Tour Of Britain Cycle Race

On 11 September the world’s top cyclists will descend on Rochdale for the start of the Tour of Britain Cycle Race. This is the largest ‘free-to-watch’ sporting event in the UK. Information on The Tour is available on http://www.tourofbritain.com.

Rochdale has been chosen as the starting point for the 2010 race and 96 of the best international cyclists will line up to take on the first stage of the eight day gruelling race, which finishes in London over 1,000 kilometres later.

We want to make sure this is a great event for local people and we want it to showcase Rochdale – the race receives nightly coverage on ITV4 so Rochdale will be put in the international spotlight in a way that it has never been before.

Getting Children and Young People Involved

We want children and young people to get involved, but the race is the very first weekend after the new school year begins.

We will therefore be promoting activities that will be taking place on the day throughout the summer, but wanted to highlight a couple of competitions to you before the end of term.

Flag Design Competition

We are inviting nursery and primary school children to design a hand-held flag for the race. Thousands of flags will be printed and the whole world will see them being waved by spectators gathered in the town centre for the start of the race and lining the route.

Any child who wants to take part just needs to create their design in colour (painting or drawing) on a sheet of A4 paper. The actual size of the flags is 170mm wide by 130mm high, so children should keep this in mind when creating their design! The theme should reflect the borough of Rochdale, the Tour of Britain, or cycling in general, or a combination of all three.

They then just need to send it to Tim Nuttall, Tourism Officer, Rochdale Council, 4^th Floor Municipal Offices, Rochdale, OL16 1XU by 9 August. Please make sure that they write their name, age, school and home telephone number and address on the back so that we can get back in touch with them!

If pupils could do this as an end of term activity, that would be great.

We would like the winner to have their photograph taken with their winning design at their school at the very start of the new school term so we can get it in local press prior to the race.

Win a Bike Competition

This competition is open to primary and secondary school children.

There will be three bikes on offer.

All entrants have to do is take along the competition flyer (which will be available online from the Council website over the summer http://www.rochdale.gov.uk/events )  to the start of the Race on September 11^th and answer a couple of questions.

We would like the competition flyer to be available via school websites too and will e-mail you the information and a PDF of the flyer itself before the end of term.

We would also like to distribute the flyer to schools in preparation for the first week of the new term (week beginning 6 September). There would be one per pupil. If they could be given out in this first week it will promote the competition in time for it taking place the following weekend.

The competition will require people to name two members of the British Sky racing team when they are announced from the race podium in Rochdale town centre and they will need to post their completed competition flyer in one of the post boxes that will be placed around the town centre.

We will be promoting the competitions and the race throughout the summer, but it would be great if you were able to communicate the competitions to your pupils before the end of term.

If you have any other ideas as to how we could help your school get involved with the race, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Similarly please do call or e-mail if you have any queries.

This will be a great event for the borough of Rochdale and its residents. I do hope that you will be able to help us to promote it in this way.

Thanks for your help,

Tim Nuttall