The finish line of the 111th edition will be set up in Place Masséna, Nice, a few pedal strokes from the Promenade des Anglais. It will be the first time that the Tour de France draws to a close far from its home in Paris. However, even before this unprecedented move, the finish of the Grande Boucle had already wandered the Parisian streetscapes and woven the race into the history of several venues. In a four-part series, letour.fr is looking back on the context and highlights of the finishes in Ville-d'Avray, the Parc des Princes, La Cipale Velodrome and, since 1975, the Champs-Élysées.
Champs-Élysées — Welcome to sprinter heaven
It was a cracking idea, said to have sprung from the mind of the TV news anchor Yves Mourousi, who had always had a flair for spectacle. The media star's moxie was perhaps the push that Jacques Goddet and Félix Lévitan needed to imagine a larger-than-life finale for the 1975 Tour. After leaving La Cipale, a 27-lap circuit race was cooked up with the go-ahead from the President of the Republic, whose support was decisive for the race to obtain the required permits. This glitzy criterium was a real treat for the 1.5 million spectators or so who turned out on Sunday, 20 July to salute the yellow jersey, Bernard Thévenet, the man who had finally toppled Eddy Merckx from the throne. Another Belgian, Walter Godefroot, picked up the final stage win, wrapping up his own career at the same time as he inaugurated a long series of sprint victors on the Champs-Élysées. Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, who lived in the area, started another tradition when he presented Thévenet with a vase from Sèvres. The organisers had hit the jackpot. Writing in L'Équipe, the journalist Pierre Chany praised the new format with a touch of wry humour: "Not a single Bastille Day military parade has ever drawn so many people to the Champs-Élysées and Les Tuileries, suggesting that the French are fonder of bicycles than of armoured cars —good news, after all".
The new format was a hit right from the start. However, a few tweaks were made from 1978 on, moving the start of the final stage outside Paris and cutting the number of laps of the final circuit. Bernard Hinault trounced the opposition in the next Tour de France, picking up six stages on the road to Paris and pushing his closest pursuer, Joop Zoetemelk, more than three minutes down. The Breton rider had got his second title in the bag, but this did not stop the two men from clashing one last time after powering away from the peloton with about 50 km to go. The Badger made short work of his rival on the Champs-Élysées to cap his most successful Tour with a seventh stage win. Three years later, Hinault finished his fourth victorious campaign on a high note with a new triumph on the Champs-Élysées, this time outgunning Adrie van der Poel in a bunch sprint. He remains the sole rider to date to have won on the Champs-Élysées in the yellow jersey.
Fignon's pain is LeMond's gain
A time trial finishing on the Champs-Élysées was already a long-standing tradition by the time the 1989 edition rolled around. It had made its first appearance in the late 1970s as a partial stage held in the morning before the circuit race in the afternoon. However, this time round, a glamorous course starting in Versailles was drawn on the map as the climax of the race. The title was still hanging in the balance going into the final race against the clock. Laurent Fignon was in prime position to pick up his third win, after 1983 and 1984, but the formidable Greg LeMond was just 50 seconds down. Yet the little details conspired to cause an upset: the American used aerobars to improve his aerodynamic profile, while the Frenchman was struggling with a bout of haemorrhoids. When the result came in, one man's pain turned into another's gain. LeMond had romped home with just 8 seconds to spare over his rival, the narrowest margin ever at the top of the Tour de France.
Sprinters got used to a drag race on the Champs-Élysées —an unofficial world championship for sprinters, if you will. Apart from the last-minute twist of the 1989 edition, the famed avenue witnessed victories by Freddy Maertens, Guido Bontempi, Jean-Paul van Poppel and Djamolidine Abdoujaparov. As a stage win here became more and more coveted, teams with fast men on their rosters eager to end the Tour with a flourish made it harder and harder for isolated riders to spring a surprise on the Champs-Élysées. Yet that is exactly what happened in 1994, when a five-man breakaway gave the peloton the slip with six laps to go and stayed clear despite their advantage never breaking the one-minute barrier. The Frenchman Eddy Seigneur outfoxed his fellow escapees in the mad dash to the line to clinch the finest triumph of his career. It was a slam dunk for the journalists at L'Équipe, who titled their report Le jour de Seigneur (literally, 'The day of Seigneur', but actually a play on le jour du Seigneur, 'the day of the Lord').
"Cav" 4ever
It is no surprise that Belgian champions have turned this shrine to sprinting into one of their favourite hunting grounds. Out of 49 finishes on what the Parisians tout as the most beautiful avenue on Earth, 12 have gone to 12 different Belgian riders. From Walter Godefroot in 1975 to Jordi Meeus in 2023, not a single one of them has managed to strike twice here, even though the list includes some of the all-time sprinting greats. Freddy Maertens, a two-time world champion (1976 and 1981) and three-time winner of the green jersey, bagged 15 stage wins… but never more than one on the Champs-Élysées. Tom Steels scooped up nine victories in the Grande Boucle, but 1998 was the only time that he came out on top on the chestnut tree-lined avenue. Tom Boonen, with six stage wins to his name, a green jersey (2007) and an uncanny knack for taming the thick cobblestones of Paris–Roubaix (which he won in 2005, 2008, 2009 and 2012), stormed to victory on the much smoother cobblestones of the Champs-Élysées, but he only made it to the finish of the Tour in two starts out of six.
Does this mean lightning never strikes twice in the same place? Not at all! Several sprinters have pulled off this feat: Djamolidine Abdoujaparov (winner in 1993 and 1995), Robbie McEwen (1999 and 2002), Marcel Kittel (2013 and 2014) and André Greipel (2015 and 2016). However, on the most prestigious home straight in the world, it is only natural for the absolute master of the discipline to hold the all-time record. Mark Cavendish is in his element on the Champs-Élysées. The "Manx Missile" hit his target four times here, with an unbeaten streak from 2009 to 2012: he started with a bang, with his lead-out man, Mark Renshaw, taking second place; he was unbeatable again in 2010, claiming his fifteenth stage win in just three Tour starts; in 2011, he took the spoils with the added bonus of clinching the green jersey; and finally, in 2012, he got a deluxe lead-out from the yellow jersey himself, Bradley Wiggins, with whom he went on to win on the track at the London Games a few weeks later. Since then, "Cav" has often withdrawn from the Grande Boucle before the finale while still picking up enough stage wins to pull level with Eddy Merckx at the top of the record table, with 34 apiece. But his tale is still far from over!
