Verity: Yorkshire has all the ingredients to host World Championships

Yorkshire 'has all the ingredients' to host a successful road cycling World Championships, according Gary Verity.

The organiser of the Tour de Yorkshire says the success of the inaugural three-day race has proven that the county could host the Worlds road race.

An estimated 1.5m people lined the roads of the route between Friday and Sunday, witnessing Team Sky's Lars Petter Nordhaug become the first winner of the race.

"We would love to have the world championships here in Yorkshire," Welcome to Yorkshire chief executive, Verity, told MailOnline. "It's an obvious thing.

"The World Championships I think would love to come to Yorkshire after what you've seen over the last few days, one and a half million people out for the first edition of a new race.

"You see much smaller crowds at other events so why wouldn't you want to come here? We have all the ingredients."

The last time the World Championships were held in Britain were in 1982, when Guiseppe Saronni out-sprinted America's Greg LeMond in the final stretch.

Verity told reporters that preliminary discussions had been held to bring the championships to the north of England, but any official bid would have to be made by British Cycling.

The earliest Yorkshire would be able to host the championships would be 2018, with the next three editions already awarded to Richmond (USA), Doha (Qatar) and Bergen (Norway) respectively.