2017 champion Katarzyna Niewiadoma is among the riders set to line up for the Women's Tour ©Getty Images

What organisers are describing as "the toughest ever" scheduled summit finish, and live television coverage for the first time, are among the notable milestones for this year’s Women’s Tour, due to take place across Britain over six stages.

The International Cycling Union Women’s WorldTour race is due to begin in the town of Colchester before concluding on Saturday (June 11) in the city of Oxford.

The fifth stage, scheduled for Friday (June 10) is set to conclude at the top of Black Mountain, due to be the second hilltop finish in the race’s history.

Black Mountain measures 7.2 kilometres in length, and averages 5.3 per cent, with up to 21 per cent in places.

The fourth stage of the race is set to take place across Wales the day before, the third time it has visited the country.

The race started in 2014 but until this year has never had daily live television coverage, something it has been able to change for this edition thanks to a deal struck with Eurosport and Global Cycling Network.

Seventeen teams, making up a total of 102 riders are due to take the start line tomorrow, and there will be a new race winner with Demi Vollering of the Netherlands absent from this year’s edition.

Former winners due to return are Polish rider Katarzyna Niewiadoma, champion in 2017, racing for Canyon SRAM, and the United States Coryn Labecki, winner in 2018, racing for Team Jumbo-Visma.

Dutch squad SD Worx are expected to be the team to beat, boasting riders including 2017 road world champion Chantal Van Den Broeck-Blaak of The Netherlands, Luxembourg’s Christine Majerus, a twelve-time national road champion and Tokyo 2020 Olympics silver medallist Marlen Reusser of Switzerland.

Among the British riders to watch are Hannah Barnes, representing Uno X-Pro Cycling Team and Leah Kirchmann of Team DSM, who will be hoping to continue their records of finishing every edition of the race so far.