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Scarborough to host Tour de Yorkshire?Scarborough (CC BY 2.0 licensed by Tom Tolkien:thomastolkien.wordpress.com)

Scarborough to host Tour de Yorkshire?

Council needs to make quick decision over spending £135k
by John Stevenson
Fri, Dec 12, 2014 20:06
0

The seaside and spa town of Scarborough is set to host a stage of next year's Tour de Yorkshire, if the local council agrees to stump up a £135,000 contribution to the cost.

Welcome to Yorkshire and the Amaury Sport Organisation, owner and organiser of the Tour de France, have suggested Scarborough could host a stage start on Foreshore Road on the the town's South Bay, according to The Scarborough News.

The Tour de Yorkshire will be run from Friday May 1 to Sunday May 3, and it's suggested that Scarborough would be the start of the middle stage on Saturday, May 2.

The council will need to pay an estimated £135,000 in host town fees and the cost of infrastructure and support, but they don't have long to decide.

To get everything in place by May 2, organisers need a decision by December 22.

The council's director of service delivery, Andy Skelton believes the race is likely to bring more economic benefit into the town than it will cost.

In a report, which will go before cabinet members next Wednesday, he said: “In terms of benefits to the borough, it is difficult to quantify these in terms of a financial value. Comparisons can be drawn with Armed Forces Day which delivers an estimated induced economic input to the area of £770,000.

"The key factors as suggested by Welcome to Yorkshire are up to 900,000 additional spectators over the three-day event and television coverage on terrestrial TV and across Europe.

"In addition, there is the opportunity to showcase the area as a destination and add to the growing enthusiasm and participation in the sport of cycling in the UK.

"These benefits are likely to exceed by some margin the cost of £135,000 to the borough council.”

Tour de Yorkshire
Scarborough
John Stevenson

John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.

He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.

Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.

John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.

He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.

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