CYCLING / Tour de France: London businesses will reap a bonanza of up to £60 million (€87 million) after confirmation yesterday of perhaps the worst kept secret in the cycling world in recent years: the Tour de France will, as first reported in the Guardian in 2004, be starting in the capital on July 7th, 2007.

Transport for London (TfL) has been one of the driving forces behind the bid and will earmark £4 million to finance it, with that sum sure to be increased by other partners, possibly Sport England, British Cycling, and the local councils where the two English stages will finish.

A TfL spokesman said yesterday: "We estimate that the return just over the course of the weekend will be £50 million to £60 million. We are expecting a lot of Spanish, French and Italian visitors."

Usually, when the Tour visits an area, hotel rooms are booked up well in advance, and in recent years organised trips to the race have been increasingly popular. The start of the Tour - le Grand Depart - is a major draw for visitors because the race is concentrated in one area for several days. The main event in London will be the prologue time-trial on Saturday, July 7th, a route of less than five miles encompassing the Mall and Buckingham Palace, but the teams will arrive on the previous Wednesday for medical tests and press conferences.

The field will be formally presented to the public on the evening of July 6th, and after the prologue the capital will host the start of a road-race stage on the morning of July 8th.

The initial bid was for a stage starting and finishing in London, but that has been amended to a route which will take the riders towards the Channel for a stage in France the following day.

The French press have reported that the return to France will be on the Eurostar high-speed train. In 1994, when the Tour visited England, the race caravan came through the Channel tunnel before it opened to the public and returned to France by ferry and aeroplane. About three million spectators watched the two stages.

The precise costs of hosting the Tour in the capital have yet to be finalised because the tendering process for organising the stages through an event management company is not expected to begin for a couple of weeks.

On the Tour's highly successful visit to Britain in 1994, the race was organised by Alan Rushton and Mick Bennett, who had run the Kellogg's Tour of Britain and were also involved in organising the Tour's 1998 start in Dublin.

The pair are no longer working together but remain involved in race and event organisation, with Bennett taking a hand in the last two Tours of Britain and running the London cycle show. There is speculation that they will feature in rival tenders.

Chris Boardman, who won the prologue time-trial three times, having made his Tour debut in Le Tour en Angleterre in 1994, said yesterday that cycling bodies in England would have to be prepared for a massive, but probably brief, upsurge in public interest in cycle racing.

"It's a tremendous opportunity for our sport," he said. "Right in the build-up to 2012 it puts a major sports event in the middle of London. It's like having the Olympics come to town. In Bradley Wiggins we have someone who can perform in front of the home crowd, and there will be David Millar as well."

Boardman compared the media impact of the Tour to his gold-medal win on the Lotus bike in the Barcelona Olympics. "It will be millions and millions of free advertising for this sport. All sides of the sport will need to be interested and available for the public so they can make the link between the sports event and opportunities for real people."

Though Millar is the last Briton to win the prologue, having taken the stage in 2000, Wiggins also has his sights set on victory.

"It's an amazing prospect having two events in the space of six years - with that and the Olympics - which can do so much for my profile and that of British cycling," said the 25-year-old Wiggins. "The prologue is near where my mum lives in Victoria and I can't imagine how many people will be there.

"I've known about it for a few months and that's why I've put so much emphasis on this year's Tour prologue in Strasbourg. It's my sole objective; it will be a dress rehearsal for London. If I can win or get close this July, it will give my confidence a massive boost."

Guardian Service

(Previous Tours to start outside France)

1954: Amsterdam (Netherlands)

1958: Brussels (Belgium)

1965: Cologne (Germany)

1973: Scheveningen (Netherlands)

1974: Plymouth (England)

1975: Charleroi (Belgium)

1978: Leiden (Netherlands)

1980: Frankfurt (Germany)

1982: Basel (Switzerland)

1987: Berlin (Germany)

1989: Luxembourg (Luxembourg)

1992: San Sebastian (Spain)

1994: Dover (England)

1996: Den Bosch (Netherlands)

1998: Dublin (Ireland)

2002: Luxembourg (Luxembourg)

2004: Liege (Belgium)