{"id":10589,"date":"2025-07-20T13:35:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-20T13:35:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/10589\/"},"modified":"2025-07-20T13:35:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-20T13:35:11","slug":"tour-de-france-director-hints-that-race-will-finish-outside-of-paris-in-future-the-2024-finish-in-nice-wont-be-unique","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/10589\/","title":{"rendered":"Tour de France director hints that race will finish outside of Paris in future: \u2018The 2024 finish in Nice won\u2019t be unique\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Tour de France<\/a>\u2019s race director, Christian Prudhomme, has strongly suggested that the era of the race always finishing in a bunch sprint on the Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es in Paris is over.<\/p>\n

Due to the Paris 2024 Olympics last year, the Tour finished on the C\u00f4te d\u2019Azur with a time trial from Monaco to Nice. It was the first time ever<\/a> that the final stage had taken place away from Paris.<\/p>\n

This year, the Tour returns to the French capital, but it does so with a twist: though stage 21 finishes on the Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es 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 <\/a>before reaching the famous cobbled boulevard.<\/p>\n

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Speaking to Cycling Weekly during the 2025 Tour\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\"Tour<\/p>\n

Christian Prudhomme has been the Tour de France’s race director since 2007<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Getty Images)<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that the arrival in Nice, outside of Paris, won\u2019t be unique. We were delighted with Nice,\u201d he said. \u201cBut what\u2019s crucial for me is to always keep a really strong relationship with the city of Paris. That\u2019s crucial for me.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only real question is, if one year we don\u2019t go to Paris, what do we do? You can\u2019t get angry, and we certainly don\u2019t want to fall out with the Mayor of Paris, but there are municipal elections next year in March in all of France\u2019s big cities. Naturally we\u2019ll have to work with a new team because Anne Hidalgo, the Mayor of Paris, isn\u2019t running. We\u2019ll see how all that goes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fundamental question for me \u2013 because we could easily have the finish elsewhere \u2013 is what\u2019s going to happen the year after [in 2027]? It\u2019s clear that Paris can\u2019t be closed off for the Tour de France. That\u2019s impossible for me. Paris is Paris.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThere are tons of factors that are taken into account. Of course people saw Nice and are going to say, \u2018You can come and finish here\u2019. Yes. When we chose Nice, there was another big French city that was also put forward. I won\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Tour<\/p>\n

The 2024 Tour de France finished in Nice.<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Getty Images)<\/p>\n

The Tour has been hosting its Grand D\u00e9part 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.<\/p>\n

Thierry Gouvenou, the man who designs the race parcours, recently told the Athletic<\/a> that hosting a Grand D\u00e9part on the East Coast of the United States would be logistically difficult, but he left the door open for the race potentially finishing Stateside. \u201cPersonally, I would rather see it finish there,\u201d Gouvenou said. \u201cThere\u2019s such a significant time difference and it\u2019s better for the riders going to the United States rather than back to Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n

So would ASO be open to the possibility of having a Grand Arriv\u00e9e \u2013 as they billed and marketed the finish in Nice last year\u2013 in another country? \u201cNo, for me the Tour should finish in France,\u201d Prudhomme answered. Always? \u201cYes. That said, I don\u2019t think anyone is in doubt about my interest in big cities abroad. The French, in any case, are in no doubt, because I\u2019m criticised for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

When told that the Tour could make a big profit from staging a finish outside of France, Prudhomme responded: \u201cThe question of money is never the first question. You might not believe me, but for the Tour de France, it\u2019s never the first question. The first question is to do things that are beautiful and please people, and then the money comes. It\u2019s Bernard Hinault who said: if you want to win money, you won\u2019t 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\u2019t manage anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt worked out well to return to Paris for the 50th anniversary of the first finish on the Champs-E\u0301lyse\u0301es. It was just chance, but it worked out well,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s 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\u2019ll be a Tour de France stage but in the heart of Paris. The Champs-E\u0301lyse\u0301es is splendid, but the people are under the trees, so you get the beauty of Paris, but you don\u2019t get the impression of the mass [of people]. On Rue Lepic in Montmartre you can see the mass.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Tour de France\u2019s race director, Christian Prudhomme, has strongly suggested that the era of the race always…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10590,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-10589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}