The story of how the UK landed the 2027 Tour de France and Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift Grands Départs begins more than two decades ago with a text. Still today, Christian Prudhomme remembers reading it. “I’d just arrived at [Tour organiser] ASO at the time,” the men’s race director says, “and it was about golf.”
The year was 2004. The text came from a Leicestershire man named Paul Bush, and flashed up on the phone of the then ASO president, Patrice Clerc. Bush had just started a new role as an events director in Scotland. Twenty-two years on, Prudhomme is recounting the story in the basement room of Leeds City Museum, on the day of the UK Tour stages reveal for 2027. Bush is sitting three seats to his left, smiling.
