Montmartre, mon amour – A final worth repeating?

This will not be an ordinary debrief; the last day deserves a special format in which, starting from a bit of a distance, we will try to interpret why this was a very different 21st stage from the average, why it is good that the race did not only focus on the central part of Paris, and what the future of the Tour de France in Paris might hold – regarding this, wild ideas have arisen in the author's mind.

But let's first establish the facts. The Tour de France returned to Paris after a year of absence. The French capital regained its final stage after a particularly successful Olympic Games, which, thanks to Christian Prudhomme and the significant support from the city of Paris, included the most important attractions of the city's 18th arrondissement: Montmartre and the Sacré-Cœur Cathedral. The planned route debuted with huge success at the 2024 Olympic Games, with the Côte de la Butte Montmartre and the massive crowd of approximately 1.5 million that accompanied the race, receiving such media attention and making cycling as a sport so popular that the organising committee of the Tour de France simply could not say no to such an opportunity. The route of the 21st stage included three ascents on a 16.8-kilometre circuit and seemingly provided an equal chance for sprinters, classics specialists, and possibly GC riders for a genuine final showdown.

Several important questions arose before the stage. How much will this resemble a classic, Champs-Elysées-like boulevard sprint in terms of outcome and stage structure? Will there be an early attack that could succeed? How significant will the Montmartre climb be? Will there be rain that could potentially lead to neutralisation? How dangerous will the route be? After all, at the Olympics, 160 riders didn’t all go at once onto the narrow, cobbled climb. There were many questions, but overall, yesterday answered a lot of them.

Day 21 started like every other final day of a Grand Tour. Bottles of champagne popped, and of course, celebratory photos were taken in almost every form – the top 3 in the overall standings and their teams stepped forward, we also saw Uno-X up front (Tobias Halland Johannessen's sixth place is the best Norwegian result in Tour de France history), Geraint Thomas was able to say goodbye, completing his last Grand Tour stage, as he will retire at the Tour of Britain in early September. Benjamin Thomas and Matteo Vercher reenacted the scene from the first stage where they had a double crash at Mont Cassel – this time Vercher perhaps won one of the happiest mountain sprints in Tour history. The first hour and a half went according to its own flow, as it should, and upon entering Paris, the first attacks began.

However, the usual course of the race slightly deviated from what could be considered traditional on the circuit around Place de la Concorde, compared to what we fundamentally saw before 2024. In the first one and a half laps of the usual Champs-Elysées circuit, a breakaway typically formed, which the peloton would give an advantage of about 40-45 seconds, and they would catch it 5-12 kilometres before the end – this had happened almost every year in a formulaic manner for nearly 20 years. 

This year, however, with Montmartre and arriving in Paris a bit earlier, everything changed. Due to the rain earlier in the day, the Paris circuit was neutralised in terms of GC differences before they reached the circuit, allowing everyone to go completely freely, one last time. This led to significant attacks right from the start; it was already unorthodox for Florian Lipowitz, who won the young riders' competition, to attack 60 kilometres before the end, but ultimately this did not yield results (except that he was the first among the top 5 to gain –  9 seconds, on Tadej Pogačar in the general classification), and when the peloton turned right instead of the usual left turn at the obelisk, all 160 riders awaited the familiar unknown, the Montmartre climb, together.

Montmartre welcomed the weary peloton with open arms. Ladies in French tricolour danced cancan in front of the Moulin Rouge, sometimes on bicycles; artists who painted the competitors in their distinctive jerseys, and a huge crowd from all corners of the world, many of whom waited for over 10 hours to witness a marvel, something that had never happened in the history of the race. This image somehow captures all of Paris: the bustling capital, which stands out culturally among the world's cities. 

From the perspective of the race, the race before Montmartre unfolded excitingly – the peloton was never as stretched out in any crosswind sections in Northern France as was visible at the beginning of the first lap, with a 25-30 second gap between the front and back of the peloton before the first ascent of La Butte. 

It was hard to imagine anything else but that Julian Alaphilippe would attack during the modern Tour de France's debut here. Alaphilippe and panache are such intertwined concepts that what happened on the first climb of Montmartre was almost inevitable – it was not necessarily the case that the race winner, the yellow jersey holder, Tadej Pogačar, would launch a very strong counterattack at this pace. There was speculation that due to the expected rain and conditions, the Slovenian would not be proactive. However, a victory in Paris, which he had missed at the Olympics and might not have many chances in his career at achieving, was tempting enough for him to give it a try.

