Tour of Britain Women

The Tour of Britain Women is a Women's WorldTour cycling stage race held across England, Scotland, or Wales, run over five days in August since 2026 after years as a June race. First run in 2014 as the Women's Tour and now run as the Lloyds Tour of Britain Women after its title partner, it suits riders who can handle changeable weather, technical descents, and the tactical compression of a short stage race.

The Tour of Britain Women is a Women’s WorldTour stage race in Britain, first held in 2014 as the Women’s Tour and renamed in 2024, when British Cycling took it over. The route changes every year, and more than once the winner has been decided by bonus seconds in the last sprint of the final stage.

The Women’s Tour begins in 2014

The first Women’s Tour ran from May 7 to 11, 2014, over five stages from Oundle in Northamptonshire to Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk. Sixteen teams started, three of them the national teams of Great Britain, the Netherlands and Switzerland. The longest stage was 118.5 kilometers and the shortest 87.8. Marianne Vos, then the Olympic and world champion, won the race.

Lisa Brennauer won in 2015, and in 2016 the race joined the new Women’s WorldTour. By 2022 it had grown to six stages.

Lizzie Deignan’s two victories

Lizzie Deignan won in 2016, when she raced as Lizzie Armitstead, and again in 2019. In 2019 she and Kasia Niewiadoma started the final stage level on time, and Deignan won the race by two seconds.

She rode the 2024 race for the Great Britain team, in a squad of six that also had Anna Henderson and the Olympic track champion Elinor Barker. On the final stage she attacked alone on the Grains Bar climb and was caught with 40 kilometers to go. Her last ride in the race was the 2025 finale in Glasgow, where she finished in the bunch after helping her teammate Riejanne Markus to fourth overall.

Longo Borghini wins the 2022 Women’s Tour by one second

Elisa Longo Borghini and Grace Brown started the last stage of the 2022 Women’s Tour on the same time. At the first intermediate sprint Longo Borghini mistimed her effort and Brown gained three seconds. Longo Borghini’s Trek-Segafredo teammates talked her into trying again at the finish in Oxford, where the last kilometer had four turns and a short rise. Deignan, on leave from racing that year, had sent her a message the day before telling her to remember the 2019 sprint.

Trek-Segafredo had four riders around her with two kilometers to go, and Audrey Cordon-Ragot led her out after the first turn. Lorena Wiebes won the stage from Clara Copponi, and Longo Borghini was third. Brown finished 12th, and the four bonus seconds for third place gave Longo Borghini the race by one second after more than 19 hours of racing.

British Cycling revives the race in 2024

The 2023 race was canceled because of rising costs and a lack of sponsorship, and its organizer, SweetSpot, went into liquidation. British Cycling took the race over for 2024, renamed it the Tour of Britain Women and cut it from six stages to four.

Lotte Kopecky, the world champion, won the opening stage from Welshpool to Llandudno in a photo finish with Letizia Paternoster. The next day she attacked a kilometer from the top of the Horseshoe Pass, took only Henderson with her and beat her in a two-rider sprint in Wrexham. That gave her a lead of 17 seconds over Henderson, and it was still 17 seconds at the end.

The final stage ran from the National Cycling Centre in Manchester to Leigh, 99 kilometers with 1,615 meters of climbing. Its last classified climb was the Ramsbottom Rake, 0.97 kilometers at an average of 9.9 percent. The rain grew heavier through the day, and Ruby Roseman-Gannon won the stage by passing Christine Majerus on the line as Majerus raised an arm to celebrate.

Wollaston beats Ferguson on bonus seconds in Glasgow

The 2025 race started in Dalby Forest in the North York Moors and went to Scotland for the first time, with a finish on a city-center circuit in Glasgow. Cat Ferguson, who was 19, won the third stage in Kelso and led Ally Wollaston by three seconds before the last day.

Wollaston won all three intermediate sprints in Glasgow with Ferguson second each time, which brought them level on time. Ferguson also had to change bikes and chase back to the peloton. Wiebes won the stage, her seventh in the race. Wollaston was third and took the last four bonus seconds, Ferguson was seventh, and the overall title went to Wollaston.

Le Court Pienaar wins on the Great Orme in 2026

In 2026 the race moved from June to August and grew to five stages, the same number as the men’s Tour of Britain for the first time. It started in Cockermouth, on the edge of the Lake District, and finished in Royal Leamington Spa. The only uphill finish was on the Great Orme above Llandudno, 2.5 kilometers at an average of 6 percent.

Kimberley Le Court Pienaar attacked at the bottom of that climb and won alone, 14 seconds ahead of Liane Lippert. She took the leader’s jersey from Wiebes and kept it for the last two stages. Wiebes won the other four stages and finished second overall.

It was Le Court Pienaar’s first overall win in a stage race. She first rode the race in 2015, when she was 19, and finished last, in 83rd place and more than an hour behind the winner. In 2025 she won the opening stage, wore the leader’s jersey for a day and crashed out on the second stage.

This is one of the few stage races where the general classification can shift on a single exposed climb, a badly timed puncture, or a wet descent through a market town. The short format leaves no room for recovery rides, and the British landscape delivers more variety than the mileage suggests. It attracts riders chasing late-season form and teams willing to commit to aggressive racing when the margin for error is thin.