The 2014 Tour de France will feature a stage that visits the London 2012 Olympic Park on Saturday July 5th in front of Leeds Town Hall before traveling 190-kilometer towards Harrogate.
The race last visited the UK in 2007, when London hosted the prologue and the opening stage.
"Since the resounding success of the Grand Depart in London in 2007, we were very keen to return to the United Kingdom," said Tour director Christian Prudhomme.
It will be the fourth time the Tour has visited Britain after previous visits in 1974 and 1994.
"We're bringing the world's greatest race from Yorkshire all the way down to London," London Mayor Boris Johnson said. "I know it's going to be wonderfully exciting. I'm going to be in the crowd."
The first stage stretches for 190 kilometres (118 miles) and is flat until entering the iconic Dales, where the terrain becomes slightly steeper as riders race a semi-circular route across the contours of the valleys. The peloton then sweeps southeast through the cathedral city of Ripon before rejoining flat roads on a long, straight finish to Harrogate.
Stage two heads to Huddersfield via Haworth and from there riders face a number of sharp ascents, the last of which is some five kilometres (three miles) from the finish.
Stage three will take the pack over 170 kilometres (105 miles) through the counties of Hertfordshire and Essex before arriving in London from the northeast, via Epping Forest.
The rest of the 2014 route will be unveiled on Oct. 23.
As part of the festivities, all riders who managed to finish a Tour de France have been invited for the final day. About 500 former riders are expected to be at the finish line on the Champs-Elysees.
With that being said, because of Lance Armstrong's tarnished name he'll likely not be invited to join in on the celebration.
Armstrong was stripped of his seven Tour titles and banned from cycling for life following a U.S. Anti-Doping Agency report that portrayed him as a serial drug cheat. But after years of denials, he has finally chosen to come clean about his doping during an interview with Oprah Winfrey that was taped Monday and scheduled to air Thursday at 9 p.m.
Before the allegations and eventual confession, Armstrong was always the main talking point of the race when he won his seven titles from 1999-2005, and when he came out of retirement to race in the 2009 and 2010 Tours.
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