Cyclist
Rapha Super-League launched as a lifeline for the British racing scene
From May, Britain’s domestic cycling scene will see the launch of a new series: the Rapha Super-League. The sixteen-race-long programme will give the UK’s top riders a chance to compete in a year-long ranking that compiles several disciplines and races across the country.
The series will come into effect from May, with the opening round set to take place at the Lincoln GP next month. The Super-League, which will conclude in Yorkshire in August, offers riders a broad calendar of events, covering road races, criteriums and even a stage race in 2025.
In light of ongoing struggles in the domestic scene, British Cycling’s Chief Executive John Dutton hopes the launch of the new league ‘will help re-energise the bike racing community whilst captivating interest from new fans’.
How will it work?
The Rapha Super-League will run as a year-long championship across the current UK racing scene. A selection of existing criteriums, one-day races and stage races as well as the British National Championships will count towards the rankings.
Each race will have a different points weighting based on the style of race and each event’s importance, with a prize on offer for the top-scoring man and woman at the end of the Super-League in August.
The races will all operate as separate entities, so teams will not need to sign up to the Super-League as a whole. All riders who finish an event in the Super-League will be featured in the standings as per British Cycling’s results database. These results will then be fed into the Super-League leaderboard.
Rapha hopes the series will create an increased interest for riders to compete in a wider selection of events, especially for the events included in the series, which currently operate outside of the existing British Cycling National Series. It’s also believed that this Super-League format will help to create a more cohesive sporting narrative across the domestic racing calendar.
Which races will be included?
It’s been confirmed that 16 events will be included in the 2025 Rapha Super-League, stretching from May to the end of August, and all 16 will consist of a men’s and women’s race, meaning that the two leagues will run in tandem throughout the season.
The Lincoln GP, which Rapha has sponsored since 2020, will open the 2025 Super-League on Sunday 11th May. The series will include British Cycling’s Road and Circuit Series events, incorporating both road races and criteriums into one single classification. On top of this, there will be one stage race on the agenda for the 2025 league, the Ronde van Wymeswold in the East Midlands.
The Wentworth Woodhouse GP in Yorkshire will act as the league’s final round on Sunday 31st August. To make for a nail-biting finish, the final two races of the year – the Cambridge Criterium and the Wentworth Woodhouse Grand Prix – will award double points.
Races in the Rapha Super-League
- Lincoln Grand Prix: Sunday 11th May
- Ronde van Wymeswold: Saturday 14th-Sunday 15th June
- Via Criterium: Saturday 21st June
- Tour of the Reservoir: Sunday 22nd June
- National Criterium Championships: Friday 27th June
- National Road Championships: 29th June
- Otley Cycle Races: Wednesday 2nd July
- Ilkley Cycle Races: Friday 4th July
- Guildford Town Centre Races: Wednesday 9th July
- Sheffield Grand Prix: Wednesday 16th July
- Fort Vale Colne Grand Prix: Tuesday 22nd July
- Dawlish Grand Prix: Friday 25th July
- Witheridge Grand Prix: Sunday 27th July
- Beaumont Trophy: Sunday 17th August
- The Cambridge Criterium: Sunday 24th August
- The Wentworth Woodhouse Grand Prix: Sunday 31st August
A British take on the 1980s Super Prestige
Rapha has supported domestic racing for a decade now. During the 2010s, the brand sponsored the now-defunct London Nocturne and was the title sponsor for the Rapha-Condor squad, one of the most prolific teams on the domestic level at that time. The brand has also been involved in supporting grassroots campaigns to support young riders racing in Europe and on British soil through the Dave Rayner Fund and its own Rapha Foundation.
Rapha’s UK & EU community marketing manager Jess Morgan was instrumental in getting the brand on board. Over the past couple of years, she has been involved in British Cycling’s Elite Road Task Force, which was established to help address the challenges brought upon the domestic racing scene in recent years. When devising a plan for tackling the decline in British racing, she recalls the idea of the Super-League as part of ‘road map’ published by Rapha back in 2018.
‘In this document was the mention of this thing called the Super Prestige. It was a points championship that used to run across the international cycling calendar, targeted by all the top riders during that era. It essentially took all of the biggest races in the calendar and joined them up.
