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The Tour of Britain organisers announced that the 2009 edition of The Tour will once again take place over eight days, running from Saturday 12th September to Saturday 19th September.

Following the resounding success of the 2008 race, next year’s Tour of Britain will once again maintain the 2.1 categorisation, awarded by the sports governing body the UCI, that it has held since its rebirth in 2004.

The 2.1 level allows for up to a maximum of 50% of the teams participating to be from the ProTour, thus allowing The Tour of Britain to continue with its policy of mixing the very best ProTour, Professional Continental and Continental teams with the top domestic teams, while also confirming the continued presence of a Great Britain team in the race, something not permitted at the higher 2.HC category.

Despite this year’s event only being just over a month behind us, interest in the 2009 race is already strong, with over twenty teams having already expressed an interest in riding The Tour of Britain.

During the 2008 race the official Tour of Britain website (tourofbritain.co.uk) received over 1.5 million page views, an increase of 40% on 2007, while there were an average of 28,000 visits to the site per day, contributing to more than 225,000 unique visits across the eight days.

On television too, large numbers tuned in for The Tour of Britain highlights each evening on ITV4. With an average reach of 310,000 viewers and a peak reach of 376,000 for the highlights of Stage Five to Dalby Forest in Yorkshire, the programme compared strongly with the Tour de France highlights on the same channel and met with an extremely positive reaction from both ITV and Tour of Britain organisers.

The 2009 Tour of Britain will finish in central London, on the same iconic circuit as used for the opening stage of this year’s Tour with full details of the route being announced at the national launch in the Spring.