Charlie's Profile

Already the holder of a collection of international track medals, and with a strong pedigree of domestic road racing behind him, Tanfield was selected as a travelling reserve for the men’s endurance team at Tokyo 2020.

Tanfield took a circuitous route to the Great Britain Cycling Team Olympic programme, having 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, within 18 months, the youngster was a world and Commonwealth champion.

Gold at the UCI Track Cycling World Championships came in Apeldoorn, Netherlands, in March 2018, where he was part of a team, with Ed Clancy, Kian Emadi and Ethan Hayter, that beat Denmark.

In April, 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.

Tanfield also took to the road in Gold Coast, finishing eighth in the individual time trial, an even in which brother Harry picked up the silver medal.

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

A productive 2018 ended with Tanfield recording his first success at a UEC European Track Championships, finishing with the 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, in finishing second to Australia in the final.

At the 2019 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.

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.

As a rider with the Canyon-backed domestic professional team for the past five seasons, along with brother Harry, Tanfield won the National Championships Under-23 Individual Time Trial in 2018 and came 16th in the National men’s road race that year.

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.

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