Club after a January that had gone well at home: 18th in the time trial and 20th in the road race at the Australian under-23 championships. Europe was harder, as it tends to be. He rode the Ronde de l’Isard, the Gran Premio della Liberazione and the Giro della Provincia di Biella, and his best days were 41st at the Giro delle Valli Aretine and 50th at Bassano-Montegrappa.
Juniors
camsmajaco named both their 2027 junior squads last week, eight men and seven women, and both are smaller than this year’s. Ian Mansel-Thomas points at the UCI. The Junior Road Nations Cup is being reformatted for 2027 and entry limited to national and regional teams, which shuts trade teams like his out of it. He says that matters a great deal to the junior women, whose calendar is thin at the top end to begin with, and barely at all to the men.
Either way the turnover is severe. Seven junior men age out, every one of them born in 2008, and five come up from youth racing. On the women’s side it is five out and three in. Milo and Sam de la Mare and Daniel Davies are the men’s second-year core, and Aalia Clay, who took bronze in the junior time trial at the world championships, heads the four staying with the women.
Three of those leaving know where they are going. Leon Atkins (camsmajaco to Lidl–Trek Future Racing), the junior national time trial champion, moves into the American team’s Continental development squad. That one has been coming: Lidl-Trek announced the pathway deal back in April 2025, when Atkins was still at Fensham Howes, and said only that he would join them in the coming years. Megan Cherry (camsmajaco to Simpson Nouvelles) we had in the 22 September round-up. Zoe Roche (camsmajaco to Decathlon CMA CGM, reported) has been riding for the French team’s cyclocross squad since August, and ProCyclingUK has her among the signings for their new women’s road team, which is not confirmed. The other nine, six men and three women, have nothing announced.
Three British first-year juniors are going to the same place next season, and all three were announced last month without us picking them up. That one is on us, so here they are properly. AirTox Carl Ras Junior Women, the Danish development team run by Morten Ravnkilde with Uno-X Mobility as its talent partner, named Olivia Smallshaw (Secret-Training.cc) on 8 September, Olivia Poole (Specialized Youth Development Team) on 14 September and Aisling Charlesworth (Fibrax Fenwick’s Wrexham Cycling Club) on 18 September. Every one of those went out on Instagram and nowhere else, which is increasingly where this part of the sport does its business.
Charlesworth is 15 and has ridden for the Wrexham club since she was four. This year she won the under-17 editions of In Flanders Fields at Ypres and the Ronde van Vlaanderen at Oudenaarde, and took three national youth track titles in Manchester in August, in the elimination, the individual pursuit and the points race. Smallshaw was the one chasing her home in two of those. She came away from the same week with four medals, among them the Madison silver alongside Katie Robertson, who is off to camsmajaco. So the pair of them spent August racing each other and will spend next season on the same team. Poole arrives from somewhere else entirely, as national youth cross-country and short-track mountain bike champion, second at the European youth cross-country championships and third at the British road championships.
All of the above is on Mercato 2027, our tracker of transfers and rider moves, along with everything else we have confirmed. If you missed it, the last edition had Tom Portsmouth and James Hartley heading for French Continental teams and Zappi naming their first rider for 2027.
Featured image: Milan Josy/The British Continental
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