Vuelta a Espana and Tour de France still on Yorkshire cycling agenda

Welcome To Yorkshire’s commercial director Peter Dodd said the county’s commitment to cycling was undimmed following the recent resignation of chief executive Sir Gary Verity, who was credited with bringing the Grand Depart of the Tour de France to Yorkshire in 2014.

An estimated two million people lined the route of the four-day Tour de Yorkshire over the Bank Holiday Weekend for the fifth edition of the race.

Dodd confirmed to The Yorkshire Post that the contract with joint-organisers ASO (Amaury Sports Organisation) has another “two to three years to run” and that they have enough start and finish towns around the county to take them up to 2022.

Beyond that, negotiations are continuing to bring the starts of the Vuelta a Espana and the Tour de France to the county in the next six years.

The Vuelta’s public relations director Charles Ojalvo attended day two of the Tour de Yorkshire.

Dodd said: “Our ambition would be to host the Vuelta and for the Tour de France to follow shortly, both within five to six years.”

On the Tour de Yorkshire’s future, he added: “All our sponsors are committed for the long term and 20 hours of television coverage into 190 countries is a very, very powerful message.”

Verity resigned on health grounds in March with investigations now ongoing into both his personal expenses and allegations of a bullying culture within the organisation. That led many councils to suspend funding for Welcome To Yorkshire, but Dodd insists there is no lack of enthusiasm from authorities to continue the cycling tradition.

"As I've travelled around Yorkshire, various chief executives have said to me, 'You do know I'm down for a stage start or a stage finish, don't you?'" he said.

"We're over-subscribed. We had 16 potential starts and finishes for 2019, off the top of my head we've probably got at least 14 for next year and one or two for 2021."

Dodd said Welcome To Yorkshire have a rolling agreement to stage the Tour de Yorkshire with the Amaury Sports Organisation, the owners of the Tour de France, and that he hoped to confirm their commitment for the next several years in the coming months.

"We are committed on paper until 2020 or 2021 but we will probably announce, hopefully later this year, a new contract to take us further forward," he said.

The Tour de Yorkshire has made a point of pushing its women's race, introducing equal prize money two years ago and expanding it to a two-day race last year, using the same routes in full as stages of the men's race run on the same day.

Dodd said operational practicalities meant there would be no imminent expansion of either race in terms of stages, but said the organisation remains “ambitious” regarding the development of both.