Tour de Yorkshire



The Tour de Yorkshire is a road cycling race in Yorkshire, England which started in May 2015. It is promoted by the Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO) and is rated as a 2.1 event as part of the UCI Europe Tour. From 2015 to 2017 it was a three day race and in 2018 will expand to four days starting on Thursday 3 May to Sunday 6 May.

The idea for the race arose as a legacy event following the significant success of the visit of the 2014 Tour de France to the county. The first two stages of the 2014 Tour, also organised by ASO, from Leeds to Harrogate, and York to Sheffield, were nicknamed Le Tour de Yorkshire.

To date, the race has always taken place over the three days before the May Day bank holiday (which in Britain is on the first Monday in May).

2015
Taking place from 1–3 May, the route was Bridlington–Scarborough, Selby–York, and Wakefield–Leeds.

The overall winner was Lars Petter Nordhaug of Team Sky. Samuel Sánchez was second and Thomas Voeckler  was third. Nordhaug also won the points classification and Team Sky won the teams classification. The mountains classification was won by Nicolas Edet.

2016
This took place from 29 April–1 May (British Cycling had rejected an application by the organisers Welcome to Yorkshire and ASO to increase the race to four days for 2016 ), and the route was Beverley–Settle, Otley–Doncaster, and Middlesbrough–Scarborough.

2017
The 2017 Tour was on 28 - 30 April, with starting or finishing places of Bradford, Bridlington, Harrogate, Scarborough, Sheffield and Tadcaster. It was later announced the route would be Bridlington–Scarborough, Tadcaster–Harrogate and Bradford–Sheffield with the women's race on the Tadcaster–Harrogate section.

2018
The tour was extended to four days running from Thursday 3 May to Sunday 6 May. On 28 September 2017, the start and finish points of the stages were announced as Barnsley, Beverley, Doncaster, Halifax, Ilkley, Leeds, Richmond, and Scarborough. It was later announced that the stages would be Beverley–Doncaster, Barnsley–Ilkley, Richmond–Scarborough and Halifax–Leeds, the women's race would be on part of the first two stages.

Impact
The Tour de Yorkshire has had a significant benefit to Yorkshire in terms of monetary gain and exposure to the world. In 2015 it generated £50 million, £60 million in 2016 and £64 million in 2017. It was estimated that the broadcast coverage of the event in 2017 and was viewed by 9.7 million people across the world with over 2 million people spectators lining the route.