Tour de France 2014: Route for 101st race announced The 2014 Tour de France, which begins in England, will include five mountain finishes and one individual time-trial. The 101st Tour will start in Leeds on 5 July, one of two stages in Yorkshire, before the riders race from Cambridge to London prior to the French stages. Chris Froome is worried about crashes and mechanical problems on cobbles - and there will be nine sections of them on stage five in northern France. The British defending champion said the surface has an "unknown factor." "A mechanical problem in the wrong moment of the race when things are kicking off could lead to you losing the Tour," the 28-year-old Team Sky rider told Cycling News prior to Wednesday's announcement. Tour de France 2014 route in the UK I'm not a big fan of that. Someone shouldn't lose the Tour due to a mechanical fault. Froome followed first British winner Sir Bradley Wiggins, the 2012 champion, with a peerless climbing performance and three stage wins to claim the yellow jersey this year. It will be the fourth time the race has visited the UK and the first time since 2007, when a Westminster prologue was followed by a stage through Kent. Previous visits came in 1974 and 1994. The opening stage to Harrogate is expected to end in a sprint, giving Mark Cavendish - who has 25 stage wins in the Tour - the chance to take the race leader's yellow jersey in his mother's home town. The second, hilly stage is from York to Sheffield and could open up gaps in the general classification standings, before another stage expected to end in a sprint, from Cambridge to The Mall in central London.