Next year the Tour de France will start in Yorkshire and the organizing committee is already trying to produce a long-term legacy of the big event. According to chief executive Gary Verity, the organizers hope to put on a three-day stage race in the county in 2015, with Tour de France organizers ASO being involved in the project.

For the second time in less than 10 years, the Tour de France will be departing from Great Britain when next year's edition of the Grande Boucle kicks off in the county of Yorkshire. However, the organizing committee Welcome2Yorkshire doesn't see it as a stand-alone event and hopes to create a lasting legacy from the great spectacle.

And the ambitions are soaring, with the executive director Gary Verity claiming that the county wants to challenge Belgium as cycling's hotbed in Europe. The committee has teamed up with Tour de France organizers ASO as they try to put Yorkshire firmly on the cycling map.

“We’ve said all the way along that we’re keen for Yorkshire to become the cycling capital of Europe and wrestle that away from the Belgians," he told Cyclingnews. "Clearly having the Tour de France is not going to do that on its own so there needs to be a whole series of things. We’ve had some really good discussions with ASO about bringing other races to Yorkshire.”

The plan is to create a three-day race that has a similar format to the Criterium International. Held over two days and three stages, the ASO-organized race was held in the Ardennes for several years but was recently relocated to Corsica.

“It would be great if we could do a three-day race, similar to the Criterium International," Verity said. "Something like that would fit really well in Yorkshire. We know that we’ve got all kinds of stages we could put on and if we could do that on a regular basis, it would be a genuine legacy of the Tour de France coming to Yorkshire.”

The Tour de France kicks off on July 5 with a road stage from Leeds to Harrogate.