Tour Down Under 2016: Tour de Yorkshire organiser Sir Gary Verity likes downhill finish

Sir Verity loves the uniqueness of the fast finish after some of the peloton reached speeds of nearly 105km/h down Gorge Road before the Corkscrew Road ascent.

Tour de Yorkshire’s Sir Gary has need for speed

TOUR de Yorkshire organiser Sir Gary Verity is contemplating a downhill finish for his race in future, endorsing the break neck speeds of the Santos Tour Down Under’s stage 3 on Thursday.

Sir Gary loves the uniqueness of the fast finish after some of the peloton reached speeds of nearly 105km/h down Gorge Road before the Corkscrew Road ascent.

“Normally with the many stages of bike races you’d have a flat finish for a sprinter or an ascent, a summit finish,’’ he said.

“It’s quite unusual to take someone to the top of the summit and bring them down the road with some of the data on the screen showing they were touching 104.9km/h.

“That is quite crazy that’s as fast as you’ll see anywhere in the world.

“I have never quite of thought about that (the downhill finish) before.

“We’ve always thought about whether it’s going to be a flat finish in which case we have to split the peloton up beforehand or we have a finish which has a bit of a kick to it.

“It’s kind of reverse psychology and we have to think about that.”

Sir Gary is in Adelaide having a series of meetings with race organisers and SA’s tourism and sports minister Leon Bignell.

Gary Verity from Yorkshire at the end of Stage 3.

The British businessman who is also chief executive of Welcome to Yorkshire won a plethora of accolades for Yorkshire hosting the first stage of the Tour de France in 2014.

The region is close to again securing a Tour de France start.

“We learned quite a lot two years ago and we were pleased with the outcome of the Tour de France first stage which was lauded as the grandest Tour de France departure,’’ Sir Gary said.

“But from my point of view as the Tour de Yorkshire organiser it’s fantastic for me to be here (Adelaide) at the start of the cycling season and to be able to over three days catch up with so many riders, sponsors, team managers and owners, the organisers of this race and journalists.

“They’re all in the one place and can have a lot of meetings in three days that could take many, many weeks if I did it all one at a time.

“It’s kind of speed dating meets cycling.”