Cycling
It starts in Amorebieta and will have the finish line in Baiona, and it will be the last of the three to be held on Basque roads in an edition that will start with a Bilbao-Bilbao
The third stage of the 2023 Tour de France will be held between Amorebieta and Baiona and will be the last of the three days that will make up the Grand Départ of the French round in Euskadi, according to EITB. For obvious reasons, a good part of the layout of this stage will run along Gipuzkoa roads, which will once again vibrate with the passage of the best platoon of the season.
Next year’s Tour will start from Bilbao on July 1 with a stage that will also end in the Biscayan capital. The second stage will also run entirely on Basque roads, although the place of departure and arrival is still unknown. It will be held on July 2.
On Wednesday of next week, all the details of the stages that Euskadi will host in the 110th edition of the Tour will be announced, in a presentation that will take place in Vitoria and in which the general director of the French race, Christian Prudhomme, will participate. .
The Tour will leave the Basque Country again 31 years after it did so from Donostia in 1992. In 1996 the race came to Pamplona and also had an arrival in Hendaye.
The institutions of the Basque Autonomous Community have invested twelve million euros in reorganizing an exit from the French round, of which the Basque Government, the Provincial Council of Bizkaia and the Bilbao City Council three million each, and the provincial councils of Gipuzkoa and Álava and the municipalities of Donostia and Vitoria, 750,000 euros each. The arrival of the third stage in Baiona indicates that the Iparralde institutions have also decided to participate in a project that from the beginning was described as “country”. Jean-René Etchegaray, president of the Community of Iparralde and mayor of Baiona, was present at the presentation in March of last year in Bilbao. “We will be partners in this precious operation,” said the lapurtarra alderman.
Gipuzkoa and Alava
The second stage and the role of Gipuzkoa and Álava in this start of the Tour remain to be seen. If, in the case of Gipuzkoa, it is limited to serving as a passageway between Amorebieta and Baiona or, as the Lehendakari ventured in the presentation, there will finally be a stage with a finish line in Donostia. Álava was then spoken of in the code of Rioja Alavesa. In 1992, the Tour started with a prologue in Donostia, won by Miguel Indurain. The next day the race started and came from San Sebastián with the victory of Frenchman Dominique Arnould. On this occasion, it is not yet confirmed what kind of stages Euskadi will host this time.
