Resilience is the main factor in success and the people of this northern county have it in spades, argues John P Wilson
What is it about Yorkshire which inspired 2.5 million highly enthusiastic people, half the county’s population, to turn out and watch the opening two days of the Tour de France? Its inhabitants are renowned for their gritty resilience and determination, but the question is can these qualities be translated into economic success?
The Tour de France race director, Christian Prudhomme, described the welcome for the TdF cyclists and teams as unparalleled in history. People lined the route up to ten deep and on the winding Holme Moss hill climb police estimated there were 60,000 people.
People camped out all weekend to ensure they bagged a good vantage point; farmers cut 'Bienvenue le Tour' into the grass on hillsides and some even dyed their sheep the colours of jerseys -yellow, green and polka dot. In the multicultural district of Burngreave, I watched a wide range of nationalities all with a great sense of pride at being a part of this little slice of history. A huge roar of encouragement sounded for one local cyclist as he rode his bicycle down the middle of the empty road an hour before the peloton arrived.
I know how hard these climbs are for cyclists as during my student summer job, at a sewerage works, I pedalled home up the steepest part of the route, an 800-metre 30 per cent section of the Jenkin Road.
Tour commentators acknowledge the effort required by competitors require, with one pundit describing its gruelling demands like this: "This is a very steep climb. You can't see it, but, their legs will tell you. Watch how they wobble, watch as they crack one by one..."
When I cycled it in my student days, I never imagined that the capacity to keep going when it was really tough would give me the life skills to transfer to the workplace but it did.
And perhaps this is the secret of the Yorkshire’s success too because as a county it has produced a disproportionately high number of sporting sensations for its size. Among them number Olympic super Saturday star Jessica Ennis (heptathlon), Ed Clancy (cycling team pursuit), Alistair Brownlee (triathlon) and Nicola Adams (boxing), to mention a few.
In fact if it had been an independent country during the 2012 London Games, as some diehard Tykes would like, it would have finished in 12th place in the gold medals table.
There is a toughness and resilience in Yorkshire folk, which often enables them to dig deep and get to the finish. And research has shown that the main factor in success is resilience, the ability to keep going after suffering set-backs.
Yorkshire has the innate capacity to persevere and dig deep and it is attributes such as these that will help the north of England bridge the gap with the affluent South. The organisers of the Yorkshire stages of the Tour de France’s will be hoping that this magnificent showcase translates to economic success founded on the skills and values of Yorkshire thrift and resilience.