Curiously enough, the knitted bunting is one of the things that still resonates in the minds of those who organised the 2014 Grand Départ of the Tour de France in Yorkshire.
Amid the crowds thronging the roads over the first two stages of the race, traversing picture-postcard Yorkshire Dales to council estates in Sheffield, a whole county devoting itself to a bike race for the weekend, the bunting and yellow jerseys knitted in local villages and hung beside the route became an indication of the lengths to which the folk of the Broad Acres had gone to embrace an event that would barely have registered with many spectators only a few years earlier.
Official estimates stated that 4.8 million people had stood on the roadsides across the first two stages, 3.3 million over two stages in Yorkshire, then 1.5 million for the third stage from Cambridge to London. These are figures that have significantly increased competition to host the Grand Départ — over the past three years the race has started in Copenhagen, Bilbao and Florence — and which have resulted in another successful British bid.
It was announced last week that the first three stages of the 2027 race will be held in Scotland, England and Wales, with the Grand Départ in Edinburgh, which was where the unlikely subject of handcrafted bunting became a topic for discussion once again. “For us, the knitting, I think that was the first time, the one and only time,” Christian Prudhomme, the race director, said. “But the whole event in Yorkshire was just huge. A wall of people, smiles on everybody’s faces, a corridor of sound for the riders. It was amazing.”
The precise worth of staging major sporting events is never easy to calculate. Much of the impact is quantifiable and the 2014 Grand Départ, in financial terms, was estimated to have generated £128million in total revenue. But so much of the benefit is intangible, such as the inspiration to spectators, young and old, who may be persuaded into sport, perhaps with goals to become part of the next generation of elite athletes or simply to enjoy a healthier lifestyle.
Katherine Grainger, the outgoing chair of UK Sport, warned this week of a shortage of big events due to be held in this country after the men’s football European Championship has been co-hosted with Ireland in 2028. “We risk public investment, we risk global reputation, we risk opportunities for athletes,” Grainger told the BBC. “We’ve got a great reputation for it and we have a few [events] lined up. But when it comes to mega-events, after 2028 we’ve got nothing secure.”
In itself, the Yorkshire Grand Départ was an example of the impact such mega-events can have, surfing the wave of sporting euphoria that had been generated two years earlier by the London Olympics. It was also perfectly placed to capitalise on the cycling boom that had swept the country on the back of Olympic successes and the victories in the previous two Tours de France of Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome, the first two British winners of the race.
In turn, the surge of support seen at London in 2012 and Yorkshire two years later began to inspire the next generation of cyclists. This year there are 34 British riders in the men’s World Tour, more than ever. This week the first and fifth stages of the Volta a Catalunya were won by Matthew Brennan, a 19-year-old who hails from Darlington, a short spin from some of the most memorable stretches of the Grand Départ in the Yorkshire Dales. Tuesday’s second stage was won by Ethan Vernon, the 24-year-old British rider, pipping Brennan to the line in the sprint. Just as the likes of Mark Cavendish, Froome and Geraint Thomas are leaving the stage, a new British cast is assembling.
In Edinburgh last week Laura Kenny spoke of the time she realised the full impact of the London Games, where she had won the first two of her five Olympic gold medals. “It was when I was competing back in the London velodrome at the 2022 Commonwealth Games and I had two team-mates [in the team pursuit], Sophie Lewis and Maddie Leech, and they both said they’d taken up cycling on the back of London 2012,” Kenny said.
“There’s a big picture of me as you walk in the velodrome with my hand in the air and Sophie said her good luck charm when she was riding there as an under-12 was to give me a high-five on that picture. She made me feel like a granny. But when you hear stories like that, wow, what an impact. That’s what you hope for from these events.”
The Olympic inspiration over the past year came from another brilliantly staged Games in Paris, where iconic locations and a medal rush for the host nation vividly evoked the heady London days of 2012. The cycling road race, in particular, gave a reminder of cycling’s ability to showcase the best of a location to a global television audience, with the peloton making three climbs of the steep cobbles in Montmartre in front of crowds standing ten-deep either side. Some of the most spectacular shots of Yorkshire in 2014 were in Bronte Country up the cobbles of the main street in Haworth.
The route for the 2027 Grand Départ has yet to be decided, but the prospect of a sprint finish up the gradual incline of the Royal Mile’s cobbles towards Edinburgh Castle will surely prove irresistible. The first three days of the Tour de France Femmes will also be held in the UK, with the opening stage likely to start in Leeds.
The script in 2014 had a victory on the opening stage for Cavendish in Harrogate, his mother’s home town. That did not quite come to pass, as he dislocated his collarbone in a crash during the final sprint, but, having retired after securing his record 35th Tour stage win last year, he has fond memories of riding that opening stage and has high hopes for big crowds again in 2027.
“What cycling does so well is that you can step out of your house and the sport is there going past,” he said. “That road you get picked up from school every day on is the arena, the same as a football pitch or tennis court, so it’s easier to imagine yourself doing it, it’s attainable. It gives me goosebumps to think of riding through Yorkshire; the riders still talk about it to this day.”
Those with a less than sympathetic view of the generosity of Yorkshire folk believe that the huge crowds were prompted simply by the discovery that a bike race is free to watch. But there was so much else that made for a remarkable Grand Départ.
Some sunny weather certainly helped to show off the glorious greenery of the Dales, but on the second day the race came alive on a spectacularly sharp climb through a Sheffield council estate — Jenkin Road — which was transformed for a few hours into a throbbing sporting auditorium. “It’s like riding through a nightclub out there,” Thomas said. “It’s brilliant.”
There was an immediate legacy for the county in the form of the Tour de Yorkshire race, held over three days from 2015 to 2017, with an extra day added for the next two years. But the race was cancelled during Covid and has yet to be staged again, with the local tourist board falling into dire financial straits.
This, indeed, is part of a troubling decline in the domestic racing scene across the UK. British Cycling stepped in to rescue the men’s and women’s Tours of Britain last year and it is hoped that the return of the Tour de France in 2027 will further the governing body’s new strategy of increasing the sport’s social impact.
“This is not just about the race, it’s about creating a national moment that encourages healthier lifestyles, supports cycle tourism, and brings communities together,” Jon Dutton, the British Cycling chief executive, said.
However the impact of the 2027 Grand Départ is measured, it clearly has the potential to be a landmark event, which the organisers claim could become the largest free sporting spectacle in British history. Just as the London Olympics paved the way for the Yorkshire Grand Départ, now the success of that 2014 event is serving as a template for the 2027 race in Edinburgh and beyond, with the aim of knitting added colour into the nation’s sporting fabric at a time when major events are becoming more important than ever.
