British Continental girls’s staff Lifeplus-Wahoo are hoping to step up a tier subsequent season and turn out to be a ProTeam from 2025.
The brand new tier will probably be launched for the primary time subsequent yr, serving as a second skilled division of ladies’s biking groups, and bridging the hole from Continental to WorldTour.
Talking to Biking Weekly, Lifeplus-Wahoo basic supervisor Tom Varney confirmed the ambition. “That’s the intention for us,” he stated. “It’s going to be our tenth yr subsequent yr additionally, and I feel we should be at that degree. We’ve got to finalise a number of issues and see precisely what the rules say, however the intention is to be there.”
To fulfill the ProTeam standards, groups must register with the UCI, slightly than simply their nationwide federation, offering a financial institution assure and committing to pay a minimal wage to riders.
The UCI initially deliberate to introduce the brand new tier in 2026, matching the boys’s construction, however introduced it ahead in view of the “present growth” in girls’s biking.
Varney understands Lifeplus-Wahoo are one in all 4 Continental groups worldwide to request extra info from the UCI, and the one one of many present six British Continental groups.
“We wish to differentiate ourselves from the opposite UK groups, but additionally the opposite 30-odd, 40-odd Conti groups all over the world,” the Lifeplus-Wahoo boss stated. “We wish to see some progress commercially throughout the UK. I feel we have seen a variety of development in girls’s sport: soccer, rugby, cricket. I feel it is about time that we noticed a few of that degree of economic success in biking.”
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Presently, there aren’t any British girls’s WorldTour groups, which means there are none at skilled degree. “I feel the UK riders, and the juniors that we see developing, deserve one thing to intention for,” Varney stated. “We do not have a staff on par with those who we see within the WorldTour and the nations which are main the best way, and I feel the UK deserves that.”
This season, Lifeplus-Wahoo have needed to alter their plans after discovering out that they had not been invited to the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, regardless of having taken half within the opening two editions. Varney obtained the information from social media. “I feel it is undoubtedly a disgrace,” he stated. “In fact, it was by no means assured for us to be there. We’ve all the time had a plan A and a plan B, but it surely’s been slightly little bit of a blow.”
Lifeplus-Wahoo will participate this weekend within the three-stage Ford RideLondon Classique. The staff will then line up, alongside the opposite 5 British Continental girls’s groups, on the Tour of Britain Ladies subsequent month.
