Tour de Yorkshire

The Tour de Yorkshire was a road cycling race in the historic county of Yorkshire, England which first took place in May 2015. It was promoted by the Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO) and was rated as a 2.HC event as part of the UCI Europe Tour.

The idea for the race arose as a legacy event following the success of the visit of the 2014 Tour de France to the county. The first two stages of the 2014 Tour, also organised by ASO, from Leeds to Harrogate, and York to Sheffield, were nicknamed Le Tour de Yorkshire. From 2015 to 2017 it was a three-day race but in 2018 it expanded to four days. The race took place in the days before the May Day bank holiday which, in Britain, is on the first Monday in May. The race was to become part of the new UCI ProSeries in 2020 but that was cancelled due to COVID-19. The 2021, 2022 and 2023 tours were also cancelled.

Taking place from 1–3 May, the route was Bridlington–Scarborough, Selby–York, and Wakefield–Leeds. The overall winner was Lars Petter Nordhaug of Team Sky. Samuel Sánchez (BMC Racing Team) was second and Thomas Voeckler (Team Europcar) was third. Nordhaug also won the points classification and Team Sky won the teams classification. The mountains classification was won by Nicolas Edet (Cofidis).

This took place from 29 April – 1 May (British Cycling had rejected an application by the organisers Welcome to Yorkshire and ASO to increase the race to four days for 2016), and the route was Beverley–Settle, Otley–Doncaster, and Middlesbrough–Scarborough.

The 2017 Tour was on 28–30 April, with starting or finishing places of Bradford, Bridlington, Harrogate, Scarborough, Sheffield and Tadcaster. It was later announced the route would be Bridlington–Scarborough, Tadcaster–Harrogate and Bradford–Sheffield with the women's race on the Tadcaster–Harrogate section.

The tour was extended to four days running from Thursday 3 May to Sunday 6 May. On 28 September 2017, the start and finish points of the stages were announced as Barnsley, Beverley, Doncaster, Halifax, Ilkley, Leeds, Richmond, and Scarborough. It was later announced that the stages would be Beverley–Doncaster, Barnsley–Ilkley, Richmond–Scarborough and Halifax–Leeds, the women's race would be on part of the first two stages. It is estimated that this year's event bought in £98 million to the Yorkshire economy.

In October 2018, it was announced that Barnsley, Bedale, Bridlington, Doncaster, Halifax, Leeds, Scarborough and Selby would all be either start or finish points for the stages in the tour of 2019. At the same time, it was revealed that Redcar would be a host town in 2020.

In the same month, the world governing body for the sport (UCI), announced that the tour had been upgraded to HC status, the highest status for a multi-stage race which is not part of the world tour. Sir Gary Verity, the race organiser and chair of Welcome to Yorkshire said