With the collapse of both remaining British men's Continental teams at the end of 2024, former World Tour racer Harry Tanfield has launched an ambitious bid to create a new Continental team for the 2025 season.

The team will be the only British UCI men's team to exist alongside Ineos Grenadiers, following both the existing Continental uci racing and Saint Piran fold at the end of 2024. 

Tanfield raced on the World Tour from 2019 to 2021 Katyusha-Alpecin, AG2R Ramondiale and team Qhubeka-NextHash. In 2024, he hopes to fill the gaps that are evident in the UK racing scene. 

"British cycling has a bright future. But that exciting future will happen without St. Piran Pro cycling," read a statement from St. Piran's management earlier this week. The Cornwall-based team had filed an application for UCI Continental status, which was rejected by British cycling.

Trinity Racing has been in existence as a UCI Continental-level team since 2020, offering the way to world tours such as Tom Pidcock, Ben Turner (both Ineos Grenadiers) and Ben Healy (EF Education First-EasyPost).

Yorkshireman Tanfield is in a battle with time and the deadline for funding for the new team is approaching soon. British cycling has already extended this deadline in two weeks to give the team more time to prepare its application.

"I spoke to BC and they agreed that it would be a two-week grace period. "If we can come back to us with a whole new team that has nothing to do with Sampiran, we'll look at that application and consider it," Tanfield told Cyclingnews on Sunday afternoon and heard about the closure of Sampiran in a team video call Tuesday night.

"We have two weeks to do the best we can. It's not like all contracts have to be done by 6th December, but it's a letter of agreement and intent in principle.

"There were a lot of people reaching out to support me personally and helping me to speak in front of people... At the moment, obviously time is not on our side, but we are doing the best we can in the situation.

The team aims to "bridge the gap" between the UK's domestic scene and higher levels of sport. Tanfield hopes to raise between £250,000 and £300,000 to fund a racing programme that includes races in continental Europe and the UK. He says he's already had some promising conversations in the last few days.

Despite a record 34 British racers set to compete on the Men's World Tour next year, with the closure of Saint Piran and Trinity Racing, the domestic scene will be at a 20-year low during the peak period of British cycling from 2010 to 2019, with at least 5 UK-based Continental racers set to compete. The team was running. The last time there was nothing was in 2004. In 2025, 4 British Women's Continental teams will be in operation.

Tanfield believes that it is important for the sport that there is at least one continental men's team in the UK scene.

"I think it's really important for the scene. I've seen it myself. I came through the whole system a decade ago and I went professional for the British scene. I owe a lot to the scene, but it was a very different race scene from when I think back 10 years ago and what it is now," Tanfield said.

"I think it's really important that there are options for guys who are coming from juniors to go abroad and they aspire to join the team"