PARIS — Four hours before the final stage of the Tour de France begins, I walk the length of the last, newest climb on the race parcours. This is only possible on the course itself, as thousands of fans have packed themselves dense against the barriers, the lucky few enjoying cafe tables or spots inside second-floor apartments, the vast majority simply standing and waiting to see how the riders would contend with a Paris novelty: difficult racing. Two thirds of the way up, a group of singing French lads build to a crescendo before launching a baguette across the course. A corresponding lad on the far side takes a honking bite from the loaf, and ritually hurls it back, on and on until the baguette disappears to rapturous peals of joy. This is the Col de la Butte Montmartre.
Paris is always the end of the Tour, unless it's an Olympic year, and it's almost always a parade. Three weeks in, and every rider, mechanic, and sleep scientist with the Tour, not to mention its cheese-addled press corps, is exhausted and wants nothing more than to sleep for 36 straight hours. The final stage is usually a champagne toast on wheels, with the winners of various classifications taking turns riding to the front of the pack for photo-ops before the peloton arrives in the city and turns a few leisurely laps around the Champs-Élysées; then the sprinters duke it out one last time.
Many riders would like that tradition to have continued in 2025. The problem is, the Olympic road-racing circuit centered around the twisty cobbled climb up to Montmartre, and it produced some of the best, most beautiful racing of the year. The climb is just long and painful enough to cause meaningful separations, but not so demanding as to turn the race into anything like a mountain stage. Moreover, the jubilant vibe on Montmartre was too special not to try replicating, with the fans pressed up against the riders on a Belgian-classic style climb in the home city of cycling, something everyone involved talked about with reverential awe.
Organizers decided to neutralize any potential GC battles by taking final times on the flat bit, which further motivated one-day–style racing. Still, it left open the question of whether the climb would prove decisive enough to disrupt the sprint trains.
Sorry sprinters: It did. You are not getting your parade back. The first Tour de France Montmartre stage was perfect.
On the climb, a man dressed as a Smurf offers me pulls from a champagne bottle, a young family with a Hungarian flag has me take their picture, and any group of remotely enthusiastic fans I train my phone on immediately notch up the intensity. This all happens in the sunshine—though, as would befit a Belgian classic, rain is pouring down by the time the riders hit the foot of Montmartre.
I leave the climb to soak up the atmosphere on the Champs-Élysées, which I mean in the literal sense, as I've forgotten my poncho. Not that it detracts from the experience at all. I find myself on the barriers next to two German guys, and I glance over at their lanyards; one reads Florian Lipowitz, who is currently in the race and about to finish third. I ask about it, and Lipowitz's father and brother introduce themselves. I ask if they're surprised about their boy's strong performance, and with the confidence of people who've spent their entire lives around the young crusher, said they are impressed but not surprised.
One strange thing about a Paris finale: being back in a city where the Tour is just something that's happening, not the center of the day for every person whom I will see or interact with. Around the Champs, Metro stations are closed, and the logistical snarl of the Tour forces all manner of deflections, though further up the lines, people are just out to do their errands.
The Champs belongs to the dreaded VIPs, who are afforded cushy hangout zones with protection from the elements, as much champagne as they want, and barrier-side stands of bleachers. Press passes do not get you anywhere near the good stuff, so I settle for a place along the barriers further up with my crew. When the rain intensifies, we retreat to the piss-scented entrance to an underground parking garage, watching on someone's phone until the riders approach the barriers, then we run back and watch them fly by.
A man slices, yes, a leg of jamon serrano in front of, yes, a truck. I ask him for some. He yells at me.
The chatter all week among the riders and staff was that Tadej Pogacar would go for it on Montmartre, and he animates the race the first time up. Julian Alaphilippe enjoys his state-mandated futile attack, to the joy of those shivering alongside me down in the flats, then Pogacar makes his move and splits the peloton. It's not so much the pitch of the climb that forces a selection, but rather the narrow width and technical riding required to stay upright and powerful on the slippery cobbles. The next time through, the bunch is blasted to hell, with green jersey–winner Jonathan Milan a minute behind and his Tour-best domestique Quinn Simmons not even on the front.
A Trek rider detaches his bike computer and hurls it on the ground in rage. They wanted a sprint. Instead we're getting a classics race.
The second ascent winnows the group to six. With that few riders, the final lap up Montmartre is sure to be decisive. Matteo Jorgenson puts in a heroic shift on the front in service of Wout van Aert, continually prodding Pogacar in the run-up to the final climb, just to sap his legs as much as he can before the going gets tough. Pogacar goes first, but van Aert goes hardest, putting in a herculean turn, throwing his big body forward onto the cobbles, emptying what little he has left in the tank to get over the top first and power on home to a second, and far sweeter, Champs-Élysées victory.
Pogacar cannot follow, though he puts in a game effort and plays a critical part in making the unprecedented finale something truly special. When van Aert makes his move, the gathered crowd kilometers away rises to a roar. Everyone likes van Aert, a prolific and charismatic winner on every terrain and surface in bike racing who has come back from a number of serious injuries to get back to winning in cool ways and being perhaps the most complete domestique in cycling. He is the coolest possible winner.
"My radio was just noise, people screaming, so I had no idea of how big my gap was," van Aert says after. "I was not really prepared for these emotions." Primoz Roglic, finishing his first Tour since 2020, plays to the fans on the final ascent. Riders headed to the line have their arms around each other. The L'Equipe headline reads simply "EPIQUE." Hours later, talking to rider Neilson Powless about how we were both from Sacramento, he says of the stage, unprompted, "That was so fun!"
As van Aert crosses the line, the sun pokes through the clouds. It's almost too saccharine, a moment of meteorological and metaphorical bluntness. But that's part of the magic of the Tour. The race is painful most of the time for those inside of it, and it's an all-consuming vortex for those adjacent to it, yet everyone involved feels lucky to be there. Final conversations on Sunday invariably end with, "See you next year!" It has been an incredible privilege to be a tiny part of it.
Later that night, I bike home down the Champs. It's still closed, being cleared of its final barriers. The sweeping boulevard is the perfect place to host a bike race, and I can't believe they found a way to make it better.
