History

The Tour of Britain is the UK's biggest professional bicycle race and a centrepiece of the British sporting calendar, attracting over a million spectators to the roadside in 2008, and hundreds of thousands more on television and via the internet.

The Tour returned after a five-year absence in 2004, quickly re-establishing itself as the main event in the British cycling calendar. Ranked at the 2.1 category by the UCI and initially held over five days, by 2008 The Tour of Britain had grown to become an eight-day event, allowing it to visit more parts of the UK than ever before.

Every year some of the world's top cyclists compete on British roads for the right to wear the yellow jersey. Over the past five years, Olympic, World and Commonwealth Champions have ridden The Tour of Britain, alongside stage and jersey winners from all three Grand Tours.

The race has proved successful for British riders too, with Mark Cavendish, Roger Hammond and Olympic Gold Medallist Paul Manning all winning stages in recent editions of the race.

Cavendish is just one of a number of young riders, like Andy Schleck, Romain Feillu and Ben Swift who have been successful in The Tour of Britain before going on to have even greater success in some of the worlds biggest races, showing the importance of The Tour in the world cycling calendar.

To find out more about the previous five editions of The Tour of Britain, click on the links to find out the stage winners and the story of each race.