Harry Tanfield's British Conti team dream floats away: "It's just not possible"

There will be not a single British Continental team cruising through Europe in 2025. This is now confirmed as the last attempt from ex-WorldTour rider Harry Tanfield to form a brand new formation come short to meet the British Cycling's deadline for submissions.

"We can’t go Continental, that’s just not possible," he said according to CyclingWeekly. "We’re not really sure what to do now. I kind of just want to have a week off to compose my thoughts. We can’t go Continental so there’s no deadline now to reach. If we want to register an elite team then I think we can do that."

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"There’s a few things that could happen but as of yet I haven’t got anything confirmed," he continued. "It would be nice if a team could get off the ground in some way here in the UK. I'm just going to keep looking for the sponsorship now going forward to 2026 as we can’t make the deadline for this year as it's passed now, it’s gone. British Cycling said to come back in November next year."

Despite the failure this year, Tanfield is still optimistic about possibility to build something into future, even if it's not much more than a project in his head at the moment.

"I’ll just be plugging away over the winter essentially and into next year to just see where I can go with this," he said. "Some of the companies we approached regarding sponsorship were really interested, but they just didn’t have the marketing budget at this time of year so can’t do anything about it. Hopefully we could maybe try and get something off the ground for 2026 but I’m not too sure."

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As things stand, the former WorldTour professional is now without a ride on a personal level. Tanfield explained that his brother, Charlie, is in a similar situation but both hoped that could turn a corner.

"I really don’t know for myself and my brother and where this leaves us," he said. "I’m talking to some other teams, there’s this sort of on the go, there’s a lot of ifs and buts with it all. I just want to do what’s best for the scene in the UK and even if that is a non-UCI team then that’s better than nothing."

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