“Easier than selling Manchester United, but still not easy”: New Tour de Yorkshire organiser in talks with UCI and British Cycling to make race “as big as it was before”

The recently relaunched tourism agency Welcome to Yorkshire’s director Robin Scott says he is currently in talks with the UCI and British Cycling, as he attempts to revive the defunct Tour de Yorkshire races in time for next year’s tenth anniversary of the Tour de France’s Grand Départ in the county.

Scott, the co-founder of Lancashire-based company Silicon Dales – which last year bought all of Welcome to Yorkshire’s assets, including the rights to the men’s and women’s stage races – has told the Yorkshire Post that discussions are ongoing with the two governing bodies and that the organisers are currently working to ensure that there is “enough funded support” for the resurrected event to “be as big as before”.

A 2024 Tour de Yorkshire – though it remains to be seen whether that rather controversial moniker will continue to be used in any case – would mark the first time the races have been held since 2019.

Since then, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, escalating financial challenges, and the collapse of the region’s tourism and inward investment agency Welcome to Yorkshire, after a period mired in scandal, ensured that the race has lain dormant.

> Tour de Yorkshire bites the dust – but a new one-day event may replace it

But Scott, who earlier this year relaunched Welcome to Yorkshire, which ran the race jointly with Tour de France organisers ASO, in partnership with British Cycling, is cautiously optimistic that – despite the current turmoil engulfing the UK racing scene – elite international racing will return to Yorkshire’s roads next year.

“We’re looking to make sure we’ve got enough funded support for the event to be as big as it was before, without having to go to local councils and ask them to dip into their pocket,” he told the Yorkshire Post this week.

“Before we start making announcements or putting firm dates into the calendar, we want to get everything in place to have a successful event.

“But the target has always been 2024, for the ten-year anniversary of the Grand Départ in Yorkshire.”

French hero Thomas Voeckler wins the final stage of the 2016 Tour de Yorkshire in a packed Scarborough (SWPix.com)

Launched, as Scott notes, the year after the region hosted the first two stages of the Tour de France in 2014, the four-day Tour de Yorkshire men’s race, as well as the women’s event – originally a one-day race, but later expanded to two – quickly became one of the most well-supported races in the world, with throngs of fans lining the county’s hills, lanes, and towns to catch a glimpse of the sport’s stars such as race winners Marianne Vos, Greg Van Avermaet, Thomas Voeckler, and Lizzie Deignan.

But misuse of expenses and allegations of bullying against chief executive Sir Gary Verity – who brought the Grand Départ to the region – tarnished Welcome to Yorkshire’s image. He resigned in March 2019, six months before Harrogate hosted the UCI Road Cycling World Championships that he had fought hard to secure and which became intrinsically associated, for all sorts of reasons, with his controversial leadership.

Following Verity’s departure, a number of the local councils throughout Yorkshire that funded the agency withdrew their financial support (with some also openly questioning the value of hosting high-profile cycling events and refusing to fund the Tour de Yorkshire in 2021), and the agency collapsed, entering administration in March 2022 – when it was bought at auction by Silicon Dales.

> Forensic accountants to investigate all Welcome to Yorkshire expenses claims

As we reported last June, Silicon Dales swiftly entered talks with both Tour of Britain and Women’s Tour organisers SweetSpot and the ASO in a bid to revive the race (potentially as a one-day event), though discussions with the Paris-based media and sports events company soon broke down.

While nothing has yet been confirmed concerning SweetSpot’s involvement with the races, ASO owns the rights to the Tour de Yorkshire name, meaning that any resuscitated event would likely have a fresh identity.

“We couldn’t have tried any harder to get agreement with ASO for the Tour de Yorkshire event, but we needed a partner on the delivery side who wanted the event to go ahead in future,” Scott said at the time.

“In 2024, we’re hoping to deliver a marquee event for the region which evokes a similar energy to the amazing 2014 Grand Départ we remember so fondly.”

Scott also hopes that a new-look Tour de Yorkshire will form part of his ambitious plans for Welcome to Yorkshire – which will, at least, retain its old name – to attract people to the historic county.

“We initially considered a rebranding exercise, but it’s relatively expensive and not entirely justified,” he said this week.

“With the name recognition of Welcome to Yorkshire and what they have achieved in the past, the positives outweighed the negatives.”

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Scott’s plans to revive the Tour de Yorkshire will come as a relief for cycling fans, riders, and stakeholders in the UK, after what has been a miserable few months for the domestic racing scene.

The current challenging economic climate, and the pressures it has placed on potential sponsors, has resulted this year in the collapse of several UK-based teams, while also placing strain on race organisers at all levels.

This precarious situation for British bike racing was underlined by last month’s announcement that the Women’s Tour – one of the most important stage races in the women’s international calendar – has been cancelled for 2023, just weeks after organisers SweetSpot launched a crowdfunder in a bid to save the race, and months after the Tour Series, another SweetSpot event, was also put on temporary hiatus.

As Robin Scott noted on his LinkedIn page today, the British cycling landscape in 2023 means that bringing the Tour de Yorkshire back to life may be “easier than selling Manchester United, but [it’s] still not easy”.