Grand Tour of Yorkshire - how Robin Scott wants to reignite region's love affair with cycling

Much has happened in the world in the three years since the UCI Road World Championships were staged in Yorkshire - much has happened in the three days since the Tour of Britain swept through this great county, let’s be honest.

But back in 2019, the White Rose county hosted 13 days of top-level cycling, from the four days and six races of the Tour de Yorkshire in the spring to a week and a bit of the world championships in the autumn.

Just five years after an estimated five million people came out to cheer the Grand Depart of the Tour de France in Leeds, Harrogate, Bradford, Sheffield and countless points in between, Yorkshire had established itself as a premier destination for the sport of cycling, from staging elite races to welcoming recreational riders from all over the world.

Yet as quickly as the bubble had inflated, it burst.

Scandal at Welcome to Yorkshire was followed by bankruptcy amid a global pandemic that brought society to a halt.

The Tour de Yorkshire - a rare opportunity for civic pride but a costly luxury - was a relatively minor casualty, but a casualty nonetheless.

The cycling boom in Yorkshire, it appeared, was over.

Then the Tour of Britain - a race that had side-stepped Yorkshire for 13 years primarily due to the county having its own event - announced last year it would come back to our region, and on Wednesday the good folk of Yorkshire responded with the warm embrace the cycling community has grown accustomed to.

Smiling faces on the road side, schoolchildren waving flags, enthusiastic families banging the hoardings as the cyclists went past.

“It’s the biggest crowd we’ve had all week for the Tour of Britain,” gushed Tom Pidcock, a wide-eyed teenager eight years ago when the Tour de France flew past his home roads, now a stage winner in that famous race and one of the most exciting prospects in world cycling.

Wednesday’s 149.5km Tour of Britain stage from Redcar to Helmsley via coastal routes and North Yorkshire Moors thoroughfares served as a reminder of what Yorkshire is capable of when it comes to staging major cycling events.

It also whetted the appetite for more and suggested there may be life left yet in Yorkshire’s love affair with cycling.

And there could well be, for by 2024, the county could be staging a new race.

Out of the embers of Welcome to Yorkshire, the company that have taken over the remnants of the tourism board have ambitions to bring a new, different, and innovative cycling race back to Yorkshire in two years time.

And it has to be new, because there is no inclination from the Amaury Sport Organisation - co-organisers of the five Tours de Yorkshire between 2015 and 2019 - to fulfil the final year of its contract with the old Welcome to Yorkshire to stage a sixth edition of the race.

So this new company, fronted by Robin Scott, an e-commerce entrepreneur from Wensleydale, has already announced their new race will be called the Grand Tour of Yorkshire and is to be staged in 2024 to coincide with the 10-year anniversary of the Grand Depart’s visit.

“The idea is let’s make a new event that draws on the legacy of the Tour de Yorkshire but isn’t necessarily the same thing,” Scott tells The Yorkshire Post.

“The Tour de Yorkshire was a strong cycling event but we want to broaden it out into a more public event, with more family involvement.

“Since 2019 the world has flipped on its head and there’s more people than ever before involved in cycling.

“To reflect that, we want to bring back the elite sport but make sure that the event is tweaked so there’s more of a mass participation element.”

Scott and his team are in the very early stages of planning and a number of options are still on the table.

At it’s most basic, the Grand Tour of Yorkshire will be a one-day race for professional male teams.

At it’s grandest, this new tour of Yorkshire will be a weekend of cycling, with a one-day professional men’s race, a women’s race and, if feasible, amateur participation events as well.

If the latter is achievable it would mirror the format adopted by the World Triathlon Championship Series which was staged in Leeds on the second weekend of June every year from 2016 to 2019, again in ’21 and earlier this summer.

“We want to make it a festival of sport,” says Scott.

“As well as road cycling, we could put on BMX and mountain biking. They’re on our wishlist, but we’re trying to put the key races in place on the calendar first and then we can build around it.”

There is much to do and many people to convince.

There will be no headline-grabbing announcement like the Tour de France is coming to Yorkshire, as there was in the days of Sir Gary Verity a decade ago.

Where Verity’s mindset was to run before he could walk - to great success for the region, let us not forget that it was Verity’s unbridled chutzpah that sparked the cycling romance - Scott appears mindful to walk before he runs.

By the end of September the new Welcome to Yorkshire company hopes to sit down with cycling’s governing body, the UCI, to work with them to set the wheels in motion on this new event.

They have already established a relationship with Sweetspot, the sports events company that produces the Tour of Britain, the Women’s Tour and other major cycling events in the UK, to provide the expertise that makes up for the loss of ASO.

Conversations with local authorities will have to be had, British Cycling need to get on board, and sponsors need to be acquired, either the re-engaging of existing partners or the seeking of new clients.

The list of stakeholders is endless.

“We’re creating a working group of representatives from local authorities, from central Government, ideally the DCMS, British Cycling and then ideally someone from UCI to sit on the steering group,” confirms Scott.

“It will probably be a non-profit that runs the event but that is subject to final clarification.”

Where the Grand Tour of Yorkshire would sit on sport and cycling’s overcrowded calendar is also a big question mark.

Cycling in 2024 will be no different to any other year, with a three-week Giro d’Italia in May, three-week Tour de France in July and the three-week Vuelta Espana which enters its final weekend today. Plus there is an Olympics to factor in.

The Tour of Britain has had to contend with being a rival for the final grand tour of the season every year since it returned to the calendar in 2004.

The Tour de Yorkshire had established itself in the May Bank Holiday weekend, just after the Spring classics season and a week ahead of the Giro d’Italia.

But Scott and his team are not beholden to the Tour de Yorkshire’s traditional May Bank Holiday weekend slot, and nor do they want to be.

“In de-coupling from the old race we have the opportunity to go to a different weekend,” says Scott, who hopes to see the Tour of Britain and the Women’s Tour return to Yorkshire in 2023 to continue building momentum.

“As the new Welcome to Yorkshire we want to see as many days of cycling as there were in 2018, albeit they were in one stage race.

“In 2023 we’re trying to assist and inspire people to bring the same number of days back next year.

“Having that repeated coverage would be better for the region.

“So then when we bring the race back in 2024 you’ve got the same number of days of cycling, and not all just concentrated in the same week.”

The appetite from the new organising body is in place, the appetite from the Yorkshire folk, as witnessed on Wednesday, is also there.

“Helmsley was brilliant, the sun came out, everyone was smiling,” says Scott.

“The finish at Duncombe Park was an example of what Yorkshire can do really well - a pretty village town, historic, leading into the open countryside.

“It’s got everything within a square mile basically.”

The good ol’ cycling days came back on Wednesday. They may be coming back for good.