By BBC (Sports) | Created at 2024-10-29 22:08:24 | Updated at 2024-11-05 16:25:02
1 week ago
The 2025 Tour de France will be staged exclusively in France for the first time in five years.
The 112th edition of the Grand Tour will feature 21 stages, starting in Lille on 5 July and ending in Paris on 27 July.
The Tour had raced through Andorra in 2021 while it had Grand Departs in Copenhagen in 2022, Bilbao in 2023 and Florence in 2024.
The 2025 race will also see a return of the Champs-Elysees finale on the 50th anniversary of its first finish there. The Tour finished outside Paris for the first time in its history this year because of the Olympics.
"We decided to bring the Tour home, it was high time after all the foreign starts," said race director Christian Prudhomme.
The Tour, stretching 3,320km (2,063 miles), will feature two time-trials and six mountain-top finishes, with the first part taking place mostly on the plains.
"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," Prudhomme said.
"I don't think Thierry Gouvenou, who mapped out the route, left a single climb [untouched] between Lille and Brittany."
UAE Team Emirates' Tadej Pogacar won his third title this year to secure a Tour de France-Giro d'Italia double and is set to battle two-time winner Jonas Vingegaard for the yellow jersey again in 2025.
The women's Tour, meanwhile, has added a ninth stage and will run from 26 July to 3 August.
Poland's Katarzyna Niewiadoma won the third edition of the Tour de France Femmes this year.
