Tour de France organisers aiming to turn Sheffield yellow next summer
The countodown is on for next summer’s Tour de France which will head to Sheffield
Sheffield could turn yellow next summer if the Tour de France organisers have their way.
Britain hosts the Grand Depart of both the men’s and women’s races next summer with Sheffield at the heart of the race.
The women’s Tour starts on July 30 with an 87km stage between Leeds and Manchester. A day later there will be echoes of 2014 with a 154km stage from Manchester to Sheffield including several of the climbs ridden by the men 13 years earlier.
The full routes for the races were unveiled in Paris on Thursday, and while five of the six UK stages were already known, the picture was completed with the third stage of the women’s race to be an 18 kilometre team time trial through central London. That route, which takes the riders past the Houses of Parliament, Tower of London, and St Paul’s Cathedral, going through Trafalgar Square and Hyde Park before finishing in front of Buckingham Palace, will cross both Tower Bridge and London Bridge as the race takes over the city on August 2.
The women’s race is making its British debut while the men’s race visits for a fifth time, and first since Yorkshire hosted what Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme once described as the “grandest” of Grand Departs in 2014.
Paul Bush, managing director of Grand Depart GB, now has big ambitions of his own.
“One of my aspirations will be to turn the UK yellow next year, for two weeks, so everybody is in yellow,” Bush said. “Now that would be pretty special.
“Now that would beat 2014. Not that I’m looking to beat 2014, because it’s not a competition. But if we could encourage everybody, workplaces, communities, old age pensioners’ homes, schools, everything to become yellow, I think that would really embrace the thing.”
The men’s race starts on July 2 with a 184km largely flat stage from Edinburgh to Carlisle. A 223km stage two will take the peloton from Keswick to Liverpool via the Forest of Bowland and a challenging 223km stage three goes through the heart of Wales between Welshpool and Cardiff.
Bush said the decision to take the women’s race to some of the climbs made famous 13 years ago was deliberate on the part of Tour organisers ASO.
“They really wanted to showcase 2014 with the women to demonstrate that actually there’s absolute equality in terms of what we’re doing between men and women,” Bush said
“Then a team time trial in London, 18 kilometres, closing two bridges, that’s never been done in the lifetime of the city of London simultaneously. I think that will be very special.”
After London the women’s Tour heads across the channel and towards a showdown in the Massif Central, with three big mountain days reaching a climax with a summit finish to stage nine on the Puy de Dome on August 8.
From Cardiff, the men’s race crosses the channel and heads from Normandy to the Alps via the Jura mountains, then to the Pyrenees where the battle for yellow should be settled, with Tadej Pogacar hoping to be crowned Tour champion for a record-breaking sixth time in Paris on July 25. Six mountain stages, including summit finishes on the Grand Colombier, Les Saisies and the Col du Portet, will be key, as will a total of 71 kilometres of time trialling on stages seven and 16, the most since Sir Bradley Wiggins became the first British Tour champion in 2012.