Rotterdam and The Hague look to host the Tour de France Grand Départ in 2024 or 2025
Rotterdam is also hoping to host the final stage of the women's Tour de France in 2023
The Dutch cities of Rotterdam and The Hague have put themselves in the running to co-host the Grand Départ of the 2024 or 2025 Tour de France.
If they were picked it would be the third time in 15 years that the Netherlands had hosted the Tour. Rotterdam wishes to be the host for the opening prologue with stage one being hosted around The Hague.
The race organiser, ASO, will visit the area to review the bid as it looks to make its decision. The bid is said to be costing more than 20 million Euros.
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Rotterdam has hosted the Tour before back in 2010 when Fabian Cancellara stormed to victory in the opening prologue to take the yellow jersey.
The Hague has had the Tour before as well, albeit back in 1973 where another prologue took place with Joop Zoetemelk the rider who came out on top to pull on yellow.
The Netherlands has hosted the Tour a total of six times with the capital of Amsterdam being the first to do so back in 1954. Scheveningen, Leiden, Den Bosch, Rotterdam and Utrecht followed over the next few decades.
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Utrecht was meant to host the start of the Vuelta a España last year but due to the Covid-19 pandemic, it was unable to do so meaning the Spanish Grand Tour was cut down to 18 stages instead of the usual 21. The Dutch city has had to request to host again in the coming years.
Rotterdam is also wanting to be the finish location for the final stage of the women's Tour de France, or Tour Féminin, in 2023.
It is not yet fully clear that the race is, in fact, coming back to the women's calendar, but plans do look to be going ahead to hold the race in 2022.
The Tour de France will start in the Bretagne city of Brest in 2021 with Denmark's capital city, Copenhagen, holding the event in 2022 for what will likely be a sprint fest.
The Grand Départ in 2023 will also be held abroad, on that occasion by Bilbao in the Basque Country of Spain. This, if the Vuelta's opening stages of 2020 are anything to go by, is not likely to be a very sprinter-friendly start to three weeks of racing.
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Hi, I'm one of Cycling Weekly's content writers for the web team responsible for writing stories on racing, tech, updating evergreen pages as well as the weekly email newsletter. Proud Yorkshireman from the UK's answer to Flanders, Calderdale, go check out the cobbled climbs!
I started watching cycling back in 2010, before all the hype around London 2012 and Bradley Wiggins at the Tour de France. In fact, it was Alberto Contador and Andy Schleck's battle in the fog up the Tourmalet on stage 17 of the Tour de France.
It took me a few more years to get into the journalism side of things, but I had a good idea I wanted to get into cycling journalism by the end of year nine at school and started doing voluntary work soon after. This got me a chance to go to the London Six Days, Tour de Yorkshire and the Tour of Britain to name a few before eventually joining Eurosport's online team while I was at uni, where I studied journalism. Eurosport gave me the opportunity to work at the world championships in Harrogate back in the awful weather.
After various bar jobs, I managed to get my way into Cycling Weekly in late February of 2020 where I mostly write about racing and everything around that as it's what I specialise in but don't be surprised to see my name on other news stories.
When not writing stories for the site, I don't really switch off my cycling side as I watch every race that is televised as well as being a rider myself and a regular user of the game Pro Cycling Manager. Maybe too regular.
My bike is a well used Specialized Tarmac SL4 when out on my local roads back in West Yorkshire as well as in northern Hampshire with the hills and mountains being my preferred terrain.
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