IT WILL be sat there now on the desk of Simon Renucci, the Mayor of Ajaccio, the capital city of the island of Corsica.
You will all have seen them before, those twee sort of greetings cards with a ragged little teddy bear on the front clutching a heart with the words ‘Thank You’ written next to it in bold bright letters.
Inside the ‘space left free for your own message’ offering, there will be scrawled ‘You don’t know how much this means to us’ and it will be signed by every member of the organisational team for Yorkshire’s ‘2014 Grand Depart’.
After rendering the finish line useless by jamming a bus under a bridge and having the mass crash to end mass crashes on the opening stage, the Corsicans have pretty much ensured that very little can go wrong for Yorkshire in staging the Tour De France next year.
Even if the first stage from Leeds to Harrogate meets disaster when a No58 service bus to Burley-in-Wharfedale gets lodged under a low bridge, it will merely be seen as a touch of gritty North Country satire on what has to be done to match the French at their own game.
