The borough has recouped nearly all of the £50,000 it ploughed into hosting a leg of an elite women’s cycling race.

Welwyn Hatfield Council has secured £42,750 from sponsors for the Friends Life Women’s Tour stage which ended in a dramatic sprint finish on Parkway, last Saturday.

Matt Rayner, the council’s youth and sport partnerships manager, said: “I want to say a massive thank you to all our sponsors for helping to put on such a successful event.

“We made an initial investment to host the stage finish and from the outset we were confident it was the right thing to do for Welwyn Hatfield.

“Thanks to the support of sponsors, we managed to recoup almost all of this outlay, and if you take into account sponsorship ‘in kind’, we exceeded that target.

“It’s a great example of us working alongside local business to deliver something of which the whole borough can be proud.”