‘If you’re new to the sport and you don’t already know which races are good or which riders are good. There’s no easy way for you to follow the sport because it can seem like a bunch of random bike races occurring in no particular order. There’s no cohesive start, middle, and end to a racing season. It doesn’t really have a grand finale where the best cyclist of the year is crowned.
‘So, I thought, why don’t we try and do something like that, but apply it to UK racing, connecting them all into one league. Then at the end of the season, we can crown one person as the best all-rounder of the year.’
What will it look like?
The series will build upon the British Cycling National Series, but two events from outside that loop will be included: the VIA Criterium in King’s Cross, London and the Cambridge Criterium, which was founded last year by Monument Cycling.
‘From an attendee’s point of view, they’re amazing,’ Morgan says. ‘They’re in really central locations. They’ve got music and an event village. Those races, along with the other 14, encompass as many road disciplines as we can, including the National Championships as well, since those are the most important races of the season for many.’
Rapha will be in attendance at all the events on the league’s 2025 schedule, hoping to bring its unique flair to the existing race scene, which has already been tested out at the Lincoln GP over the past couple of years.
‘We are planning to turn up at all of the races, bringing cowbells and stickers, coffee and beer,’ Morgan explains. ‘We’ll bring a bit more of that spectator experience.’
In terms of coverage of the series, The British Continental will provide a live ticker for race updates throughout. Monument Cycling, which launched a streaming service for the domestic scene last year, will also be involved on the media side. However Rapha is cautious about the prospect of live coverage making a full return in 2025.
‘There won’t necessarily be full live coverage, but there’s going to be on-the-day coverage and there’ll be highlights afterwards,’ Morgan says. The main way to follow everything will be through Rapha UK’s Instagram.
‘We want to take what could be quite a difficult-to-follow season and turn it into one story – one that’s easy to follow by people who haven’t necessarily followed bike racing before. Hopefully, there’ll be a lot more storytelling around racing to hold people’s attention throughout the whole year. We want people to get invested and care about who wins at the end.’
‘It used to be incredibly popular so there’s no reason why we can’t go back to that’
The British racing scene has been on a sharp downward turn since the pandemic. Part of this is due to a lack of funding from investors and sponsors, but a strong factor is also a dwindling interest in domestic racing in the UK.
During the days of Tour Series in the 2010s, ITV broadcast free-to-air highlights of the races, with regular YouTube coverage of the domestic scene. Nowadays, it’s becoming much harder to justify race broadcasts from a financial perspective, as viewership fell following the end of ITV’s deal. With this, the number of events in the National Series has decreased greatly over the past ten years, with fewer teams able to stick around year after year.
Following on from the pandemic, British Cycling reformed the domestic structure. Monument Cycling jumped on board in 2024 to broadcast the racing, but the Super-League now offers a real chance for a new initiative to revitalise the British circuit.
‘I’m optimistic that we can elevate the existing race scene and hopefully bring more people to it, more spectators, more riders, more stability for the race organisers,’ Morgan says.
‘Hopefully, it’ll capture the imaginations of more people and we’ll see bigger interest in this kind of racing again. It used to be incredibly popular so there’s no reason why we can’t go back to that,’ Morgan affirms.
‘A lot of people might not even realise that there’s all this great racing happening on their doorstep. All they need is a bit more awareness. It’s free to watch. so you can just turn up and follow it, just as you would with international racing.
‘That’s hopefully what the Super-League is going to do. Spread the word to new audiences, get people a little bit more engaged with domestic racing in a way that it’s struggled in terms of relevancy compared to WorldTour racing in the last five or ten years.’
The future of the series
Rapha has focussed on bringing a nationwide feel to this Super-League. Races in northern England, London, Wales and the south west of England signed up. Given that the project will be enjoying what the brand describes as a ‘pilot season’, there is space for the Super-League to grow in the coming years.
‘This year, we were limited to the time frame that we had. In the future, it could be that it starts earlier [than May]. Generally, we’ll try to make it as geographically spread out as possible. We’ve got races across the north and south of England and two in Wales, including the National Championships, but hopefully it’ll become a truly British series. I would love to see more races in Scotland and Wales become part of the Super-League in the future.’
Rapha is also optimistic that the future may bring a wider selection of races, with the potential for junior categories and intermediate prizes to be added on in the seasons to come.
The Super-League will start in Lincoln next month. It will compile the results from all of the UK’s biggest races. To follow the narrative, be sure to follow Rapha UK on Instagram @rapha_uk.
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