Cat Ferguson to make Tour of Britain Women debut next month

Double junior world champion Cat Ferguson is set to make her debut at the Tour of Britain Women in June, British Cycling announced on Tuesday.

Ferguson, who hails from North Yorkshire, will lead Spanish WorldTour team Movistar in the four-day stage race which will take in her home county before heading north and into Scotland. The 19-year-old recently took her first win of the season at a rain-soaked Navarra Classic.

Alongside Ferguson, British Cycling revealed that Visma-Lease a Bike's rising star Imogen Wolff is also set to race. Yorkshire-born Wolff won a bronze medal in the junior time trial at last year's World Championships, and rode for the same British amateur team as the Movistar rider, Shibden Apex RT.

Wolff won a stage and the youth classification in her first race of the season, the Vuelta a Extremadura, and was recently praised by Marianne Vos for her role in the Dutch veteran’s recent stage win at La Vuelta Femenina.

Meanwhile, British Cycling also confirmed that Lidl-Trek's Lizzie Deignan will line up for one final outing at her home race before her retirement later this year. Deignan won the event’s predecessor, the Women’s Tour, on two previous occasions and took home the mountains jersey in last year’s race.

"I'm always happy to race the Tour of Britain Women," Deignan said. "I have such special memories from this race and over my career I have had a lot of success here. It's always a different feeling racing in front of home crowds so I hope we see lots of fans out cheering for the women's peloton over all four days.

"This will be my final Tour of Britain so it will be bittersweet but I am going to be surrounded by some incredible women as part of our Lidl-Trek team so I'm confident we can make it a good week and we will be motivated to achieve some nice results together."

Deignan will be joined by her Lidl-Trek teammate Anna Henderson who finished second last year. The duo raced together as part of the Great Britain Cycling Team in the 2024 edition of the race.

"I am really looking forward to racing the Tour of Britain Women again this year," Henderson said. "It's always special to race on home soil, and as a British rider, we don't have so many opportunities so I will be looking to make the most of this moment and hopefully, we will see lots of enthusiastic British cycling fans out on the roads to support us."

Sisters Zoe and Elynor Bäckstedt are also set to race for Canyon-SRAM zondacrypto and UAE Team ADQ respectively. Having finished 15th in Paris-Roubaix Femmes during the spring, Zoe will be making her debut at the race while Elynor will be taking part for a third time.

Alongside the raft of high profile British riders, Olympic road race champion Kristen Faulkner (EF Education-Oatly) is also set to race. The Tour of Britain Women gets underway in Dalby Forest on 5 June.