The 17th edition of the race will rake place between 5-12 September.
Since the Tour of Britain returned on the calendar in 2004, no other team has been as successful as Deceuninck – Quick-Step, who racked up a total of 22 stage wins with 15 different riders, in addition to two triumphs in the general classification, the most recent of these being brought by Julian Alaphilippe in 2018, at his very first participation there.
The World Champion will be back at the start, just one week after riding to his first ever Bretagne Classic podium, and will be joined by another rider who has tasted success at the Tour of Britain, Mark Cavendish. The 36-year-old Manxman has a total of ten stage victories there and will look to add to this impressive tally next week, on a team that will also include Davide Ballerini, Tim Declercq, Mikkel Honoré and Yves Lampaert.
The route will be particularly hard this year, with two stages standing out as having the potential to create some big gaps between the contenders: the 18.2km team time trial from Llandilo to the National Botanic Garden of Wales, held over an undulating course, and the brutal finish on Great Orme, a 1.9km climb averaging 9.8%, which the riders will tackle just twenty-four hours later, at the end of the longest stage of this edition.
“We start the race with a strong team. Julian, Mikkel and Davide have all shown a really good form in Plouay, where two of them finished on the podium, while Mark comes here with a lot of motivation after a magnificent Tour de France. Yves raced the Deutschland Tour last week and you could see the legs he had there, while Tim is Tim, everyone knows what he is capable of and will once again assume his familiar role at the front of the peloton. The route is one of the toughest in modern history, with many ascents, narrow roads and a lot of climbing every day, which will make things difficult to control”, said Deceuninck – Quick-Step sports director Geert Van Bondt.
