As one of the UK’s leading sports Universities, we were delighted to host the start of Stage 3 of the UK’s most prestigious cycle race, the AJ Bell Tour of Britain, this week.
Over 100 of the world’s top professional cyclists assembled in the beautiful grounds of St Mary’s College for the Tour’s first Stage in England. After leaving St Mary’s, the Tour headed out towards the North Pennines before heading back through County Durham and then on to Sunderland. In all, Stage 3 covered a 163 kilometre (101 mile) route, through some of the North of England’s most stunning scenery.
This is the first time Durham has hosted a stage start in the professional edition of the AJ Bell Tour of Britain.
We were especially proud to see Durham University students Louis Jakobson and Jason List join riders on this Stage. Louis and Jason are members of the Durham University Cycle Club and were delighted to have the opportunity to take part in this event and complete the full route of this Stage.
Durham is a top sporting University. We finished in 3rd place overall in the 2021/22 BUCS season, and support over 50 capped internationals each year. Our sporting alumni include Gabby Logan, Jonathan Edwards, Will Carling, Sophie Hosking and Caroline Atkins.
We also offer one of Britain’s largest participation programmes, with over 75% of our students engaged in sport and physical activity across 18 sports and over 700 teams.
We recently invested £32 million in our sports facilities with state-of-the-art equipment at our sports hub, Maiden Castle Sports and Welling Park.
As well as welcoming Stage 3 of the Tour of Britain to Durham, we were delighted to host the Zambian Commonwealth Games Team in July, in the run up to the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games.
We then welcomed England Hockey to Maiden Castle Sports and Wellbeing Park in August, as they hosted the Women’s Euro Hockey Qualifiers hockey tournament.
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