Charlie's Profile

Charlie Tanfield began riding on the track for Great Britain’s track endurance squad in 2018. Already the holder of a collection of international track medals, and with a strong pedigree of domestic road racing behind him, the North Yorkshire native began his cycling career with the Cleveland Wheelers, before taking a circuitous route to the Great Britain Cycling Team Olympic programme. 

An all-round sportsman as a youngster, Tanfield also played competitive football and swimming while racing mountain and road bikes, with older brother Harry and younger brother Toby.

Eventually cycling took over and Tanfield managed to combine studying for a degree in mechanical engineering at Derby University with training at the local Velodrome with his Team KGF pursuit squad.

He first made his name at the 2017 HSBC UK National Track Championships where he won gold in the team pursuit and silver in the individual. Those performances alerted him to the GB team and 18 months later, Tanfield was a world and Commonwealth champion.

Tanfield’s first full year as part of the GBCT track team began in style, beating Denmark to take gold at the UCI Track Cycling World Championships in Apeldoorn, Netherlands, teamed with Ed Clancy, Kian Emadi and Ethan Hayter.

The 2017-18 UCI Track Cycling World Cup season provided Tanfield with further career highlights. In Minsk, Belarus, in January 2018, he won the team pursuit as part of the independent Team KGF, with brother Harry, Dan Bigham and Jonathan Wall. Tanfield also won the individual pursuit at that round, dominating in a final which he won by over seven seconds.

In April that year, he represented England at the Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast, Australia, where he not only rode to silver behind the hosts in the team pursuit – alongside Emadi, Hayter and Ollie Wood – but also won gold in the individual pursuit, beating Scotland’s John Archibald in the final in a new Commonwealth Games record of 4:11.455.

A productive 2018 ended with Tanfield recording his first success at a UEC European Track Championships, finishing with team pursuit bronze in Glasgow, along with Hayter, Emadi and Steven Burke.

In February 2019, in Pruszkow, Poland, Tanfield came close to a second UCI Track Cycling World Championship gold in the team pursuit as he formed part of a squad that also included Ed Clancy, Hayter, Emadi and Wood, finishing second to Australia in the final. Later that year at the UEC European Championships in Apeldoorn, Tanfield repeat his feat of the previous year, collecting another team pursuit bronze, this time with Hayter, Wood and Clancy.

Tanfield returned to racing after lockdown in 2021 travelling with the Great Britain track team to the Tokyo Olympics as a reserve rider, racing in the team pursuit semi-final before a crash saw them out of the event.

In October, he featured in the team pursuit team at both the UEC European Championships in Grenchen, Switzerland (with Rhys Britton, Will Tidball, and Wood) and the UCI World Championships in Roubaix, France (as part of a team featuring Emadi, Hayter, Wood and Ethan Vernon), achieving bronze medals in both competitions. 

Into 2022, and it was bronze for Tanfield in the individual pursuit at the UCI Track Nations Cup in Glasgow, before the build-up to a home Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, where the team of Bigham, Tanfield, Vernon and Wood achieved a silver medal. The season continued with further success, a bronze at the UEC European Track Championships in Munich, Germany, alongside Britton, Emadi, Wood and Tidball.

The same team that won Commonwealth silver rode to UEC European team pursuit silver in Grenchen, Switzerland in February 2023, and a couple of weeks later Britton, Tanfield, Tidball and Wood won bronze at the UCI Track Nations Cup in Jakarta, Indonesia.

The 2023 world championships saw the team pursuit team ready to defend their title before disaster struck as a crash in qualifying took the team out of contention.

In 2024, as the Great Britain track team builds towards the Paris Olympics, the year began with gold for Tanfield alongside his team pursuit colleagues Bigham, Hayter, Vernon and Wood at the UEC Track Elite European Championships in Apeldoorn in January. It was the first European title in nine years for Great British men’s team pursuit. Tanfield also claimed silver in the individual pursuit. 

This was followed by yet more success as Britton, Tanfield and Tidball were joined by Josh Charlton and Josh Tarling for the team pursuit at the Tissot UCI Track Nations Cup in Adelaide, Australia where they picked up the win. 

On the road, Tanfield has also shown his talents, dating back to 2014 when he finished fourth in the National Championships men’s junior road race in North Yorkshire. He rode for the Canyon-backed domestic continental team between 2018 and 2021, along with brother Harry, and won the National Championships Under-23 Individual Time Trial in 2018.

In 2021 he won a round of the Tour Series at Castle Douglas, before moving to Ribble Weldtite for the 2022 season and Saint Piran in 2023, where he is a current rider. He finished fourth in the National Championships  Individual time-trial in 2023 while riding for the Cornish continental team.

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