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VALENCE, France (Velo) — Sprinters in the Tour de France are steaming that the closing-day sprint down the Champs-Élysées is off the menu in this year’s Tour de France.

This Tour’s 21st stage is typically filled with madcap hijinks and a ceremonial romp ahead of a tidy final sprint down the most famous boulevard in Paris in what many consider the unofficial world championships of sprinters.

Not this year.

Race organizers are directing the pack over the radical Montmartre circuit that was used with dramatic effect at the Paris Olympics last summer.

That might mean spectacle until the closing moments of the Tour, but sprinters are steaming.

Their one chance to shine has turned into another sufferfest with little hope of contesting for victory in the most prestigious win of the year.

“I hate it. I think it’s terrible what they’ve done,” Jayco-AlUla’s Luke Durbridge told Velo. “It’s the holy grail of sprinting and there are no sprints anymore.

“They put sprint intermediates uphill. They put 3000 meters of climbing in a sprint stage and now this, so why be a sprinter and why come to the Tour de France?”

50th anniversary, sprinters not invited
EvenepoelEvenepoel attacks last year of Montmartre. (Photo: Alex Broadway/Getty Images)

Innovation is one thing, messing with tradition is something else.

This summer is the 50th anniversary of the Champs-Élysées finale, and after missing out last year in Nice for the first time since 1975 due to the Paris Olympic Games, race organizers wanted to do something special.

So they cut-and-pasted the Olympic Montmartre circuit used in both the men’s and women’s road races to spectacular effect, and squeezed it into the program of the Tour’s final stage.

The pack will race four laps on the Champs-Élysées and then head for three laps over the climb up Rue Lepic.

Then it’s a fast descent onto the finishing straight on the Champs.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea for the Tour,” Tudor Pro Cycling’s Matteo Trentin told Velo.  “We’re pretty scared about it because if you see the Olympics, it was just 50 riders there, and it was already a big mess. Now we’re sending the whole peloton over it.”

Instead, racers will be on edge for one more hit-out that could rattle the GC and see riders hitting the ground.

Ruining the Parisian romp?
Jordi MeeusJordi Meeus is the last sprinter to win on the Champs. (Photo: Marco Bertorello – Pool/Getty Images)

The high-octane 10 laps on the cobbles of the Champs-Élysées to close out the Tour is arguably one of sport’s most spectacular finales.

It’s a tradition that dates back to 1975, but race organizers are scrambling the script for Sunday.

While the Montmartre circuit will be great for TV, many riders are on edge when they look ahead to Sunday.

“Nobody likes it,” Visma-Lease a Bike’s Matteo Jorgenson told Velo. “But the decision has been made, and it’s unfortunate.

“It means that we can’t talk with people in the peloton and celebrate the event that we just suffered through.

“So it’ll probably be like any other stage, it’ll be a race,” Jorgenson said. “There’ll probably be gaps in GC and guys going for the stage, and it’ll be hectic.”

Jorgenson attacked over Montmartre in last summer’s Olympic Games to finish in the top 10 but said the climb isn’t really that challenging for the GC climbers, but possibly too steep for the pure sprinters.

It’s the nerves and tension that make it one more long day in the saddle.

Neutralizing the GC
EvenepoelThe Olympics delivered. a spectacular race in 2024, but is it too much for the Tour? (Photo: ODD ANDERSEN/AFP via Getty Images)

What he and others are worried about are crashes, nerves, spills, and possible late-hour shakeups in the GC after surviving three harrowing weeks.

“We’re going for safety, but I don’t see that as really safe,” Trentin said. “If we keep the 3-kilometer rule or whatever, where the GC guys have to go over the last lap, then I will see like pretty much of a mess. Let’s see. I hope to be wrong.”

Sources said discussions are ongoing behind the scenes to determine if some sort of time neutralization might be in the cards.

The GC could be taken before or during the Montmartre circuit to ensure there are no unnecessary risks or prevent late-hour U-turns.

But some ask, if you do that, why even bother?

This is seen more as an insult to the peloton’s speed demons.

Durbridge pointed out a larger trend of how the bigger pure sprinters in the bunch are being squeezed out by Tour race designers who are packing in more vertical and more technical courses, even into stages that could end in a bunch sprint.

“These big guys — 80 kilos — they suffer over the Alps just to get to Paris to have the Champs, and now they’re taking that away from them,” Durbridge said. “I’m pretty upset about it, and I think a lot of people share my opinion.”

The champagne toasts will have to wait
VingegaardThe early stage hijinks might be off the cards Sunday. (Photo: Daniel Cole – Pool/Getty Images)

No more champagne toasts. The elite sprinters will have to race their guts out to make it to the line.

All this means it’s going to be full-on racing on the final day of Geraint Thomas’ Tour de France career.

The 2018 Tour winner is bracing for one more crazy day in his final pedal strokes at the Tour, but he seems unfazed by the change.

“I think a lot of people are a bit disappointed, and it’s kind of nice to stick to tradition, but it’s certainly going to add different elements to the race,” Thomas told Velo.

“It’s going to be a lot tougher and a lot more stressful fighting into that climb,” Thomas said with a weary shrug. “That’s how bike racing’s going these days. So yeah, we’ll get stuck in.”

The Tour keeps evolving. Gravel, cobblestones, impossible climbs — they’ve all been added to the Tour menu of suffering.

There is some discussion that this will be a one-off to pay tribute to the 50th anniversary, and the sprinters will have their day in the sun back in 2026 in a return to the traditional finale.

Riders can only race what the Tour organizers hand them.

“The organization is boss. The Olympics were beautiful to watch, and if that’s what they want, for me that’s no problem,” Oliver Naesen (Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale) told Velo.

“You could say the Champs-Élysées is like the worlds for sprinters historically, and we have the champagne moment for the different jerseys and all of that, but why can’t it be a real race? I think it’s perfectly fine.”

Sprinters suffered over the Alps and Pyrénées to survive and have a chance to win in Paris.

This year, they might have had their last chance on Wednesday in Valence.

Don’t be surprised to see a trickle of sprinters heading for home across two brutal stages in Alps.

If there’s no chance to win, why keep suffering?