Easter weekend was the biggest weekend in Irish domestic road racing. Three premier events — the Gorey Three Day, the Ras Mumhan, the Tour of Wexford — each one with fields of 150-plus riders, all sold out before the entries closed. That was pre-pandemic. The calendar this year saw one of those races run with 21 riders across categories one, three, four, juniors, and over-40 masters. A historically famous race that produced future pros. Twenty-one riders. Across multiple grades.
This is the version of the story that surfaces locally. The version Anthony Walsh walks through on the Roadman Cycling Podcast is the version that surfaces across the entire English-speaking cycling world. The Tour of California is gone. The Tour of Utah is gone. The Tour of Yorkshire is gone. The Tour of Britain has lost premier events and the St Piran Continental team that anchored its narrative has folded. The Irish race calendar of 2026 does not resemble the calendar of 2016.
Road racing is not dead. But the structural shape it had for forty years is reorganising at a speed most of the audience has not yet processed.
Listen to the full episode with Anthony →
This piece walks through what the data actually says, what the underlying causes are, and what the practical implications are for the serious amateur trying to build a competitive season in the world that is replacing the world they raced in.
What The Numbers Say
Bike sales are the simplest leading indicator. UK bike sales fell to 1.45 million units in 2024 — 2.5 per cent below 2023. That 2023 figure was already the worst year for UK bike sales since 1985. The 2022 number had dropped 22 per cent in a single year, unwinding most of the pandemic-era boom. The trend across the post-pandemic period is downward and accelerating.
The U.S. data tells the same story. Bike sales have returned to roughly 1970s-era unit volumes. The bike industry has been in active contraction since 2022. Companies have closed, dealers have shrunk, and the marketing budgets that historically supported event sponsorship have been cut hard.
Premier events have collapsed in parallel. The Tour of California ran from 2006 to 2019 and was the largest U.S. road race in the modern era. It is gone. The Tour of Utah ran annually from 2004 to 2019. It is gone. The Amgen Tour of California women's race that was supposed to anchor a parallel pro-women's calendar in the U.S. is gone. The Tour of Yorkshire ran from 2015 to 2019. It is gone. The Tour of Britain has lost premier events, sponsorship clarity, and the depth of the domestic teams that made it competitive.
At the amateur level the contraction is even sharper. The Irish Easter weekend example is one local data point in a national pattern. Visit Nenagh Classic, Swords GP, Stolan Bobby Brigan — multiple regional races that anchored the Irish calendar a decade ago no longer exist. UK regional racing has thinned similarly. U.S. domestic racing outside specific pockets has effectively collapsed below the national-level events.
The participation pattern that survives is concentrated. The races that still run with full fields are the ones that have either sustained extraordinary local commitment or pivoted toward formats that draw beyond the traditional road-race rider — fondos, club leagues, structured time trials.
What The Underlying Causes Are
Three forces compound to produce the decline.
One. Bike-industry contraction. The pandemic pulled forward five years of bike purchases into 2020-2021. The unwind has been brutal for the industry, and the marketing budgets that funded event sponsorship have been the easiest cost line to cut. Without sponsorship, premier events lose their financial viability. Without premier events, regional racing loses the narrative that drew amateur riders to it. The contraction at the top compounds downward.
Two. Governance failures at national federations. This varies by jurisdiction but the pattern is consistent. National federations in several English-speaking cycling markets have prioritised internal politics, inconsistent licensing structures, and limited investment in event production over the things that would actually grow participation — clear calendars, professional event delivery, equal access for women's racing, and meaningful prize structures. Anthony's framing on the Irish situation is direct — there is significant incompetence at the federation level in Ireland that is accelerating the broader trends. The same pattern is visible in other markets.
Three. Rider migration to alternatives. The cycling participation that still exists has not vanished. It has moved. Gravel racing, structured fondos, multi-discipline events like the Lifetime Grand Prix, club-level criterium leagues, and timed sportives have absorbed the riders who used to race domestic road. The migration is rational from the rider's perspective. The production values, calendar clarity, and narrative depth in gravel and fondos have been stronger than what the road racing scene has offered for the last several years.
The Lifetime Grand Prix is the cleanest counterexample to the broader decline. Six events across the U.S. calendar — Sea Otter, Unbound Gravel 200, Crusher in the Tushar, Leadville 100, SBT GRVL, Big Sugar — produced as a coherent season-long series with professional broadcast, deep narrative around the riders, and meaningful prize structures. The series has grown viewership and participation in every year of its existence. It demonstrates that the audience for serious amateur racing exists. It also demonstrates what production standard the audience now expects.
