Scotland could soon host Tour de France stages after "successful" World Championships

Scotland Cycling's chief executive Nick Rennie has said that he's hopeful of the Tour de France coming to Scotland soon, after the country played a successful host to the 2023 UCI Cycling World Championships, the first-of-its-kind cycling championship in history, combining 13 disciplines with over 200 events in the past two weeks.

It's being widely regarded as the biggest cycling event in the history, with more than 500,000 fans having attended it, and many describing it as a "celebration of the sport". So after such glowing appraisals, the next step, according to Rennie, is to bring the most famous event in cycling to the country.

He said: "There are a lot of conversations which are hugely exciting - even something as huge as the Tour de France might be an option for a few stages. I hope that the success of this huge event will just further raise the credibility of Scotland as a fantastic venue for cycling events.

"This is the biggest event, but Scotland has a great heritage and track record of hosting World Championships and World Cups in cycling. It takes a long time to put the packages together and convince the decision makers they should go with Scotland."

"Fingers crossed, I'm sure in the next few weeks we'll hear some announcements," he added, according to the BBC.

> UK government confirms bid for 2026 Tour de France Grand Départ

Pure. Dead. Brilliant. #GlasgowScotland2023 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 pic.twitter.com/aLlnS970uz

— 2023 UCI Cycling World Championships (@CyclingWorlds) August 13, 2023

Was Glasgow 2023 successful?

The event, primarily taking place in Glasgow, but also in places such as Stirling and the Glentress Forest, was the largest championships held in a region at the same time, with more than 8,000 cyclists from 151 nations taking part, and over 200 new champions being crowned with rainbow jerseys.

Belgian fans, 2023 worlds, Glasgow ( Zac Williams/SWpix.com)

We asked road.cc readers how they felt about the championships on the live blog yesterday, and the answers were glowingly positive — including being called a "great success" and a "fantastic experience".  

And while Rennie said that he's hoping to bring the Tour de France to the Scottish lands, for Michael Matthews, a veteran of the peloton from Down Under, this Worlds already felt like one.

> “It felt like the Tour de France”: Have Scotland’s world championships been a success? We ask the riders, fans, and locals

"It was truly special. Obviously the UK has a massive cycling following. But honestly I didn’t expect this. The road race felt like I was in the Tour de France, or in Belgium or in Holland, where cyclists are gods," the Jayco AlUla rider told road.cc.

He added: "We were treated to a very special race. Everyone had goosebumps when we entered the circuit. Even before the circuit, all through the towns, you could just see the kids really enjoying us riding past.

"You could just feel the love, and that’s truly special. With the amount of negative things you see on social media these days – and you try to black it out obviously – but once the race started, having the fans cheering us on made the race even more special than just being another world championships."

2023 world road race championships, Glasgow (Thomas Maheux/SWpix.com)

And not just Matthews, the sentiment was corroborated by road.cc writer Ryan Mallon, who was present at the Championships: "Just walking around Glasgow, surrounded by banners advertising French constructions firms and giant inflatable bowls of fruit, there is a palpable sense, from this writer’s perspective anyway, that cycling has taken over Scotland’s largest city."

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Visions for a Scottish Grand Départ in 2026

If it does end up happening, it wouldn't be the first time that Britain would act host to Le Tour. It has previously hosted stages from the 1994 Tour in Dover to Brighton and in Portsmouth, to mark the opening of the Channel Tunnel.

The Tour returned to London for its opening day time trial stage in 2007 and headed to Canterbury the next day, before hosting another Grand Départ in Leeds and the following two stages in Yorkshire.

Tour de France 2014 stage 1, Leeds (Dean Atkins/SWpix.com)

For the next year, it's confirmed that the Tour de France will see its riders setting out from Florence in the Tuscan region of Italy, while Rotterdam or the Hague seem poised to host the Grand Départ in 2025. Meanwhile, Rotterdam will also host the Tour de France Femmes next year.

The inaugural UCI Cycling World Championships have proved that uniting our sport is a recipe for a spectacular event.

Thank you to all parties involved for brining this vision together. We already look forward to the 2027 UCI Cycling World Championships in Haute-Savoie 🇫🇷 pic.twitter.com/1P9qdyWfGA

— David Lappartient (@DLappartient) August 13, 2023

Back in 2021, it was reported that Britain will bid to host the 2026 Tour de France Grand Départ, with stages expected to be in England, Scotland, and Wales and funding coming from the government to back the bid and cover organising costs, with then Chancellor Rishi Sunak allocating £30 million funding to prepare bids to hold the opening stages of the 2026 Tour de France and the 2025 Women's Rugby World Cup.

It would appear that the UCI President David Lappartient's vision of hosting a cycling "mini-Olympics" have been well and truly recognised in Glasgow. While the next edition — it's supposed to take place every four years, in the year preceding the Olympics — will be in Haute-Savoie in France, Scotland seems ready to host another cycling fete, only this time, the winner would take not the rainbow, but the yellow jersey.