Tour of Britain 2012

Event Details

The Grand Depart will take place in Ipswich, with Suffolk and Norfolk hosting the opening stage of this year’s race on Sunday 9th September. From there The Tour will visit Nottingham, Knowsley and Merseyside, Scotland, the North West, Stoke-on-Trent, Wales and Devon before the challenging final stage in the Surrey Hills, finishing on Guildford’s uphill, cobbled High Street on Sunday 16th September.

In between 100 of the world’s best riders will be tackling climbs in the Peak District, mid-Wales and Dartmoor to name but three of the locations The Tour takes in on its journey through England, Scotland and Wales.

Once again The Tour of Britain will showcase Britain’s stunning scenery to a domestic and international audience with some of the world’s top cyclists competing on British roads for the right to win the IG Markets Gold Jersey.

We were delighted with the success of the Tour of Britain last year. The large crowds at the side of the road showed how cycling has captured the imagination of this country. The race this year will be the first major sporting event in this country after the Olympics and Paralympics. What better way to capitalise on the nation’s enthusiasm for sport and for cycling.

We sponsor the leader’s jersey for the race. It changed colour to gold to reflect the origins of the “IG” name. The IG Group, in its original form, was founded in 1974 as ‘Investors Gold Index’. We were the first to enable investors to trade the price of gold as an index, rather than trading the commodity itself; hence the IG Markets Gold Jersey.

This year’s route looks to be another challenging one and we are looking forward to another close battle for the IG Markets Gold jersey. Only two riders wore the gold jersey throughout the race. The first was sprint superstar Mark Cavendish who proved he was in top form leading up to his World championships win by winning the opening and closing stages. The other was Dutchman Lars Boom who took the jersey off Cavendish after stage 3 and held onto it for the rest of the race.

This year the chance is there for many more riders to pull on the jersey. Obviously we hope that we’ll see a final day battle between riders from Team Sky and Team IG Sigma Sport up the cobbled finishing straight in Guildford.