Tour de France: the Grand Departures from abroad, a great classic

The 2023 Tour de France will start from Bilbao in Spain.

The year before, he will have left Copenhagen in Denmark.

This will be the second time in its history that the Grande Boucle will experience two successive Grand Departures from abroad (Yorkshire Great Britain in 2014 and Utrecht in the Netherlands in 2015).

Logically, this should not have happened, but the Covid has reshuffled the cards.

Because Copenhagen was to host the start of the Tour this year.

But, following the one-year postponement of Euro 2020 football where Copenhagen is the host city, the Danes could not host both events at the same time.

Brittany, designated the launching pad for the Tour 2022, has therefore exchanged places with the Danes.

For a long time, a departure from the Grande Boucle outside France looked like an exception.

Today, they are much more regular.

Because these host cities are ready to put their hand in the wallet to afford the Tour de France, its attractiveness and its influx of spectators.

Concretely, it was in 1954 that the Tour de France left abroad for the first time.

It was from Amsterdam in the Netherlands.

The Netherlands is also the foreign nation that has opened its doors the most to a Tour start.

Since then, without counting Copenhagen 2022 and Bilbao 2023, the event has gone abroad 22 times.

Country by country, Tour departures abroad

Netherlands:

six starts.

Amsterdam (1954), The Hague (1973), Leiden (1978), s'Hertogenbosch (1996), Rotterdam (2010), Utrecht (2015).

Belgium:

four departures.

Charleroi (1975), Liège (2004 and 2012), Brussels (2019).

Germany:

four departures.

Cologne (1965), Frankfurt (1980), Berlin (1987), Düsseldorf (2017).

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Great Britain

: two departures.

London (2007), Yorkshire (2014).

Luxembourg

: two departures.

(1989 and 2002).

Spain:

a start.

San Sebastian (1992).

Ireland:

a start.

Dublin (1998).

Switzerland:

a start.

Basel (1982).

Monaco:

a departure (2009).