There was indeed a split, and with 27 riders, a perfectly sized group formed, so that no one was preoccupied with positioning, creating dangerous situations; rather, the strongest could indeed win – in the pouring rain. Here, the organisers deserve praise for making the decision to neutralise this race based on radar images, because here, contrary to the spirit of the last day of the Tour of 'let's not attack each other', significant GC differences had developed that would have influenced the final standings (the podium wouldn't have changed, but Kévin Vauquelin, for example, could have made it into the top 5 on the last day if the actual GC differences had been counted). 

The rain introduced a completely unexpected scenario, as viewers and followers under 30 years of age (like the writer of this debrief) may not remember a Paris finish where it rained so heavily; the helicopter images made the sky look apocalyptic – fortunately, no one crashed, which is commendable for both the riders and the organisers. During the second, rainy climb, it was again Pogačar who set the pace, flying up the cobblestones and forming a group of six people who could fight for victory, with some very interesting names among them.

Next to the yellow jersey was Davide Ballerini (XDS Astana Team), who wanted to save Astana’s Tour de France with a stage victory, Matteo Trentin (Tudor Pro Cycling Team), who had been convincing several times in the last week and evoked his form from 4-5 years ago, Matej Mohorič (Bahrain-Victorious), who later said he wanted to win a stage to such an extent that he would have even risked going to the hospital, as well as Matteo Jorgenson and Wout van Aert (Visma | Lease a Bike), who had a tactical advantage due to their numerical superiority. This last sentence was particularly key because they were finally not just seemingly trying to exploit this advantage but were also doing so physically. They did this in a very classic way, with Jorgenson attacking on the flat (the American had regained a good portion of his strength after being unwell for the past week and a half), while van Aert stayed just behind them to create the gap that the two Slovenian stars would have to close on their own. 

It was a smart move; they felt that they could tire out their competitors even before the Butte Montmartre, and that’s exactly what happened. In the ecstatic atmosphere of the final climb, Wout van Aert, who had been glued to Pogačar's wheel, dropped the Slovenian on the steep 8-9% section and reached the Sacré-Cœur Basilica alone. Statisticians pointed out that the last time this happened was in October 2023, at the Giro della Toscana, where Pavel Sivakov did the same – it was a very rare scene, almost making the casual fan feel it was historically significant because it had not happened in such a long time. Wout did not stop. He could not stop. He had already won in Paris back in 2021, but this was a particularly special victory, especially given the circumstances and the manner of the victory. This was his 10th Tour de France stage win; he had already won solo while wearing the yellow jersey, and he had also won on a day that included the Mont Ventoux twice, but dropping the greatest of the current era, using his cobbled skills on a final climb – perhaps this was more beautiful than any of his victories. 

Wout van Aert's year is all about this: when people start to give up on him, for all sorts of perceived or actual reasons, he delivers an all-time memorable performance on a day in the Grand Tours, and he could win on two of cycling's current ten most iconic finishes, at Piazza del Campo and Champs-Élysées in 2025. Teamwork sometimes overrides individual performances, and the 21st stage highlighted this the most.

Stage 21 proved that Montmartre has a place in the Tour de France; however, with the inclusion of the mountain, the decades-old traditions that the Tour de France operated under were called into question. We saw that significant differences could arise, which may not have mattered much in a race like this year's, but in the coming years, if the competition is tighter, this could lead to varied scenarios from a GC perspective. 

The other question is, what will happen to the classic sprinters? For many years, even decades, winning the Champs-Élysées sprint was a sprinter's ultimate goal, and those who achieved it would enter the ranks of the immortals, marking a huge and prestigious success. This year, that was taken away, and we saw that even though the ascent of Montmartre only had to be climbed three times, not a single pure sprinter managed to survive even the first ascent. Ballerini, Trentin, Arnaud de Lie, and Tobias Lund Andresen finished in the top 10 among sprinters alongside Wout, but they all belong to the category of the very versatile riders. 

It is very difficult to find a clear solution, and the rotational system preferred by many and echoed in comments would be the best solution for this (one year a boulevard sprint, the next year Montmartre), but with Christian Prudhomme announcing that the Tour de France is open to finishing outside of Paris, the opportunities open up to such an extent that Paris could even be the opening venue, and then the Montmartre circuit could provide a perfect opportunity for the first GC differences to emerge. One thing is certain: this wonderful district must remain in the competition's rotation, because what we saw yesterday will still bring a smile to our faces even a decade from now.