The Tour de France could have damaged with custom this 12 months by shifting its grand finale to Nice, however the traditional Champs-Élysées circuit seems to be set to stay in place when the ultimate stage returns to Paris in 2025, regardless of the probabilities prompt by the Olympic Games street race circuit.
The dramatic street races on the Paris 2024 Olympics took within the climb of Montmartre earlier than ending with the Eiffel Tower as a backdrop. While the Tour’s technical director Thierry Gouvenou expressed admiration for the course, he defined why it was unlikely to be replicated at his race sooner or later, beginning with the width of the roads.
“The Tour de France peloton is twice as massive because it was on the Olympics, so we would have to search out a lot larger streets than these used on the weekend to map out a brand new circuit,” Gouvenou instructed L’Équipe. “Towards Montmartre, they went via some very slender locations, actual bottlenecks. In some locations, in the event that they wanted to supply mechanical service to riders in the back of the bunch, they’d barely have been capable of open the automobile doorways. It labored yesterday right here, but it surely would not be acceptable through the Tour.”
Gouvenou added that the spate of punctures and crashes that troubled the street races weren’t completely sudden given the Tour peloton’s annual expertise on the streets of Paris.
“That did not shock me. Every 12 months we have now extra mechanical issues through the 60km we cowl in Paris than on the remainder of the Tour de France,” Gouvenou stated. “And it might have been even worse if the climate hadn’t been good: the slightest drop of water turns the streets of Paris into an ice rink, as we noticed within the time trial.”
Indeed, Gouvenou downplayed the prospect of any deviation from the Tour’s acquainted Champs-Élysées circuit, noting that it allowed the race to enter the guts of Paris with out an undue influence on the each day lifetime of the town.
“You would want very sturdy political will to place all that in place,” Gouvenou stated. “When we do the Champs-Élysées circuit, we barely encircle any residents, aside from the unknown soldier. If we went to Montmartre, that will have an infinite influence on the inhabitants.”
Groupama-FDJ supervisor Marc Madiot, in the meantime, famous that the dynamic of the ultimate stage of the Tour meant that tackling the Montmartre circuit fairly than the Champs-Élysées wouldn’t make for a extra dramatic conclusion to the Tour.
“It is a delusion to assume that we will have the identical situation on a last stage of the Tour de France,” Madiot instructed L’Équipe. “It could be a parade, as is at all times the case earlier than the Champs.”
