The Girls’s WorldTour is about to lose an occasion in 2025, with RideLondon Classique organisers stating on Friday that as a result of a UCI-imposed shift of dates for subsequent 12 months’s race, they should cancel it.
After the UCI revealed the 2025 WWT calendar this morning, there have been solely minor adjustments to dates, most of which simply noticed races return to their unique slots after shifting in 2024 because of the Paris Olympics. Nevertheless, RideLondon was pushed again per week later from the weekend of Might 23-25 to Might 30 to June 1.
Organisers claimed at present that this modification got here with out “session or prior warning” and that as a result of how early main occasions must be deliberate in central London, they’d no selection however to cancel the three-day stage race.
“We had been extraordinarily shocked to be told by the UCI that the 2025 Ford RideLondon Classique had been moved on the WWT calendar from the final full weekend in Might to a brand new date per week later,” learn a press release from Hugh Brasher, Occasion Director of Ford RideLondon and CEO of organisers London Marathon Occasions (LME).
“There was no session or prior warning and the information got here regardless of LME beforehand being suggested by the UCI that there can be no adjustments to the calendar till 2026.
“Main occasions in London are deliberate a few years forward and it’s unimaginable for the Ford RideLondon Classique to happen in central London on the brand new dates proposed unilaterally by the UCI. Various dates at this late stage are unimaginable.”
Brasher described it as a tragic day for girls’s biking, saying the UCI wouldn’t budge from the brand new date they offered.
“The UCI is not going to reverse this choice or permit two Girls’s WorldTour occasions to happen on the identical weekend,” Brasher insisted.
“Subsequently, sadly, it is not going to be potential to stage the Ford RideLondon Classique in 2025. It’s a very unhappy day for skilled ladies’s biking.”
RideLondon started as a legacy occasion from the 2012 Olympic Video games within the UK and has had seven editions since its first in 2016. It began out as a one-day occasion on the streets of London ending on The Mall, then after cancellations in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic, re-emerged a three-day stage race in Essex and London for 2022.
The newest version was dominated by Lorena Wiebes and SD Worx-Protime and whereas the race gained’t happen in 2025, the Ford RideLondon-Essex 100, 60 & 30 & Ford RideLondon FreeCycle will probably be held as deliberate on Sunday 25 Might 2025.
Cyclingnews has reached out to the UCI for remark.
