At the presentation of the Tour de Yorkshire some days ago, Christian Prudhomme, director of Cycling at ASO, said that it was not a question whether the Tour de France will return to Yorkshire but when. However, it may now be the Vuelta a Espana, another ASO race that will first start from the British county. In any case, the organization Welcome to Yorkshire and its Chairman Gary Verity have expressed their interest in an interview with CyclingWeekly.

For the moment, nothing is decided and it is not certain that La Vuelta will follow the same path as the Giro which has started far from its home country and inserted an extra rest day after three days to accommodate the travel to Italy. The Vuelta took off from Assen in 2009 which meant that they had a rest day after just four days. More recently, the Giro started in Belfast in 2014 and Apeldoorn in 2016 and that resulted in an extra rest day, with the race starting on Friday instead of Saturday and extending to 24 days instead of 23 days. The International Cycling Union had opposed these departures in 2013, but since then the situation has changed, especially after the Giro and Vuelta have made great efforts to reduce transfers between stages.

Gary Verity told CyclingWeekly:  “We have spoken to Javier [Guillen, race directo] and he knows if he brings the Vuelta to Yorkshire he’ll be guaranteed huge crowds.”

The Vuelta has also received an application from Utrecht. The foreign starts have been very successful, especially in Great Britain which hosted the Tour de France in 2007 in London, the Giro in Belfast in 2014 and the Tour de France again in Yorkshire in 2015. Yorkshire will also host the World Championships in 2019.