'Magical' Edinburgh to host start of 2027 Tour de France

Edinburgh was the starting city for the 2023 Cycling World Championships and will now be the venue for the Tour de France's Grand Depart in 2027 (Oli SCARFF)

The 2027 Tour de France will start in Edinburgh with the first three stages taking place in Scotland, England and Wales, the organisers ASO announced at a ceremony in the Scottish capital on Wednesday.

The women's Tour de France will also start from Britain in 2027, from a location yet to be revealed.

This will be the third men's start from the United Kingdom but the two previous Grand Departs both took place in England, making these the first stages ever to be raced in Scotland and Wales.

The first two stages of the 2007 edition were in London with Yorkshire hosting the start of the 2014 race.

According to an official report, the Grand Depart of the 2014 race attracted 3.5 million spectators to the roadside as two stages took place in Yorkshire, with a third between Cambridge and London.

"The popular success was absolutely phenomenal," Tour director Christian Prudhomme told AFP.

"We were faced with walls of people, a great mass of people."

Prudhomme said setting off from the "magical city" of Edinburgh was something he had in mind for some time but its remoteness had worked against it.

"Scotland was already a candidate against Yorkshire for 2014 and one of the major differences at the time was the distance from France," said Prudhomme.

"But since then, there have been new UCI regulations which mean that, once every four years, we have a 'joker' to start on the Friday, which fundamentally changes the deal."

The ASO organisers used the exemption in 2022 for the start in Copenhagen instead of a Saturday. They will use it again in 2027 to start on Friday July 2, 2027 for three complete stages on British soil.

Details of the cities have yet to be revealed, but the peloton will head straight for England, where the second stage will also take place.

- British cycling slump -

The third stage on Sunday, July 4 will visit Wales for the first time, where, according to Prudhomme, the architects of the route will "use the hills and very steep gradients so that the favourites in the general classification will be shoulder to shoulder".

Monday will be a rest day, devoted to the transfer of the peloton to France.

While the 2025 Tour de France will start in Lille, the Edinburgh start will mark the fifth foreign start in six years, after Copenhagen in 2022, Bilbao in 2023, Florence in 2024 and Barcelona in 2026.

Prudhomme says he is "proud" of these international starts, which he believes not only help to "raise the profile" of the Tour and of France, but also generate a lot of money for ASO -- around six million euros ($6.5 million) for Bilbao and Florence.

Mark Cavendish, who won a record 35 stages of the Tour de France and is widely regarded as the best sprinter in the event's history said: "I think both my British Championships came here in Scotland and more than anything I've always had an incredible welcome here, a real personable feel and enthusiastic support."

The now retired 39-year-old added: "I don't think we can comprehend what a start of the Tour de France is going to be like here. It's going to be bigger than you can even imagine. It's really quite exciting."

The departure from Scotland will also help to breathe new life into British cycling, which, after two hugely succesful decades that spawned three Tour winners in Bradley Wiggins, Chris Froome and Geraint Thomas, now appears to have slipped into a slump.

The once-dominant Ineos team is in a slump, not helped by losing star British rider Tom Pidcock in December, and from 2026 the public will no longer be able to tune into the Tour de France on free-to-air television.

This is also the reason why the women's Tour de France will be hosted by the United Kingdom in 2027.

The cities and dates have yet to be confirmed, with the start scheduled for the weekend following the finish of the men's Tour.

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