Next July, Yorkshire will host the opening two stages of the Tour de France. With this year’s race currently in full swing, Chief Sports Writer Scott Wilson looks at how our region is preparing to host the Tour – and what it hopes to get out of it

FORGET Mont Ventoux, welcome to Middleham. Goodbye Alpe d’Huez, hello Aysgarth Falls. By this time next year, the Tour de France will have developed a broad Yorkshire twang.

While the eyes of the cycling world are currently trained on Chris Froome’s attempts to retain the yellow jersey as this year’s Tour heads into the Alps, thoughts in our region are already leaping ahead 12 months.

To July 5, 2014, to be exact, the date when the Grand Depart of next year’s race will see the world’s best cyclists head out of Leeds and embark on a 190km journey that will wind through the Dales before ending in what is expected to be a bunch sprint in Harrogate.

Twenty-four hours later, and York will be the starting point for a hilly second stage that will incorporate Knaresborough and Haworth before concluding in Sheffield.

It will be like the Great Yorkshire Show, the Leeds Festival and the Olympics, all rolled into one. It will also be the biggest sporting event Yorkshire has ever seen.

“There’s been a lot of excitement for quite a while now, but it’s definitely ramped up even further since this year’s Tour de France got under way,” said Gary Verity, chief executive of Welcome To Yorkshire, the organisation that led the successful bid that resulted in the county being awarded next year’s Grand Depart. “All of a sudden, it seems to be dawning on people exactly what all of this means.

“It’s going to be the biggest event ever staged in the north of England, certainly in Yorkshire and our part of the world. You only have to look at what hosting a stage of this year’s Tour means to Corsica, where the riders started from last week, and the towns and villages that it’s been winding its way through in France since then.

“Every day on the Tour is like a giant holiday, and that’s what we’ve got to look forward to next July. It’s about putting millions of pounds into the regional economy and promoting everything Yorkshire has to offer.

“It’s about giving everyone the chance to join in and see the race or engage in the various cultural events that will also be taking place. And it’s also about creating a legacy and using the Tour to bring about an uplift in interest in cycling, and an increase in the number of people who participate in cycling, either competitively or for recreation, in our region.”

Economically, the benefits of hosting two full-blown Tour stages are already being felt. It is estimated that there will be an economic boost of more than £100m in terms of tourism revenues and increased international recognition, and there is growing anecdotal evidence of guest houses and hotels in the Dales hanging out the ‘No Vacancies’ sign for the start of next July.

But a key part of Welcome To Yorkshire’s pitch for the Grand Depart was a pledge that the Tour would help promote cycling in the region and build on the sport’s growing national popularity in the wake of the Olympic successes of Sir Chris Hoy and Victoria Pendleton and Sir Bradley Wiggins’ victory in last year’s Tour de France.

Bob Howden is the chairman of British Cycling Yorkshire, the regional arm of the sport’s governing body, and has been delighted with the momentum that is gathering some 12 months before the Tour crosses the Channel.

“In the cycling world, it doesn’t get any bigger than the Tour de France,” he said. “But it’s the event’s wider prominence that really makes this a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

“Without wanting to detract from the importance of what’s happening next year, the Tour will be an event that comes and goes. Our job is to make sure that it leaves something significant and long lasting behind.

“We have to use the Tour as a catalyst for change, and as a tool for encouraging people to try cycling who might otherwise not be engaged.”

A number of proposals are already on the table, from a scheme similar to the ‘Boris Bike’ scheme in London that sees people picking up a bike from one part of the city and dropping it off somewhere else, to a series of bike banks that would operate in a similar manner to public libraries.

Discussions are also taking place about improving the network of cycle routes in Yorkshire, and establishing an improved programme of mass participation races such as the popular Sky Ride, with Howden happy with the level of cooperation his organisation is receiving from local authorities and community groups.

“The main thing the Tour has done is open a lot of doors that had been closed before,” he said. “Cycling has changed from a marginal sport to one of the biggest sports in the country in the last few years, but it was still quite hard to get people to appreciate the full range of health and exercise benefits it can offer.

“The spotlight of the Tour has changed that for us and it should ensure we get thousands of kids from right across the region introduced to the sport.

“A lot of the local authorities are looking at our Go Ride programme, which we’ve been working on for a number of years now, and are keen to develop it to get kids involved in cycling, particularly in more deprived areas where the sport hasn’t previously penetrated.

“Obviously, we want next year’s two stages to be a massive success. But success for us can only be measured in 20 or 30 years time when we assess what the wider impact has been.”

By then, it is hoped that the Tour will have inspired a new generation of Yorkshire cyclists to follow in the tyre tracks of the some of the region’s greats.

The county is home to Olympic gold medallist Ed Clancy, Olympic silver medallist Lizzie Armitstead, 2009 UCI downhill world champion Steve Peat and Sky Pro rider Ben Swift, but perhaps Yorkshire’s best-known cycling son is Wakefield’s Barry Hoban, who won eight stages of the Tour between 1967 and 1975.

In Hoban’s day, seeing a British rider succeeding in the Tour was something of a rarity, and having watched the opportunities afforded to British cyclists change out of all recognition in recent years, the 73-year-old is extremely envious of the competitors who will be involved in next year’s event.

“I would love to be 40 years younger, in my prime and riding in the Tour de France next year,” he said. “I was chuffed to hear it was coming to Yorkshire, but I would be more chuffed if I was 40 years younger.

“I had a professional career that lasted 18 years. I left Yorkshire with £200 in my pocket and said to myself, ‘If I don’t win any money and spend the £200, I’ll come back to Yorkshire and become an electrician or something’.

“You never knew what was up the road so when I look back now it was amazing to have had 18 years as a professional with very little backing from Britain.”

The state of British cycling today is very different, with Froome set to emulate Wiggins’ success on the Champs D’Elysees to make it two British Tour de France victors in succession, less than 12 months after the nation’s track stars swept the board at the London Olympics.

Next year’s visit to Yorkshire will reinforce Britain’s status as a cycling powerhouse, with Tour de France race director Christian Prudhomme especially impressed by Yorkshire’s reaction to the staging of the Grand Depart.

“I have been struck by the happiness of people in Yorkshire to the news,” said Prudhomme. “Like the owner of the cafe near Buttertubs (between Wensleydale and Swaledale) who has painted the walls the colours of the jerseys of the Tour de France and installed a countdown clock for the Grand Depart.

“Like the thousands of people in front of the Town Hall in Leeds in minus three degrees, which bodes well for having lots of people lining the route. And in Ripon Cathedral, we went to the crypt which dates from 672 and the priest blessed the Tour de France. I have never seen this before.

“I said after my travels that the people of Yorkshire were Belgians who speak English because I’ve only seen the Belgians have such a passion for cycling.”