just some guy said:
Something has to give, new races moving or looking to move to world tour.
either we lose races with history or teams must get bigger.
Plenty of races have been dying, these ones are looking to get theirs.
I don't mind it to be honest. Sure, a lot of the races that are dying are ones I'd like to survive more than I'd like to see these new ones, but we have lost a large number of races recently (Missouri, Naranco, Alcobendas, GP CTT Correios, Urkiola, Sachsen, Deutschland, Ireland and more, plus others like Rioja being shortened in length). The calendar isn't as saturated as we think, it's just that every new race has to push for stars in order to establish itself. We'll see how many of them have the legs to last a long time, or if some of those other races can come back (there are people who are keen on restoring the Deutschlandtour and the Subida al Naranco, for example) whether there'd be enough room.
The organisers of the Velethon Britain have picked a good part of the country to use (and can probably create a much better parcours for young British riders than most places), but to go from 1.2 to World Tour in just two years of running (aiming to be WT by 2014 when only 1.2 in 2012) is obviously going to be a tough ask. More reasonable to let it establish itself perhaps at .1 level, but I guess they feel they need the stars, and if they're not secure in their feeling that the stars would show up, then that WT status is necessary. But just as every team talks of its desire to step up to be a World Tour team no matter how far-fetched (Scott-Marcondés César-São José dos Campos and Pure Black Racing have both stated it), the same thing happens with races. Try to get sponsors in for the long haul. After all, there was a 1.2-rated GP of Wales in 2008 - it was in South Wales, based around Abergavenny, and nearly every team was a UK domestic Continental or amateur team.
I don't know if this is an attempted, more ambitious revival of that race, or something completely new, but they'll either need to attract a more international field at .2 or get a bit of a leg-up from the UCI in order to expand to the level they want.
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