• 2024-02-28
• Tour de Hongrie

Where are we heading? - 99 years of routes in figures

Do you know when Tour de Hongrie last visited Transylvania? And how many mountain finishes the peloton has been on? Which was the most difficult Tour? The route of the 45th Tour de Hongrie will be officially revealed on 5 March, and we've gathered some interesting facts about the forty-four editions so far.

City by city

In the almost century-long history of the Tour de Hongrie, 77 different cities hosted stage starts and finishes. The capital, Budapest is, of course, the most frequent host city – it has been visited by the caravan 78 times. Miskolc (33), a well-established starting and finishing town due to its proximity to the Bükk Mountains, is second in the ranking, followed by another northern city, Gyöngyös (26). In the Heves County town, the city centre and the mountain of Kékestető both welcomed cyclists 12 times, while Mátraháza did it twice. Debrecen (25) and Szombathely (23) complete the top five.

Every stage start and finish in Tour de Hongrie history

By county, Budapest is still in first place, but Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén is very close (67), while Heves (42), Zala (35) and Somogy (34) are also frequent hosts of the race. The least affected counties by the competition are Komárom-Esztergom (4), Nógrád (5) and Tolna (6). Looking at the regions, Central Hungary (88) is already dethroned by Northern Hungary (114), and Western Hungary is not far behind (84).

The competition so far has been outside the borders of Hungary four times. In 1942 and 1943, the caravan's route took it to the reannexed territories of Northern Transylvania following the Second Vienna Award. Thanks to this politically motivated decision, the peloton climbed the King’s Pass three times in two years, while Oradea and Cluj-Napoca were also the starting and finishing points. After that, it was a long wait until 2007 before the next trip abroad: on 26 July, the peloton set off from Slovenské Nové Mesto in Slovakia to finish in Košice, led by local rider Robert Nagy. One year later, the “Újhely – Kassa” stage was repeated, with Milram's junior rider Mitja Schlüter from Germany winning.

Kosice is the northernmost and Cluj-Napoca is the easternmost venue in the history of the race, but the other two records have stayed within the Hungarian borders. Szentgotthárd, the westernmost venue, hosted the Tour for the first time in 2023, while Pécs, the southernmost, did it 20 times.

The latest stage of the Tour de Hongrie in Budapest (2021)

“Nagy Rajtok”

Budapest tops the list of the Grand Départs (or Nagy Rajts, as they’re called in Hungary): The Tour started from here 26 times so far. Until 1963, every Tour began in Budapest, then Szombathely broke the trend. Although the capital's numerical advantage is huge, the last time Tour de Hongrie started from the heart of the country was 25 years ago, in 1998. Szombathely and Veszprém are the second most frequent hosts of the Nagy Rajt with four starts each. Siófok took hosting duties three times, while Nagykanizsa, Miskolc, Gyömrő, Gyomaendrőd, Esztergom, Csákvár and Szentgotthárd once. Thirty Tour de Hongrie started with a road stage, nine with individual prologue, three with team time trial and one with criterium.

Tour de Hongrie start in Budapest (1956)

Until 1942, all the Tour de Hongrie have not just started from Budapest, but also have finished here – then came Oradea and Cluj-Napoca. The race returned to the Budapest finals in the 1950s and, apart from two detours in Szombathely, held out until 2006. In addition to the thirty-three Budapest finishes, the race concluded twice in Szombathely, Miskolc and Kékestető, and once in Oradea, Cluj-Napoca, Bükkszentkereszt, Kazincbarcika and Székesfehérvár. Interestingly, only one Tour de Hongrie ended with a time trial: in 2006, Csaba Szekeres won the mountain TT in Bükkszentkereszt.

The first summit finish on Kékestető (2001)

Reaching the top

Although our country has very limited resources in terms of potential summit finishes, the total of 21 stages have ended at the top of a categorised climb to this day. The top of this genre is, of course, the highest mountain and the most difficult bike route in the country, Kékestető, which was climbed for the first time in 2001. The climb, which is used from two sides, has already put cyclists to the test twelve times, each time playing a key role in the overall classifications.

Another frequently used climb leads to Bükkszentkereszt: although in recent years it has been linked to the Miskolc finish, it has also served as a finish in the past. The last winner here was Austrian Ferdinand Brückner in 2008. Répáshuta also hosted a stage finish in the Bükk Mountains: in 1993, Dietmar Müller won the mountain time trial here. In 2023, two new summit finishes made their debut in the route: Bárány street (Pécs) and Dobogókő.

Stage start in Fertőd, near the Eszterházy Castle (2016)

Size matters

Répáshuta is also special in another matter: with 425 inhabitants, it is the smallest independent municipality ever to have served as a start or finish town for the Tour de Hongrie. For the runner-up in the rankings, we don’t have to travel far: Bükkszék, with just 700 inhabitants, was both a start and finish village for the Tour de Hongrie in 2008. There are only eight other towns with a population of less than 5,000 that have been a starting or finishing point for the race: Újhely, Kömlőd, Bükkszentkereszt, Balatonkeresztúr, Balatonföldvár, Fertőd, Felsőtárkány and Pilisszentkereszt.

The most populous venue is of course Budapest with a population of over 1.5 million. The ten most populous cities in the country have all welcomed the peloton.

The route of the longest Tour de Hongrie ever (1962)

Around the equator

If someone had completed every edition of the Tour de Hongrie in its history, they would have 37,957 kilometres under their belt. This distance is only 2000 kilometres less than the length of the equator! This number could be even higher, because one stage was not included in the statistics. In 2017, the peloton was hit by apocalyptic weather between Keszthely and Zalaegerszeg, and the stage was interrupted and cancelled. Last year, another race was affected by bad weather: the final stage in Budapest was neutralized and shortened from 150 to 75 km.

The longest edition of the competition took place in 1962: the nine-stage race covered a total of 1393 km! This is more than one and a half times the distance of an average Tour de Hongrie (863 km). By comparison, the shortest edition of the Tour of Hungary covered only 471 km. In 1934, the race had only three stages, the last of which was a 65-kilometre-long criterium in the centre of Cluj-Napoca.

In total, 255 Tour de Hongrie stages have been held, which means that the average length of a race is 5.8 stages. The most stages were held in 1994, when Wolfgang Kotzmann celebrated at the end of the ten-day-long race. Tour de Hongrie has been recorded as a five-day event in each of the last four years, but in 2019 there were seven stages in six days: on 14 June 2019, Krisztián Lovassy won Stage 3a in Tiszafüred in the morning, and Alois Kankovsky celebrated at the end of Stage 3b in Hajdúszoboszló in the afternoon.

The shortest stages of the Tour are the prologues - the tiniest ones were held in 2016 and 2017 in Szombathely, with one-kilometre-long courses. At the other end of the scale is a stage from 1942, when Károly Nótás triumphed at the end of the 280-kilometres-long Budapest - Oradea marathon. This is almost twice the length of an average Tour de Hongrie stage (149 km). According to the statistics, the 10th Tour de Hongrie from 1935 is considered the most difficult of all time, with an average stage length of 207 km.

The Route Presentation Gala of the 45th Tour de Hongrie will take place on 5 March 2024 at 17:00 (CET) and will be broadcast live on M4 Sport.