UK women’s squad Hess Cycling Team closes with immediate effect
Mired in controversy since its launch in 2023, the UCI Women’s Continental team announced its closure, citing the rising budgets of rival squads as the main reason.
The Women’s Continental squad, Hess Cycling Team, has closed its programme with immediate effect, citing increased competitiveness in the peloton among the reasons.
Founded by Swiss businessman Rolf Hess, the team began life in 2023 registered in Luxembourg, switching to UK registration the following year, with Hess promising to make the squad the country’s leading women’s team and one capable of regularly winning the Tour de France Femmes.
However, the ambition didn’t match reality and far from winning the Tour they were never invited, taking part in only six WorldTour races across their three seasons without taking a victory. Indeed, success remained elusive, their only wins coming in the Israeli and Luxembourg national championships.
At the end of last year there were rumours of riders not being paid and outstanding expense bills, resulting in the UCI withholding their licence and the squad being unable to race until Dwars door Vlaanderen on April 2. However, by then five of their 15-woman roster had jumped ship, leaving them short of riders for those races they did start. Indeed, on a number of occasions the team was forced to withdraw from races at the last moment, taking racing opportunities from other squads.
Earlier this year, ProCyclingUK reported that one of Hess’s companies, United Global Water Holdings Ltd, was being investigated for fraud in Spain after an allegation that investors had been misled into providing €1 million.
“We also realised that in the past years, the cycling sport has become increasingly competitive with huge increases in annual budgets. During this year it became clear that a successful future for our team can only be secured by cooperating with a much stronger team and organisation,” read a letter signed by Hess and his co-managers, Norbert Stocker and Pirmin Lang, published on the team’s Instagram account.
“Until last week we were sure that this could be achieved. Unfortunately, this is no longer the case, and we have concluded to terminate Hess Cycling Team with immediate effect.
“We are incredibly proud of what the Hess Cycling Team has achieved. We came from nothing and were ranked as the top British female cycling team, something that we are very proud of.”
