“If someone wins a stage at the Tour de France 10 years from now… that’s legacy” – Iconic British cycling voice hails Pune Grand Tour as start of something special

When seasoned Tour de France commentators talk about “legacy”, they are rarely referring to a UCI 2.2 race. Yet that was the lens through which Ned Boulting viewed the inaugural Pune Grand Tour, as European observers digested what they had witnessed on Indian roads during the five-day stage race.

“If someone wins a stage at the Tour de France 10 years from now and says they were first inspired when cyclists passed their house in Pune, that’s legacy,” Boulting said during television coverage of the race. It was a long-term view, but one rooted less in immediate results than in what the event represented as a starting point.

At sporting level, the Pune Grand Tour sat firmly in familiar territory. As a UCI 2.2 event, it occupies the fourth tier of professional road racing, a category staged weekly across Europe with little fanfare. What surprised visiting commentators was not the racing itself, but how Pune compared when measured against that same global baseline.

Boulting, who has covered the Tour de France for more than two decades with ITV Sport, repeatedly returned to the scale and behaviour of the crowds lining the route. Villages, town centres and roadside sections drew sustained numbers, with spectators cheering from pavements and doorways rather than pressing into the road.

“Every time the riders went through a village, people came out of their shops, homes, and offices to watch,” he observed on air. “They stayed back, they cheered, they took photos. That doesn’t automatically happen in Europe, and it’s something you can’t take for granted.”

The contrast was not framed as criticism of European races, but as context. Even at the Tour de France, crowd control has become a recurring issue, while many Asian 2.2 events struggle to attract more than a handful of onlookers.

Former Tour de France commentator Graham Jones, also working on the international broadcast, highlighted similar points when assessing the race’s organisation. With full road closures across large sections of the route, Pune operated on a scale that is unusual for an event of its classification.

“I’ve covered races all over Asia, and this is possibly the best funded and best organised 2.2 race I’ve seen when starting from scratch,” Jones said during coverage ahead of Stage 4. His emphasis was on execution rather than ambition, noting that full closures and extensive marshalling are rarely deployed at that level anywhere in the world.

The 2026 edition comprised a short opening prologue followed by four road stages, covering more than 430 kilometres across Pune district. The route mixed urban centres with rolling rural roads and exposed sections in the Western Ghats, offering varied terrain without attempting to manufacture spectacle.

For European observers, the significance of the Pune Grand Tour lay less in who won stages and more in what the event demonstrated could be achieved outside cycling’s traditional heartlands.

Italian professional Jacopo Guarnieri, a Tour de France regular for much of the past decade, contacted broadcasters during the race to express interest after watching the coverage from Europe. His reaction was seen as an early indicator of how quickly perception can shift when an event delivers a credible television product.

Boulting returned repeatedly to that point when asked what Pune’s organisers had got right. “Cycling is free to watch,” he said. “If you put it on properly, people will come. The pictures matter, the organisation matters, and then the sport has a chance to grow.”

None of the commentators framed Pune as a finished product or as proof that Indian cycling has arrived on the world stage. The tone was more cautious than that, viewing the race as an opening chapter rather than a breakthrough moment.

There were suggestions that the event could grow, potentially adding distance or an additional stage in future editions, but always with the understanding that sustainability matters more than scale.

For now, the Pune Grand Tour has done something simpler. It has placed itself firmly on the radar of those used to judging races against global standards, not local expectations. Whether that ultimately leads to professional Indian riders emerging on Europe’s biggest stages remains an open question.

As Boulting put it, legacy is only visible years later. Pune’s first step, however, has at least ensured there is now something for the sport to build on.