Tour de Yorkshire comes back where it began
Leeds previously hosted world-class cyclists in 2014
CYCLING IN the White Rose county will come full circle next May when Leeds hosts the finish to the 2018 Tour de Yorkshire.
The city’s famous Headrow, where the wheels first turned on the cycling boom in Yorkshire during the memorable Tour de France Grand Depart in 2014, will take centre stage once more at the thrilling climax of the fourday race.
“We’re very excited to be coming back to Leeds and to have the finish coming through some spectacular parts of the city,” said Sir Gary Verity, chief executive of race organiser Welcome to Yorkshire.
“Having the finish on the same stretch as the starting point of the 2014 Tour de France will be a very special moment.
“Leeds is a great sporting city. It’s got a fantastic heritage for so many sports, and cycling is now one of the main things we are known for. I think a lot of people on Sunday, May 6, will feel very emotional about the world’s best cyclists coming back into the heart of the city.”
The full route of next year’s Tour de Yorkshire will be announced today, with the showpiece cycling event to be extended in May 2018 with a fourth day added.
The move to extend the event could be worth more than £10m, according to North and West Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce.
LEEDS WILL host the finish to next year’s extended Tour de Yorkshire, marking the first time the city centre has hosted worldclass cycling since the Grand Depart of the 2014 Tour de France sparked the region’s love affair with the sport.
Just as it was four years earlier when Chris Froome and Mark Cavendish inched towards the start line, The Headrow will be heaving with people as the fourth annual Tour de Yorkshire concludes on Sunday, May 6, 2018.
Three years ago, the inaugural Tour de Yorkshire climaxed in Roundhay Park, but the city centre has not been closed off to international-calibre cyclists since that heady day back in July 2014, when the eyes of the world fell on Leeds for the start of the world’s greatest test of endurance, the Tour de France.
“The Headrow is iconic,” said Sir Gary Verity, chief executive of race organisers Welcome to Yorkshire and the man responsible for bringing major cycling events to the county.
“I remember as a kid, Billy Bremner and Don Revie standing on the steps of the town hall addressing thousands of people. Scroll forward a few decades to the start of the Tour de France there, and then next year the Tour de Yorkshire coming back – The Headrow lends itself well to these spectacular, historic moments.”
The route for the fourth annual Tour de Yorkshire – a race that was a direct legacy of the county’s staging of the first two days of the 2014 Tour de France – will be unveiled this morning at the Square Chapel Arts Centre in Halifax.
It is already known that joining Leeds as one of eight host towns for either stage starts or finishes are Barnsley, Doncaster, Beverley, Halifax, Ilkley, Richmond and Scarborough.
The Tour de Yorkshire has been extended from three to four days for next year, with the women’s race – won last year by the county’s own Lizzie Deignan – now taking place over two days instead of one.
“Getting the fourth day is a major thing for us,” added Sir Gary. “It gives it a balance for the men’s race with two flat stages and two stages for attackers, allowing us to attract different riders and giving the Yorkshire public more chance of seeing more riders more often throughout the four days.
“We’re particularly pleased to double the women’s race to two days.”
Together with co-organiser the Amaury Sports Organisation (ASO), Welcome to Yorkshire hope the move to four days brings a wider range of teams and star names with thoughts among organisers, and within the peloton, turning towards Yorkshire’s hosting of the UCI Road World Championships in September 2019.
“Every Tour de Yorkshire is in effect a dress rehearsal for the world championships,” added Sir Gary.
“There’ll be very little, if any of the routes of those championships that aren’t on roads that have already been cycled before, whether that be for the Tour de France or the Tour de Yorkshire.
“There’s a real buzz in the pro peloton about Yorkshire – that’s down to the Tour de France, the Tour de Yorkshire, the world championships coming here in 2019, and primarily the people of Yorkshire we get coming out.”
There’s a real buzz in the pro peloton about Yorkshire. Sir Gary Verity, chief executive of Welcome to Yorkshire.
IT’S FITTING that three years after Leeds put Yorkshire on the cycling map as the starting point for the Tour de France’s memorable Grand Depart, the city will once again take centre stage as it hosts the thrilling climax to the fourth annual Tour de Yorkshire next May.
During the past four years Yorkshire has experienced a cycling renaissance that has given credence to its claim to be a new global capital of the sport. As well as hosting cycling’s prestigious world championships in 2019, the county is home to the hugely popular Tour de Yorkshire, spawned by the success of the greatest Grand Depart in the illustrious history of the Tour de France.
In the space of just three years, the Tour de Yorkshire has established itself as a firm fixture on the professional cycling calendar. More than 2.2 million spectators lined the route to watch last year’s event, which was broadcast to nearly nine million people in 180 countries.
The fact that the men’s race will expand from three days to four, and the women’s from one to two, is indicative of cycling’s growing popularity. Not only that, it is a shop window for Yorkshire that allows the county’s breathtaking scenery to be seen by a global audience and as such is a further boost to an already thriving tourism economy.
At a time when Leeds’s hopes of becoming European Capital of Culture in 2023 lie in tatters following the European Commission’s petty and contentious decision to preclude UK cities from hosting the event after Brexit, it is a piece of welcome good news. It’s a reminder, too, that Yorkshire is capable of putting on a show up there with the best.