The Tour De Tableland has been moved to the Queens Birthday long weekend starting 2010 and future years. The 2010 TdT will now be held on the Queens Birthday long weekend 12-14 June 2010, some 6 weeks later in the road racing season than in previous years. Click here for the preliminary flyer.

The change has come about after the Cycling Queensland draft road calendar for 2010 was released last week and revealed a direct clash between the Tour De Tableland and the Tour of the Tweed with the Tweed event having been brought forward to the May Labour Day weekend instead of the June Queens Birthday long weekend.

It is the Committee’s view that running both of Qld’s 2 biggest Tours on the one weekend was going to cause major problems and this was discussed at last Tuesday’s club meeting with general agreement that we have a look at running over the June weekend.

We have now had discussions with CQ and others and negotiated a move of the Tour De Tableland to the Queens Birthday long weekend for future years.  In 2010 the TdT will now be 12-14 June.

We are excited by the new date which represents a win for our event and our Club.

It offers us many benefits, including;

- better fit with less clashes to the overall Queensland Cycling calendar.

- A greater timeframe between the wet season and the event, particularly in the event of a prolonged wet season or late cyclonic activity.  This should in turn improve road safety as essential pavement repairs will have more chance of being completed between the wet season and the Tour.

- A break from our traditional “clash” with the Mt Garnet Race weekend

No clash with any other major Tableland events (at the time of writing only markets at Kuranda, Mareeba, Kairi and Archer Creek appear on the Tableland Calendar of Events for that weekend).

- Less conflict with boat traffic to/from Lake Tinaroo given the colder conditions existing in mid June.

- A far greater ability to attract competitors from interstate, in particular riders from NSW and Victoria

- The likelihood of better (though cooler) weather

- More chance for our riders to train after the wet season

- Extending our road season considering the traditional post Tour slow down

A preliminary flyer for the 2010 event can be found here.

Results from the 2009 Tour can be found here.