Colossal passes and a muscular time trial as the ultimate justice of the peace: the last two stages of the Tour de France 2024 which will arrive, due to the Olympic Games, in Nice, promise to be particularly crisp.
We already knew that the last stage would be an individual time trial linking Monaco to Nice, 35 years after Greg LeMond’s eight-second victory over Laurent Fignon on the Champs-Élysées in 1989.
It remained to discover the route, presented Monday by the organizers of ASO in Nice. And it is gratin since it will climb to La Turbie (8.1 km at 5.6%) then to the Col d’Èze by its shortest side (1.6 km at 8.1%) before finishing at Place Masséna in Nice, after 35.2 km of effort.
Everything could be decided on this time, far from the usual procession of the last Sunday towards Paris where the champagne is often released during the stage, except for the sprinters magnetized by a prestigious success on the Champs.
The penultimate stage in 2024, the outlines of which were also unveiled on Monday, is nothing short of a walk in the park either. On the contrary, it’s even a hell of a rollercoaster ride that awaits the riders during a short (132 km) but quite vertiginous stage with the successive ascent of the Col de Brais, the Col de Turini, the Col de La Colombine and finally the difficult Col de la Couillole (15.7 km at 7.1%), where the finish will be judged as last Saturday on Paris-Nice.
With 4,400 meters of elevation gain, it is a “dense, collected stage, without a flat meter, where everything will be possible”, underlined the director of the Tour Christian Prudhomme.
A menu all the more copious as the stage is placed on the eve of the arrival in Nice, where the Tour de France will end for the first time in its history more than a century old, proximity to the 2024 Olympics in Paris obliges.
This 111th edition decidedly like the others will leave Italy for the first time, in Florence.
As is usually the case in an Olympic year, the start will be brought forward a week and the race will start on June 29 and arrive on July 21, five days before the start of the Olympic Games.