FILE PHOTO: Cycling - Tour de France - Stage 21 - Monaco to Nice - Monaco, France - July 21, 2024 General view of a rider during stage 21 REUTERS/Manon Cruz/File Photo
LONDON (Reuters) - The Scottish city of Edinburgh will host the Tour de France Grand Depart in 2027 as the world's most famous cycling race returns to Britain for the fifth time.
It will be the third time the race has started in Britain after London in 2007 and Leeds in 2014.
Organisers also confirmed on Wednesday that the Tour de France Femmes will come to Britain in 2027, the first time both races have held stages in the same country outside of France.
Further details on routes will be announced in the autumn, but the prospect of a stage on the cobblestones of Edinburgh's Royal Mile is a mouth-watering one.
Organisers also confirmed that the Tour's first three stages will be in Scotland, England and Wales.
"Why Edinburgh? Because it's a magical city," the Tour's General Director Christian Prudhomme told reporters during a briefing on Wednesday. "In the Tour de France and all cycling races, what is very important is the helicopter shots.
"Edinburgh and Scotland will offer a magnificent backdrop."
The Tour first came to Britain in 1974 when Plymouth hosted a stage and it returned 20 years later in Dover to celebrate the opening of the Channel Tunnel. London staged the Grand Depart in 2007 and in 2014 massive crowds perched on the Yorkshire hills as the race began in brutal and spectacular fashion.
"It was a wall of people, it was massive," Prudhomme said.
The opening stage in 2014 ended in Harrogate where home favourite Mark Cavendish crashed badly, ruling him out of the rest of the race. Despite that disappointment, Cavendish said starting a Tour in Britain was unforgettable.
"I did two British Grand Departs. The first one was my first ever Tour of France and for many years that was the greatest Grand Depart any rider of our generation could remember," sprinting great Cavendish, who won a record 35 Tour stages, told reporters.
"It was four, five people deep the whole way from London to Canterbury. Then we went to Yorkshire in 2014 and that was something else, wasn't it."
The return of the Tour to Britain and the first staging of the Tour de France Femmes in the country was a collaboration between Tour owners ASO, British Cycling, UK Sport and the UK, Scottish and Welsh Governments.
Jon Dutton, CEO of British Cycling, said it represents an exciting moment for cycling in the UK.
"Hosting both the men's and women's races together will be a first, and we believe it has the potential to inspire more people to discover the joy and benefits of cycling," he said.
Glasgow hosted the inaugural combined UCI World Cycling Championships in 2023, contributing an estimated 205 million pounds ($265.89 million) to the local economy, according to the UCI.
Last year's Tour Grand Depart took place in Florence, Italy, with the 2026 race scheduled to start in Spain in Barcelona.
($1 = 0.7710 pounds)
(Reporting by Martyn Herman; Editing by Christian Radnedge)
