Cycling: The final time trial on the streets of Nice for the 2024 Tour de France

The Olympic Games organized in Paris obliges the Tour de France 2024 to revise the final. For the first time since 1905, the epilogue of the Grande Boucle will not take place in the capital, but in Nice, the municipality and the Amaury Sport Organization (ASO), the event manager, announced on Thursday 1.^Eh At a press conference in December.

Nice has hosted the tour 37 times, starting twice in 1981 and 2020.the latter “In a very complex health context” With the Covid-19 pandemic, the mayor of the city, Christian Estros (Horizons), was welcomed. The arrival of bicycle racing in his city had long been mentioned, the holding of the Games (from July 26 to August 11) disrupted the summer sports program of that year.

Except for the first two editions, which came to Ville-d’Avre (Haute-de-Seine) in 1903 and 1904, the Grande Boucle had previously always ended in Paris. First at the Parc des Princes (1906 to 1967), then at the Cipale velodrome (1968 to 1975), before winning the Champs Elysées from 1975.

The legendary result of 1989

As often happens in an Olympic year, the start of the tour was postponed by a week. This is 111^e The edition will begin on June 29 from Florence, Italy – a first for the country – and end on July 21, five days before the Games open.

Another announcement: the final stage, traditionally a sprint on the Champs-Élysées, will this time be an individual time trial. Unheard of since the legendary 1989 result, when France’s Laurent Fignon lost the yellow jersey by eight seconds – the narrowest margin in history – to American Greg LeMond.

For this tour, unlike the others, the organizers plan a “Last Weekend of Fireworks”With Saturday, the scene “mountain oriented” At the beginning, before this stopwatch from Nice, as the final justice of the peace, between Versailles and the Champs Elysées, thirty-five years later, which remains in everyone’s memory.

It is already planned to return to normal in 2025. Especially since the tour has something to celebrate. “We will be delighted to find Paris and the Champs-Élysées on the 50th anniversary of the first landing on the Champs-Élysées in 2025.As event director Christian Prudhomme reminds us.