Tour de France: an individual time trial dependent on Monaco in Nice as the last stage of the 2024 edition
Last unprecedented stage for the 2024 edition of the Tour de France. A time trial dependent on Monaco in Nice.
By Belga
La final stage of the 2024 edition of the Tour de France, an individual time trial, will depart from Monaco to arrive in Nice, organizers announced on Saturday.
Two days after revealing that the Grande Boucle will end in Nice and therefore elsewhere than in Paris for the first time since 1905 due to the Olympic Games which will take place in the capital that summer, we now also know the departure city of this last stage which will be run on Sunday 21 July.
The director of the Tour, Christian Prudhomme, announced it on Saturday alongside Prince Albert II of Monaco, without yet giving details on the route or the length of the stage.
The Principality, where many riders reside, hosted the Grand Départ in 2009. It was already an individual time trial starting and finishing in Monaco. The Swiss Fabian Cancellara won and donned the first yellow jersey of this edition.
This will be Monaco’s seventh appearance on the Tour map, with the peloton’s previous visits spread between 1939 and 2009 precisely.
In 2024, it will also be the first time that the Tour has finished on a time since the outcome of 1989 when the Frenchman Laurent Fignon lost the yellow jersey by eight seconds, the smallest gap in history, against the American Greg Lemond.
This 2024 edition – from June 29 to July 21 – should start for the first time from Italy and the city of Florence five days before the start of the Paris Olympics (July 26-August 11). The Olympic road races are scheduled for August 3 and 4 in Paris, a week after the time trial events on July 27.
In 2025, the return to normal is already scheduled to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first arrival on the Champs-Élysées.