The Tour de France’s race director, Christian Prudhomme, has strongly suggested that the era of the race always finishing in a bunch sprint on the Champs-Élysées in Paris is over.
Due to the Paris 2024 Olympics last year, the Tour finished on the Côte d’Azur with a time trial from Monaco to Nice. It was the first time ever that the final stage had taken place away from Paris.
This year, the Tour returns to the French capital, but it does so with a twist: though stage 21 finishes on the Champs-Élysées in the shadow of the Arc de Triomphe, the race has been inspired by the racing drama and huge crowds of the Paris Olympics road circuit and will now complete three laps of the Montmartre climb before reaching the famous cobbled boulevard.
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Speaking to Cycling Weekly during the 2025 Tour’s stay in the Pyrenees, Prudhomme was asked if ASO, the organising body behind the Tour, was considering the possibility of finishing the race in a different city other than Paris on a more regular basis.
Christian Prudhomme has been the Tour de France’s race director since 2007
(Image credit: Getty Images)
“I think that the arrival in Nice, outside of Paris, won’t be unique. We were delighted with Nice,” he said. “But what’s crucial for me is to always keep a really strong relationship with the city of Paris. That’s crucial for me.
“The only real question is, if one year we don’t go to Paris, what do we do? You can’t get angry, and we certainly don’t want to fall out with the Mayor of Paris, but there are municipal elections next year in March in all of France’s big cities. Naturally we’ll have to work with a new team because Anne Hidalgo, the Mayor of Paris, isn’t running. We’ll see how all that goes.
“The fundamental question for me – because we could easily have the finish elsewhere – is what’s going to happen the year after [in 2027]? It’s clear that Paris can’t be closed off for the Tour de France. That’s impossible for me. Paris is Paris.
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“There are tons of factors that are taken into account. Of course people saw Nice and are going to say, ‘You can come and finish here’. Yes. When we chose Nice, there was another big French city that was also put forward. I won’t tell you which one, but there was another big French city that was a candidate to host the final day of the Tour de France.”
The 2024 Tour de France finished in Nice.
(Image credit: Getty Images)
The Tour has been hosting its Grand Départ in different cities outside of France since 1954, with Belgium, Denmark, Spain and Italy all welcoming the race in the past five years, while Spain again (Barcelona) and the United Kingdom will host the respective starts of the 2026 and 2027 editions.
Thierry Gouvenou, the man who designs the race parcours, recently told the Athletic that hosting a Grand Départ on the East Coast of the United States would be logistically difficult, but he left the door open for the race potentially finishing Stateside. “Personally, I would rather see it finish there,” Gouvenou said. “There’s such a significant time difference and it’s better for the riders going to the United States rather than back to Europe.”
So would ASO be open to the possibility of having a Grand Arrivée – as they billed and marketed the finish in Nice last year– in another country? “No, for me the Tour should finish in France,” Prudhomme answered. Always? “Yes. That said, I don’t think anyone is in doubt about my interest in big cities abroad. The French, in any case, are in no doubt, because I’m criticised for it.”
When told that the Tour could make a big profit from staging a finish outside of France, Prudhomme responded: “The question of money is never the first question. You might not believe me, but for the Tour de France, it’s never the first question. The first question is to do things that are beautiful and please people, and then the money comes. It’s Bernard Hinault who said: if you want to win money, you won’t win any races, but if you win races, you will win money. This is the philosophy. I think that if we thought about money first, we wouldn’t manage anything.”
Next weekend the 2025 race will come to its conclusion in the streets of Paris, and Prudhomme is excited about the inclusion of Montmartre and the racing and televisual spectacle that it will guarantee.
“It worked out well to return to Paris for the 50th anniversary of the first finish on the Champs-Élysées. It was just chance, but it worked out well,” he said.
“There’s now the novelty that we will go via Montmartre, which is, for me, the strongest image from the Olympics in Paris, outside of the sporting achievements. It’ll be a Tour de France stage but in the heart of Paris. The Champs-Élysées is splendid, but the people are under the trees, so you get the beauty of Paris, but you don’t get the impression of the mass [of people]. On Rue Lepic in Montmartre you can see the mass.”