White Rose Ready for t'Tour



As soon as the bunch of sprinters cross the finish line under lights on Paris’ iconic Champs-Elysees to signal the end of the centenary edition of the Tour de France, a nation, or more pertinently a county, will start counting down.

For the next time the 200 hundred or so Lycra-clad cyclists will take to the road to compete for the Maillot Jaune, they will be in Yorkshire, or Leeds to be more precise.

Two stages have been organised for the White Rose County, from Leeds to Harrogate and York to Sheffield to test the peloton’s class of 2014 before it moves south to London for a day and back to its spiritual home.

While the economic benefits to the region, England’s largest, are obvious, Yorkshire will provide two key ingredients to the biggest cycling race in the world: stunning scenery and passionate fans.

While it is unlikely that defending champion, Team Sky’s Chris Froome, will be out taking snaps of the picturesque Yorkshire Dales and North York moors, the mere sight of the world’s elite passing through the undulating terrain of the north of England is one that will attract the crowds and fervent ones at that.

When you think of the Tour streaming up a mountain pass in the Pyrenees, the flags of the fans lining, if not obscuring, the road, are quite often that of the Basque people.

The Basques are cut from the same Republic-like cloth as Yorkshire folk; independent, stoic and ultimately, proud.

When Yorkshire people do things, they do it well, take a look at how they fared at the 2012 Olympics. They would have finished 12th if they were allowed to compete in such circumstances.

They’re competitive all round from cricket to cycling and Yorkshire’s tourist board ‘Welcome to Yorkshire’ did a sterling job of fending off rival bids from Berlin, Barcelona, Edinburgh, Vienna and Utrecht – places with many sights and sounds to offer, but not quite up to the standards of the self-proclaimed ‘God’s own county’.

So a climb up the Buttertubs Pass near the village of Hawes may not have the historical allure or even the difficulty of a Mont Ventoux or an Alpe d’Huez, but the hope is that those who are fortunate enough to visit and, in particular, those who have the privilege of actually competing never forget the day they entered England’s greatest county.

And by the way, the wait is only 348 days, 22 hours, 38 minutes and 39 seconds...38...37...

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