Rolling out of Bridlington on the county’s east coast on Friday April 28, the race follows an undulating 173km route to Scarborough, via the Yorkshire Wolds.

Stage two offers some respite, heading from Tadcaster to Harrogate, where the stage will finish with the same uphill sprint as the first stage of the 2014 Tour de France did.

But stage three promises to be the toughest stage of the race’s short history to date; the 194.5km route from Bradford to Sheffield’s Fox Valley has been dubbed  the “Yorkshire Terrier” by organisers, but “Yorkshire Terror” may have been more fitting.

Eight classified climbs feature in all, including the brutal cobbled ascent of the ‘Cote de Shibden Wall’ (1km at 13.5 per cent average gradient), with an exciting classic-like stage a fitting way to crown the overall winner.

The second stage, from Tadcaster to Harrogate, should favour the sprinters if the sprint teams maintain a decent control over the break and the speed of the bunch.

Marcel Kittel triumphed on Parliament Street at the Tour de France in 2014, with positioning key for the fast men before the uphill sprint.

The same course will also be used for the Women’s Tour de Yorkshire, which was won last year by Kirsten Wild.

Next year’s showpiece stage is without doubt stage three, however, which promises to blow the peloton apart with unrelenting climbing en route from Bradford to Sheffield.

The stage features 3000m of climbing in 194.5km of racing, with Shibden Wall among the highlights – one of two cobbled ascents around halfway into the stage.

Haworth’s main street (0.6km at 10.6 per cent) gives a taste of what is to follow, but Shibden Wall, which features a maximum gradient of nearly one in four, will claim some victims.

That could be the platform for the race-winning move, but there’s still one more climb to come, at Midhopestones – a 1.4km climb with an average gradient of 10 per cent – from where it is five kilometres downhill and onto the finish line.

Yorkshire lends itself to exciting racing, and organisers hope this will be the most exciting – and toughest – Tour de Yorkshire yet.