Teams and contractors owed over £175,000 as Tour of Scotland axed

No second edition of women’s stage race, reports Owen Rogers

- Owen Rogers

The Women’s Tour of Scotland was a racing success but a funding failure

Teams and contractors across the sport have been left thousands of pounds out of pocket by the organiser of the Women’s Tour of Scotland and the race will now cease to exist after a single edition, Cycling Weekly has learned.

Zeus Events, which organised the three-day race in August 2019, still owes teams and contractors at least £175,000, more than 17 months after the event.

A 2020 race was being planned and had been allocated a date by the UCI – before the pandemic caused its cancellation – but both Scottish Cycling and EventScotland have confirmed there are now no plans for its resurrection in 2021.

Teams were left unpaid, with prize money and expenses not yet received. Leah Thomas won the overall and the final stage in Edinburgh’s Holyrood Park, her Bigla Pro Cycling team taking all the remaining classifications, but a team representative told us they received neither the €6,000 (£5,313) appearance fee nor €17,747 (£15,717) in prize money.

The team, competing as Equipe Paule Ka, went out of business last year after losing its sponsors.

Though multiple contractors have been paid by Zeus, some on time and others late, many still have not. One staffer of a TV company, who wished to remain anonymous, told Cycling Weekly the firm was still owed a substantial sum that amounted to 30 per cent of its fee.

Some have been forced to write off the debt while others have not been offered either cash or a payment plan despite maintaining a dialogue with Zeus managing director, former professional rugby player Darren Clayton.