The bike and run course took the race into Manchester and Trafford, passing the Old Trafford football ground, the Imperial War Museum North and Manchester's Albert Square.
In 1999 his first high profile work - the Jewish museum in Berlin - opened after 10 years construction, followed in 2002 by the Imperial War Museum in Manchester.
There was no such protest about Mr Libeskind's glass-shards war museum in Manchester, because it sits amidst cleared industrial dereliction as, indeed, do all the new buildings on the Tyne.
Recently Clarke was one of the driving forces behind the new National Football Museum in Manchester, where his project is on show until December, plus you can watch a film of him in action.