For the first time in five years, the Tour de France will take place solely in France this coming 2025 season. Now with 21 stages, the 112th Grand Tour will begin in Lille on July 5 and will conclude in Paris on July 27.
Race director Christian Prudhomme expressed: “We decided to bring the Tour home, it was high time after all the foreign starts.”
There will be two time-trials and six mountain-top finishes on the 3,320 km (2,063-mile) Tour, with the majority of the first leg being on the plains.
Prudhomme added: “A week in the plains is not the joy ride it was in the old days. We have cut the sprint stages and laid traps everywhere…I don’t think Thierry Gouvenou, who mapped out the route, left a single climb [untouched] between Lille and Brittany.”
In recent years, the Tour raced in Andorra in 2021, Copenhagen in 2022, Bilbao in 2023, and Florence in 2024. The Champs-Elysees finale will return for the 2025 race on the 50th anniversary of its inaugural finish there. Due to the Olympics this year, the Tour concluded outside of Paris for the first time.
Source: BBC