Next year’s Tour de Yorkshire at the beginning of May will offer male and female riders what is likely to be their only chance to race on the circuit that will be used for the road race world championsips in Harrogate five months later.
The announcement of the route for the Tour de Yorkshire on Friday revealed that stage two of the men’s race and stage one of the women’s event on 3 May will both be diverted around the hilly, technical 14km circuit – with its twists and turns in and out of the centre of Harrogate – that will provide the climax to the elite women’s and men’s road races on 28 and 29 September.
Additionally, an intermediate sprint has been located in Parliament Street in Harrogate where the world championship finish line will be located, enabling a racing insight into what will be required.
Among the favourites in September will be the previous Tour de Yorkshire winner and 2015 world champion Lizzie Deignan, who has described the circuit as “very hard, very good, with lots of places to launch attacks.”
Each year, pressure mounts on the Tour de France organisers Amaury Sport Organisation – who also organise the Yorkshire Tour - to run a women’s Tour, and Yorkshire continues to provide pointers for a possible future format. This year the women’s race will conclude on a Saturday, 4 May, and both stages will be identical to those on the men’s race, making this the longest and toughest Women’s Tour de Yorkshire.
Stage one of the men’s Tour in East Yorkshire finishes in Selby after a day on relatively flat roads; stage two of the men’s event corresponds to stage one of the women’s race and concludes in Bedale, again with a mass finish expected.
The weekend is far tougher: the womens race will be decided on Saturday on the Yorkshire coast, with the particularly tough ascent up Lythe Bank from the seaside to the moors north of Whitby and two further climbs before the finish in Scarborough. That stage will enable the men’s race to take shape before it concludes on Sunday’s hilly leg from Halifax to Leeds.
