Team INEOS unveil 2019 OVO Energy Tour of Britain line-up

Former winner Dylan van Baarle and hotly-tipped Russian Pavel Sivakov headline Team INEOS’ six-man squad for the OVO Energy Tour of Britain, which begins in Glasgow on Saturday (7 September).

The pair will be joined by Ireland’s Eddie Dunbar, Michal Golas and Gianni Moscon. Reigning British road race champion Ben Swift, whose participation in the race was confirmed last week, completes their line-up.

The Tour will race through Rochdale on its final day and will arrive at approximately 12.45pm on Saturday 14 September from the Oldham border.

• www.rochdaleonline.co.uk/news-features/4/sport-news/129932/rochdale-gearing-up-to-welcome-worlds-top-cyclists-for-ovo-energy-tour-of-britain

Van Baarle, the 2014 winner of the UK’s biggest cycle race, has since finished fifth (2016) and eighth overall (2015) since being crowned the champion five years ago. The Dutchman formed part of INEOS’ Tour de France team that helped Egan Bernal and Geraint Thomas finish first and second overall in July.

Now in his second year as a professional, Sivakov, 22, finished ninth overall in the prestigious Giro d’Italia in May. He also enjoyed overall success in the five-day Tour of the Alps in May, as well as the seven-day Tour of Poland at the start of August.

Irishman Dunbar, 22, finished third in this year’s Tour de Yorkshire, while Golas, 35, of Poland, placed ninth in the 2013 Tour of Britain and won the Eisberg sprints jersey three years earlier. A top-10 finisher in the prestigious Paris-Roubaix and Il Lombardia races, Moscon, 25, will make his race debut next week.

The OVO Energy Tour of Britain, which takes in 1,267 km from its Grand Depart on George Square in Glasgow on Saturday through to the finish in Greater Manchester a week later, is British cycling’s premier road cycling event. Free for spectators to watch, it attracts a roadside audience in excess of one million people each year.

ITV4 will once again screen live free-to-air coverage flag-to-flag of each stage in the UK, along with a nightly highlights programme of the best of the action.

Rochdale route in full

The route through Rochdale will see the cyclists enter the borough at Burnedge from High Crompton on Broad Lane and then down Oldham Road, turning right at the central retail park onto Wood Street, Molesworth Street and up John Street.

The route then goes left onto St Mary's Gate and into the town centre along Newgate and past Rochdale Town Hall. From there the tour will head along Dane Street (past Asda) and Mellor Street onto Edenfield Road and through Norden towards Edenfield.