The Aviva Women’s Tour hit the ground running in 2014, with a fantastic race in front of huge crowds. 2015 will try to better that great start, and a star-studded line-up is in place to thrill the fans. Top-class international racing on home soil? It was too good an opportunity to miss for Gord as he headed to England to check it out.Tuesday 16 June: The mission for the Aviva Women’s Tour is stated in straightforward terms by race director Mick Bennett at the opening press conference: We genuinely want to turn this into the benchmark for all other women’s cycle races in the world. This year’s event is basically a mirror of the men’s one in September, just three days shorter. The facilities, the organizational effort it’s all essentially the same. Bennett is in this for the long haul, but the timeframe is shorter to achieve success; the Aviva Women’s Tour is to be unarguably the best women’s multi-stage event inside three years.The riders seem to believe in it. Everyone is pleased to be here; we’ve got 12 of the top 13 teams in the world ranking, and seven of the top ten riders. There are national champions galore, and we’re really missing only a couple of the big names as Marianne Vos and her Rabo-Liv team-mate Pauline Ferrand-Prevot are both injured.It’s changed days here in the UK: we might not necessarily be at the ‘household name’ stage, but we’ve got Lizzie Armitstead, Laura Trott, Jo Rowsell, Dani King,...
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