Money problems and broken dreams - why is it so hard to run a cycling team?

Team cars shuttle from side to side on damp roads through picturesque Yorkshire villages as the race convoy tries to keep up with a marauding peloton.

Under-pressure sporting directors at the 2025 Tour of Britain Women are shouting tactics over the radio with one hand while steering their vehicles with the other.

Then, a concertina, in which Hess Cycling's team car slams on the brakes and hits the back of another team's vehicle, making that uneasy sound of one car colliding with another.

It was a fitting metaphor for a team who shot forward too quickly and paid the price.

Within two months of that incident, the Hess team who had aimed so high when launching two years earlier had collapsed.

"We got promised the world - a big elaborate dream," says a former Hess rider, who does not want to be identified through fear of being judged as a troublemaker in the peloton. 

"It seems like it was created for one person, not for the benefit of riders. You've got to wonder why someone puts their name on the jersey."

Gone were the aims to have one of the biggest budgets on the ever-growing UCI Women's World Tour, putting Britain back on the cycling map with a world-beating team.