Boris Johnson says rejecting the Tour de France is a 'no-brainer'

Ross Lydall @RossLydall29 September 2015

Boris Johnson today said it was a “no-brainer” for London to turn down the chance to host the opening stages of the 2017 Tour de France.

The Amaury Sport Organisation, which runs the race, chose the capital to host the Grand Depart over rival bids from Edinburgh and Manchester.

However, Transport for London felt the estimated £35 million cost “sent out the wrong signals” at a time City Hall is hoping for a generous settlement in the Government’s spending review. London and Kent hosted the three-day Grand Depart in 2007, at a cost to the capital of £5.2 million, and a day stage last year.

The 2017 bid was championed by Sir Peter Hendy but he recently departed as TfL commissioner. Concerns had been expressed at the possible use of TfL’s cycling budget on a “one-off” event rather than on infrastructure.

Labour mayoral candidate Sadiq Khan said: “The Government has wasted a huge opportunity to sell London to the world and bring one of the world’s greatest sporting events back to London. Londoners deserve to know exactly what happened for the tour to be cancelled at the last minute with little explanation. The Government and Boris Johnson have serious questions to answer.”

The Mayor today said it was “entirely my call” to pull out of the event.

He added: “I had to take a very tough decision, obviously painful. In an ideal world, you know me, my policy is to have your cake and eat it. The difficulty was we had to make a choice. £35 million is an awful lot to spend on a one-off event when you could put that money into long-term projects. What people really want is safer cycling lanes.”

He added: “For me it was a no-brainer” and he denied it marked the end of big sporting events in London.

Asked why the initial bid was made for the event if the capital could not afford it, he said: “You’ve got to make some tough choices.”

Cycling campaigner Danny Williams, who writes the Cyclists in the City blog, said: “London should have said yes but not with TfL cash. TfL used safety cash for 2014 Tour. Wrong.”

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in