December 11, 2008 – The 97th Tour de France will start from Rotterdam in Netherlands on July 3rd, 2010. Never in the past has the organisation been confronted with such a dilemma: To have to choose between two cities – Rotterdam and Utrecht – whose applications were both of a very high level. Each of them had the trumps to welcome a wonderful Grand Depart. Therefore we sincerely hope that Utrecht will once again apply as a candidate for a future Tour.

The decision was made in favour of Rotterdam for two main reasons: Firstly, because in the wake of the Grand Depart from London, Rotterdam embodies a kind of continuity by using the image of the Tour de France in a metropolis to promote cycling as an important means of transport in the heart of the city. Secondly, because its geographical situation adheres perfectly to the route we have imagined for the 2010 Tour.

The choice of Rotterdam, a vast urban centre with one million two hundred thousand inhabitants, is directly in keeping with the special start of the Tour in London in 2007. The proposed project — “Rotterdam and the Tour, a new energy” — seduced us. It fits into an overall policy that aims to an even bigger place for the bicycle in the city’s heart, while leaning on the popularity of the biggest cycling race in the world, the Tour de France. From the banks of the Thames to the biggest port in Europe: the same desire, the same will.

In 2010, the Netherlands, which gave the bicycle its nickname of “little queen”, will host the Grand Départ of the Tour for the fifth time. A journalist recently asked me why the Netherlands has been favoured compared to the other countries (“only” three starts each for Belgium and Germany, two for Luxembourg, one for Spain and none in Italy, for instance). Besides the geographical location, which gives the organisers every freedom to organise the route in its entirety, a large part of the answer lies in these few lines, written in L’Équipe in 1954, when the Grande Boucle decided to start outside French borders for the very first time: “All of the Netherlands seemed to have gathered on the roads of Wassenaar, Delft, Rotterdam”¦ Tens of thousands of spectators in closed ranks, uninterrupted, for kilometres and kilometres, clapping, cheering for everything that had to do with the Tour, the cyclists, the motorcyclists, the cars that followed or that led”¦ [In this way] they made a triumph of the first stage!”

I do not believe that I am taking any risks by stating that these words were a taste of the future. A huge party is already being prepared with all the Dutch people, including, naturally, our friends from Utrecht, who are rightly disappointed today. In Rotterdam, between the Rhine and the Meuse, the Tour will depart with its feet in the water, so to speak, for the third time in a row. After Brest with the Atlantic Ocean, the Principality of Monaco with the Mediterranean Sea, here we have the North Sea, which the route across Zeeland will allow us to admire at our leisure. However, at the beginning of July 2010, it will be the enthusiasm and the jubilation of the people because of the Tour that will blow us away.

Christian PRUDHOMME
Director of Tour de France