The twists and turns of the Tour de France continued on Sunday as it was announced that the final times for general classifications would be ‘frozen’ before the three passes of the Côte de la Butte Montmartre.
That would make Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) the official overall winner with a little more than half of stage 21 to unfold and 48km still to go.
This follows a precedent from last year when the times in the general classification were also taken in the same area before the circuits, which was done to avoid crashes on wet cobblestones.
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Looking at the live pictures of stage 21 as the final day of racing was underway late afternoon in Paris, wet roads were visible, but rain had moved through the area in the morning. However, even several days before the transition from the Alps to Paris, Cyclingnews understood there were discussions among riders about neutralising GC time on Sunday, no matter what the weather.
On Thursday in the Alps, Thierry Gouvenou, course designer and race director for the Tour, told Cyclingnews: “It’s starting up a little bit. But it’s too soon to say. We will look at the weather and at the sporting stakes and we will see.”
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The sun came through three hours prior to Sunday’s send-off on the shortened course of 89km, but there were still wet and slippery spots, we understood, in the Montmartre area of the course.
A late change to the route, originally 133km in length, was made on Saturday, in response to wildfires to the east of Paris where the start had been planned at Thoiry. Security resources were reassigned to assist with management of the fires rather than the race. Now the race will start and finish on the Champs-Élysées.
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Pogačar was already set to win a record-tying fifth Tour de France, while his teammate Isaac del Toro similarly had an insurmountable advantage in the best young rider’s classification. Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost) had already secured enough points to claim the mountains classification on Sunday, as had Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek), who only needed to finish to take the green jersey, removing he jeopordy from the intermediate sprint and points available at the finish on the Champs-Élysées.
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