Sweat ‘n Gears appears on Tour Series broadcast by ITV4

Spotted in the background sporting my Rudy Projects during the Stoke round of the Tour Series

For those of you who were watching the Tour Series on ITV4 on Wednesday evening, you may have spotted me in the background halfway through the broadcast while Marcel Six of Team Twenty3c-Orbea was being interviewed.  Now some say I looked like a nightclub bouncer (thanks Ian), but I think I looked quite dashing, sporting my Rudy Project Rydon.

So, if you agree and want to look just as good with your own pair of Rudy Project’s, make sure you check out Sport and Speed.

And if you missed the programme from Wednesday evening, you can watch it again through the ITV Player by clicking here.

2010 Tour of Britain pre-race press conference

The UK’s largest free to attend sporting event starts today. And those in the know, know that this sporting event is cycling’s very own Tour of Britain.

This year sees the event start in Rochdale and eight days later, it will roll into London at the new finish location in the Olympic and Para Olympic Borough of Newham, Newham Dockside.

Yesterday the pre-race press conference took place at the Reebok Stadium in Bolton. In attendance were Geraint Thomas (Team Sky), Richie Porte (Team Saxo Bank), Cameron Meyer (Team Garmin Transitions), and Mark Renshaw (Team HTC-Columbia). Here is a video from the press conference:

Don’t forget that if you want to keep up-to-date with live updates from the race, there are various ways you can do this:

1) Follow The Tour of Britain on Twitter;

2) Watch The Tour of Britain on ITV4 every evening; or

3) Watch the live tracking on each stage page on the website.

An added bonus, here are some pictures from the 2009 event. Enjoy!

The Tour Series – a world first for cycling

2009 Tour Series Winners - Team Halfords Bikehut (Image by Joolze Dymond - http://www.joolzedymond.com)

Where in the world can you find a cycling racing series that relies on the team rather than on an individual performance? Well, in non other than the UK of course! The team at SweetSpot Group, the team behind The Tour of Britain, decided to revive the old city centre cycle racing that used to be the rage in the UK about 15-20 years ago and created The Tour Series. And boy, the teams taking part did not disappoint!

Throughout the 10-round series, all ten British-based teams battled for overall glory and gave the spectators and TV audiences wanting more on every evening of racing.

The bunch sprint at the final round in Southend (Image by Joolze Dymond - http://www.joolzedymond.com)

With spectator and TV viewing numbers in the hundreds of thousands, it looks like The Tour Series is set to come back in 2010 on an even bigger scale.

So mark your diaries for May and June next year and remember to look out for the best cycle racing the UK has ever seen.

Want to know the results from all ten rounds – then click here.

The Tour Series kicks off with a shove in Milton Keynes!

Rob Hayles taking line honours from Graham Briggs - photo by Michelle Rudd

The brand-new city centre race series – The Tour Series - arrived in a rush of colour and high-tempo racing in Milton Keynes last night. Run-off at an average speed of 28 miles per hour, the race was won by Candi TV – Marshalls Pasta rider Graham Briggs in a controversial last few metres that saw the Doncaster rider tussle with Olympian Rob Hayles. The finishing positions of Hayles’ first and Briggs’ second were reversed by race judges after it was decided that the Halfords-Bikehut rider impeded Briggs in the last few metres.

Now being involved with The Tour Series it has been one awesome experience something that I am looking forward to over the coming weeks. The cool thing about it too is that I now get a chance to mingle with all the teams and riders. So bookmark this page and make sure to check in for rider pics and videos.

For now I can give you a podcast with Ned Boulting, the ITV presenter that we see travelling with the riders from the Tour de France, where he gives us a post race comment from the event in Milton Keynes, including the contraversial sprint finish, team tactics and the podium girls! He’ll be posting these on a regular basis, so will get them up here for you to listen to:  Ned’s podcast!

Also, don’t forget to catch the action on ITV4 on Wednesday and Friday evenings from 7pm-8pm.

The Tour Series

As soon as I joined the team at SweetSpot, organisers of The Tour of Britain, I was introduced to a new series of racing that was soon to hit the UK – The Tour Series.

The Tour Series is a ten-round city centre cycling race series, which aims to bring unique gladiatorial and exciting professional team racing to UK city centres. Starting on the 21st May 2009, the 10 pro teams, each comprised of five cyclists will engage in combat against each other to become the overall champions of The Tour Series.

Now what makes this entire concept unique to the world of cycling is that on each night of racing, the teams will have to place their riders in the highest positions at the end of race in order to take overall honours. The race is not about the individual but rather about the team. So no point for riders to go on a solo breakaway or going for line honours, unless they know for a fact that their team mates will be the next best placed riders to cross the line.

So if you’re keen to check out the racing, it’s going to be televised on ITV4 the evening after each race. And thanks to ITV, viewers will be able to watch a whole hour’s worth of racing.

The dates for the race nights are:

21 May   – Milton Keynes

28 May   – Exeter

2 June    – Woking

4 June    – Peterborough

9 June    – Blackpool

11 June   – Southport

16 June   – Stoke-on-Trent

18 June   – Colchester

23 June   – Chester

25 June   – Southend-on-Sea

So if you’re out and about in these city’s on the day or night of racing, why not come along and check it all out. You won’t be sorry that you did.