The Tour de France is inspired by the Olympic Games: for the great final of the legendary cycling race, the peloton will gravitate the Butte Montmartre, like the Olympic course. The party promises to be grandiose.
Olympic nostalgia seizes France. After the celebrations of the first anniversary of the Paris Games, the Tour de France will offer a grand finale to mark the fifty years of the first arrival on the Champs-Élysées.
This time, as during the Olympic Games, the peloton will go through the Montmartre hill and the legendary rue Lepic. “We wanted to dust off the course a little,” explains Thierry Gouvenou, race director of the Tour de France, guest ofAnaïs morning. “And the Olympic Games were a click. The authorities were able to observe that it was possible to go through Montmartre and that we liked to offer this course to the runners of the Tour de France. One of the big images of the games was this climb. We wanted to relive that moment.”
A magical moment
Remember, on August 3, 2024, 90 runners from all over the world was already rushed into the streets of Paris to try to win a golden charm in a 273 kilometers route in the capital. The crowd had gathered in all street corners to see the runners. But it was in Montmartre that the images were the most beautiful. An impressive human wave pushed in this narrow climb of a kilometer to 6.4% slope. Between the attacks by Mathieu van der Poel and the duel Evenepoel-Madouas, the race was spectacular thanks to this sequence of three loops.
Thierry Gouvenou hopes the same show this Sunday during the three passages near the Basilica of the Sacré-Coeur, even if some teams would have preferred a more lenient step: “It is always a good war”, underlines the former professional cyclist at the microphone of RMC. “The teams like to control things. There, it’s different, it’s narrow and there are cobblestones in the climb. The race will be more nervous. It is normal for runners to be a little bit, but the Tour de France must evolve, not be frozen, and propose things to renew itself.”
Reinforced security
Unlike games, the peloton will not be limited to 90 runners. This Sunday, there will be 160 to start in the narrow rue Lepic. So inevitably, it was necessary to ensure the safety of all to avoid incidents: “there will be barrier in quantity and of course the police,” staies the 56 -year -old man. “After the runners are used to this kind of road with the classics in the North.”
What is certain, the public will be there with spectators already in place very early Sunday morning at the level of the barriers. “We just passed an incredible edition, we had an incalculable number of spectators. And I think that today, it will be the same thing,” adds Thierry Gouvenou. It promises a last step of madness …