For more on how gravel has reorganised the competitive cycling landscape, see the Nathan Haas piece on gravel's soul and professionalisation and the Hannah Otto Kokopelli FKT companion.
What This Means For Serious Amateurs
The implications for the average masters cyclist who reads this site are practical, not abstract.
The local road race scene may not exist next year. The amateur calendar in 2026 is not the amateur calendar in 2016. Riders who built their identity around the Saturday domestic road race need to assess honestly whether that race series still operates, and what the realistic field depth looks like. In many regions, the answer is that it does not, or that it does in such a thinned form that it no longer supports a competitive season.
The competitive opportunity has migrated, not disappeared. Gravel racing, well-produced fondos, club-level criterium series in major metros, and structured time trials still produce the kind of competition the serious amateur seeks. The race-week structure is different. The training demands are different. The equipment requirements are different. The competitive experience is broadly intact for riders willing to adapt.
Training plans should reflect the calendar that actually exists. A road racing periodisation built around criteriums and road races no longer makes sense if the rider's actual season is one gravel A-race, two fondos, and a club league. The training demands of those events differ — gravel racing demands more sustained endurance and technical-skill work, fondos demand pacing discipline across long efforts, club leagues demand sharper criterium-style intensity. The structured plan should match the calendar.
The pro-amateur gap is widening. Pro-level WorldTour cycling remains stable and growing. The amateur experience is decoupling from the pro experience faster than at any point in the last fifty years. Watching the Tour de France no longer translates into a clear pathway to the local race calendar in the same way it once did. This is not necessarily bad — it just is. The amateur cycling identity is becoming its own thing rather than a junior version of the pro version.
For amateurs looking to build a competitive season around the calendar that actually exists in their region, the Roadman coaching system is built around the multi-discipline reality of modern amateur cycling — gravel, fondos, road, time trial, off-road, mixed. For a faster answer on a specific question about how to structure a season, ask the AI coach.
What Could Reverse The Decline
Honest assessment first. The structural causes — industry contraction, governance failures, rider migration — are not easily reversed. The base case is that road racing continues to decline at the domestic level for the foreseeable future. A recovery would require coordinated investment in event production, federation leadership, and the kind of season-long narrative that has produced growth in gravel. None of those changes are visible across the major English-speaking cycling markets at scale right now.
That said, the components of a recovery are not mysterious. The Lifetime Grand Prix model exists. The production values it demonstrates are achievable for road racing. The narrative depth it produces around riders is achievable for road racing. The clarity of the season-long structure is achievable for road racing. The constraint is leadership, not technology or audience demand.
A national federation that committed to producing six premier domestic road races per year — professionally broadcast, with a coherent points structure, with equal investment in women's and men's racing, with deep narrative around the riders — could rebuild a recognisable road racing calendar. The willingness to invest in that level of production is what is missing.
For now, the riders making decisions about their own competitive seasons should plan against the calendar that exists, not the calendar that used to exist or might exist again. The work is the present.
What The Roadman Audience Should Take Away
Three things from the conversation translate directly to the rider thinking about the next season.
One. Acknowledge the change. The road racing scene that defined cycling for the last several decades is not the scene of 2026. The serious amateur who insists on racing the same way they did in 2016 is going to find a thin calendar and frustrating fields. The serious amateur who adapts is going to find good racing — just in different formats.
Two. Vote with your entries. The events that survive are the events that fill. Choosing well-produced events, supporting them year over year, and being vocal about what works and what does not is the only direct mechanism amateurs have to influence the calendar that exists.
Three. Build the season around the events that matter to you. The temptation in a thin calendar is to enter everything that runs. The better discipline is to identify two or three target events that genuinely matter, build the year around them, and treat secondary events as preparation. This is what the riders who get the most out of the modern calendar do. It is also closer to how the pros approach their own seasons.
The sport is reorganising. The reorganisation will produce something. What it produces will reflect what the riders ask for with their time, money, and attention.
Listen To The Full Episode
The full conversation — including the Lifetime Grand Prix breakdown, the Irish governance specifics, and Anthony's view on what national federations would need to do to produce a recovery — is on the Roadman Cycling Podcast.
Road racing is not dead. The shape it had is dying. The shape that replaces it is being decided by the riders, organisers, and federations making decisions right now. The work is to be present for that decision rather than nostalgic about the previous one.
