We'll always have Paris?

Sacré Coeur and Sacred Cows

I am not sure what I make of the news that the final stage of the Tour will take on the Butte de Montmartre climb not once, but three times. Actually, I am sure what I make of it. But I’ll pretend, for the sake of argument, that I’m not. And also, because it’s not entirely clear cut.

When they first leaked/released the news that they’d included it, I told my co-commentator Jacopo Guarnieri (one of the best lead-out men of his generation) about the change. Being a thoughtful man who doesn’t leap to judgement, he didn’t condemn the initiative out of hand, although I sensed a certain inner torment, as he pictured the sprinters’ trains torturing themselves to stay in contact on the climb.

Jacopo is a very open minded human with a strong independent mind, well read and curious about the world. When he weighs up a controversy and takes a side, he will do so only after due consideration, and not without first assessing the pros and the cons. So, in regard to the changes to the Paris stage, he didn’t rush to any conclusion. Besides, being a francophone Italian who raced for many years on Groupama FDJ for Arnaud Démare, and acquired near perfect French (to go with his near perfect Spanish and English), Jacopo loves France.

Only two mights ago, on the evening of the Pisa rest day, we sat together over an Aperol and discussed in minute detail not just the Opening, but the Closing Ceremonies of the Paris Olympics. He was full of love for it. He worships Paris.

He also raced the Tour six times, and finished three of them. Being a lead-out rider he was always vulnerable to the guillotine of the time cut, and also to the vagaries of the high speed crash. His last participation, in 2023, ended on the bizarre bunch sprint on the Nogaro motor circuit when half a dozen riders went down on the wet tarmac as if they had been picked off by a sniper.

That was the same day that my Tour was nearly ended when a piece of aluminium sheered off from the ceiling of our truck and nearly broke my hand. The Tour is long, and it is quite hard, especially for soft and ineffectual people like me. Watch this video from 2019, and might give you some sense of the journey.

That is why, as I have often described, in print, on stage and on air, the moment that Paris is reached after three weeks of hell-for-leather careering through a country. It is a feeling of bewildered exhilaration and release, that I can only describe with a sudden intense tang of remorse that this July will be the last time I experience it. And if it feels like that for me, how must it feel for the riders?