Brussels seeks Tour de France start in 2019 to honour Merckx
"Gr🌠and Depart" exactly 50 years after "the Cann♕ibal's" first Tour win




Brussels is seeking the start of the 2019 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Tour de France, to honour the 1969 Tour victory by Eddy Merckx, a native of the Belgian capital. An organizing committee has already broached the idea to the Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO), ✱which is apparently receptive to the plan.
Merckx won his first Tour in 1969, at the age of 24, and went on to win the race four mor🌊e times. 2019 would mark the 50th anniversary of his first win.
"It would be a fantastic homage to Eddy Merckx," said Alain Courtois, the former Secretary-General of the Belgian Football Association — who is leading the project — to Nieuwsblad.be.
Courtois and Merckx met last week in Paris with the ASO. Tour boss Christian Prudhomme "responded pleasantlyꦦ surprised" and "said immediately that the Tour absolutely would not let such a historical figure of Eddy Merckx go unnoticed. We're not going to skip Brussels."
No decisions on the 201🐓9 Tour will ღbe made until 2017, Courtois noted. "If need be, we will accept a stage finish and a start the next day, but our preference is for the Grand Depart."
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