Yorkshire – the new Belgium?

“When people think about cycling now, they automatically think of Belgium, but we want Yorkshire to become of one the places in Europe that is synonymous with cycling.”

Gary Verity has never shied from ambitious targets. His drive to cement Yorkshire’s place as cycling heartland is no new desire and can be seen in recent (but still unsuccessful) attempts to extend the Tour de Yorkshire from three days to four.

He is under no illusion about the additional challenge of hosting a World Championships. The Grand Départ itself represented a lesser logistical challenge, even if media interest in the Tour outstrips every other event in professional cycling.

Swift opinion

Administrators, however important to the process of winning the bid, will take a backseat when the championships begin. The riders will claim centre stage, and for the home riders, the desire to perform will be greater than most. The expectation levels will be ramped up still further for professional riders from Yorkshire, for whom the prospect of a ‘home’ World Championships must seem too good to be true.

Ben Swift will be 31 when the championships roll around in 2019 and, all being well, sitting on 11 years of experience in professional cycling’s top tier. Set to join the new, Chinese-backed TJ Sport squad from Team Sky next season, Swift, from Rotherham, is prepared to make an educated guess about the nature of the course and his chances on it.

“I’m going to try and make it a target,” he says. “It will be held on roads where I’ve grown up and trained. There won’t be any big mountains, but it will be a hard circuit, which I hope will be good for a rider with my characteristics. A ‘home’ worlds is really exciting and gives you that extra motivation to be in the best possible shape.”

Swift has the attributes to compete on such a circuit. The 29-year-old has made a name for himself as a wily sprinter capable of winning from small groups on hard courses. Two podium finishes at the Milan-San Remo in the last three years are evidence of that.

Swift admits Yorkshire’s award of the World Championships didn’t come entirely as a surprise, given the success his home county has had as host to races as different in scale as the Tour de France and Tour de Yorkshire.

Then there is the national picture: Britain has also hosted hugely successful Commonwealth and Olympic Games within recent memory. But the World Championships, Swift believes, will add something different to the mix.

“You almost become used to it [the UK hosting major events] because of the success we’ve had, but the worlds is the cherry on the cake,” Swift says. “It will provide a massive drive for cycling in Yorkshire and in Britain because it’s a week-long festival of cycling.

“It’s something that we need now, given the growth in cycling in the UK and the success we’ve had. We’ve had the Tour and the Olympics, and with the success of both, it was only a matter of time until we were given the worlds. It was the final piece in the jigsaw.”

Womersley offers an unflinching account of cycling in Yorkshire: that when the weather sets in, as it does frequently, riding there holds little attraction.

In fact, hours before we speak, she had been forced by torrential rain to shelve a training session on the road in favour of the WattBike. But when the sun shines…

“A lot of people think that in Yorkshire the weather is always grim, but when the weather is alright it can be quite spectacular. I love riding abroad, but when I’m climbing Holme Moss, I just look up and think: ‘this is a great place to ride my bike’.”

Whether Womersley is allowing herself to think of 2019 or not, she is unlikely to be phased by the sight of elite riders on her training roads. Her perspective on the 2014 Grand Départ must be almost unique. As a grandchild of Britain’s first Tour de France stage winner, Womersley would have been keenly aware of the significance of the race.

“It was strange,” she admits. “I’d been to see it a couple of times in France, when I was younger. It was something you watched on television, or went on holidays to France to watch, and rode your bike. But when it came to Yorkshire, we just rode for 20 or 30 minutes to watch on Holme Moss. The roads I train on everyday were shut.”

She speaks in the tone of one who can still scarcely believe the events of that day. The effect remains. Womersley tells of the parents of a close friend who, before the visit of the Tour to Yorkshire, had never taken the slightest interest in cycling.

She had been shocked to see them on the slopes of Holme Moss the day the Tour came to town. Now, she says, they are addicts of the sport, live spectators at events as different as the Tour de Yorkshire and the Revolution Series.

If Swift and Otley’s Lizzie Armitstead ride off with rainbow jerseys, little will be said for the quality of the circuit or the logistics; whether things ran smoothly or otherwise.

But the eyes of the wider world will be watching, and with cycling so closely connected to the greater prize of tourist dollars for a region, perhaps not everyone will wish Yorkshire well.

Verity has indicated what he considers to be the true legacy of the 2019 World Championships: making Yorkshire a destination synonymous with cycling.

The 2014 Grand Départ was the best possible start to such a challenging mission, and two editions of the Tour de Yorkshire have proved it was no fluke. A successful worlds would put Yorkshire on the cycling map for good.