It has been 35 years, and Greg LeMond’s incredible victory by 8 seconds over Laurent Fignon, since the Tour de France ended with a time trial. Because of the Olympic Games, the finish of the Grande Boucle has been relocated from the Champs-Élysées to Nice and is reviving this old tradition with a final battle along the Promenade des Anglais.
Despite its arrival at the seaside, the course of this 33 km time trial is far from flat: the climb of La Turbie, where the Monaco football club trains, is quite long (8.1 km at 5.6%) and promises a great suspense for the victory of the stage between the time trial specialists and the leaders of the general classification in search of a prestigious success, or, why not, a final touch to the final classification.
Monaco > Nice, 33.7 km, time trial
Departure time > 2:40 p.m.; Estimated arrival time > 7:30 p.m.
The course
The profile
The eye of Thierry Gouvenou, race director:
“It was made to find a setting almost at the height of Paris. Visually, it’s very beautiful, we’re going to be on cornices, the Col d’Eze is magnificent. And there, sportingly, it weighs, 600 meters of elevation gain. It’s clearly, especially at the end, a time trial that is made for the favorites and not for the specialists. We all remember 1989, but the Tour also changed in 2020 at the Planche des Belles Filles.”
