Next year’s Tour de France will feature a final stage time trial for the first time since 1989, and finish outside of Paris for the first time ever as a brutal parcours was announced in Paris on Wednesday.
Key points:
- The Tour de France will not finish in Paris for the first time in over a century due to the 2024 Olympics
- The race will end with a time trial for the first time since American Greg Lemond won in 1989
- The women’s Tour de France Femmes will finish on Alpe d’Huez for the first time
Meanwhile, the Tour de France Femmes will finish on the mythical climb to Alpe d’Huez for the first time.
The three-week men’s race will start in Florence, Italy, on June 29 and feature two trips into the Alps — including a monumental final week culminating in a historic 34 kilometre individual time trial from Monaco to Nice.
“The Tour peloton has never climbed so high, so early,” Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme said.
The 3,492km route will feature a whopping 52,230 metres of vertical gain, with the highest point being the 2,802m Bonette pass, France’s highest tarmac road.
“I’m in a bit of shock,” sprinter Mark Cavendish told Eurosport after the reveal.
“I really thought last year was hard. This is, I can’t even.
“It’s a very, very hard Tour de France. Like, very hard indeed.”
For the first time since the Tour was first raced in 1905 there will be no stage finish in Paris due to logistical complications with the Paris 2024 Olympic Games due to start a week after the race ends.
“We were committed to avoid Paris because of the Olympics,” Prudhomme told Reuters.
“There are only 28,000 police forces available and we knew we could not get more.”
Although that means there will be no iconic finish on the Champs Elysees, it does open up the possibility of a tantalising final-day battle akin to that in 1989, when American Greg Lemond won the race for the first time.
Lemond edged past Frenchman Laurent Fignon to win arguably the greatest Tour in history by just eight seconds, overcoming a 50-second deficit heading into the stage as Fignon battled with saddle sores.
“Everyone remembers the last occasion the Tour finished with a time trial,” Prudhomme said.
“Thirty five years later, we can but dream of a similar duel.”
The race will also feature a controversial gravel stage through the Champagne region in Troyes.
Although the line-ups will not be finalised until much closer to the race, it is expected that two-time defending champion Jonas Vingegaard will look to complete a hat-trick of titles.
He will, though, face daunting opposition.
Primož Roglič will line up against his former teammate after recently signing for BORA-hansgrohe, the team of Australia’s Giro d’Italia winner Jai Hindley, who will likely be relegated to a role of super domestique or target the other Grand Tours.
Roglič, who was beaten by compatriot Tadej Pogačar in dramatic fashion in 2020, denied having an “obsession” with winning the Tour de France in an interview with Cycling News earlier in the week, but the four-time Grand Tour winner said he would again challenge for the yellow jersey.
“It’s my responsibility to go for it, to try to do everything to win, to have no regrets and be proud of what happens,” he said.
World time trial champion and 2022 Vuelta a España winner Remco Evenepoel is also expected to line up at the Tour, with reports suggesting that Pogačar is flirting with competing at the Giro d’Italia instead of challenging for the Tour.
However, given Vingegaard’s incredible time trial performance in the 2023 edition, a lengthy race against the clock will not phase the Danish rider.
From a sprint perspective, all eyes will be on Cavendish though.
The 38-year-old currently shares the record for the most number of wins in stages at the Tour de France with Eddie Merckx, having claimed 34 victories in his stellar career.
The Manx rider was set to retire last season but, after crashing out of the Tour de France with a broken collarbone, was tempted to continue for one more year to attempt to break the record.
He will have plenty of competition at the sport’s premier showcase though, potentially including Australian sprinters Kaden Groves and Caleb Ewan on the limited number of sprints available on the route.
“When they write flat day it doesn’t mean a sprint. It just means they’re not in the mountains,” Cavendish said.
“There’s not eight sprints.
“Hopefully the third one should be there in Turin — we just get through the Italian Appennino first.”
The Tour de France Femmes, in its third year since it was relaunched, will also tackle new ground, starting in the Netherlands and Belgium, starting in mid-August, after the Olympics.
The 946.3km-long route features three sprint stages, an individual time trial, two hilly and two mountain stages.
Dutch rider Demi Vollering won the overall title last year with a stunning ride up a misty Col du Tourmalet.
“We went to the Tourmalet last year, we wanted to go to iconic places and l’Alpe d’Huez is part of cycling’s history,” women’s Tour director Marion Rousse told reporters.
“It’s the toughest stage in Tour de France Femmes history with 4,000m of altitude gain.
“Women have proved they have the level for that.”
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