Cycling: The Tour de France will not start in Copenhagen in 2021 as planned. Instead, the Tour of France celebrates the Grand Départ in Denmark in 2022.
Tour de France, Olympic Games & Soccer World Cup
That us the Corona pandemic we can already guess that its effects will still be felt in a few years' time. This is partly due to the typical domino effect. We can now also see this from the shift of the Grand Départ in Copenhagen. The Tour de France 2021 will not start in Denmark on July 1 as originally planned. The reason? Since the Olympic Games had to be postponed to next year, they would deal with the Tour de France overlap. Therefore, the organizers pushed to move the start a week forward. However, Copenhagen did not like this idea at all. After all, the Tour de France would then collide with the World Cup, which also had to be postponed to 2021 due to the corona virus. Therefore, all parties involved had no choice but to seek a compromise. This has now been found as the Grand Départ in Copenhagen will take place the following year.
Where does the 2021 tour start?
So the 2022 tour starts on July 1st in Denmark. But where do the pros start their journey in the coming year? This is now to be found out very quickly. There shouldn't be a shortage of applicants. Brittany seems to be the favorite for the award. So far, however, there has been no confirmation from the ASO. After all, there is already planning security for 2022. Because the route of the Grand Départ will go through the stage without any changes. In Copenhagen, for example, an individual time trial is first completed before it goes from Roskilde to Nyborg and then from Vejle to Sonderborg.
frank jensen, Mayor of Copenhagen:
"I'm glad we managed to get a Danish tour start for 2022. Many of us were looking forward to seeing the tour in Denmark next year. And now, unfortunately, we have to wait a little longer. On the other hand, the Danes can now look forward to an even bigger Volksfest in Gelb in 2022 if the tour isn't pressured by the European Football Championship and Olympics and hopefully we have the coronavirus under control."