Yorkshire deserves to be showered in praise for the staging of the Tour de France Grand Depart.
I went into Harrogate with my family at 10am on Saturday, six and a half hours before the riders were due to cross the line, and you couldn’t get anywhere near the finish.
We took a few pictures of each other standing near the line, but it was quickly apparent that the crowd was going to be massive, so we made our move to the fan park and stayed their for four hours.
The atmosphere was fantastic, there were so many young families around and everyone was just determined to be a part of the event and to enjoy it to the maximum.
It seemed to be the same way for every mile of the course through Yorkshire – the scenes through Calderdale and Huddersfield, right through to Holme Moss, were just inspiring – and for so many people to turn out really did do Yorkshire proud.
When it comes to the biggest cycle race in the world, it takes some doing to blow the French away – but they were truly amazed by what they saw.
There is talk of them bringing it back here at some stage, which would be great, and, of course, there is also talk of a tour race for the county, which is equally encouraging.
It just shows the effect which our success in cycling over the years has had, with Sir Chris Hoy, Sir Bradley Wiggins, Mark Cavendish and Chris Froome firmly to the fore.
There is no better way, to be fair, for families to enjoy a day out than cycling, because it is relatively inexpensive and tremendous healthy.
It always helps when the sun shines, of course, but it’s a great activity to get involved in and I’m sure the Tour de France will have plenty of knock-on positives for the people of Yorkshire as well as our economy.
Just going back to the sporting element of the race, how incredible that two of our best-known riders – Cavendish and the defending champion, Froome – should be out of the reckoning after just the first few days.
How they would perform was of massive interest to the British public, but two or three crashes later and there aren’t too many familiar names left in the peloton.
Those are the fine margins in professional sport.
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