Tour de France marks 50 years of finishes on the Champs-Élysées

This year, the Tour de France will celebrate half a century of iconic finishes on the Champs-Élysées. In 2024, the race famously skipped Paris for its traditional final stage due to preparations for the Olympic Games. But in 2025, the Tour is set to return to the French capital, with stage 21 once again concluding on the world’s most famous boulevard.

Writing in The Guardian, William Fotheringham reflected on the history and spectacle of this landmark finish.

“It is impossible now to conceive of the Tour de France without two things: the race leader’s yellow jersey and the finale on the Champs-Élysées, a spectacle that is half a century old this summer.”

Fotheringham highlighted some of the most memorable conclusions on the Parisian cobbles. Among them were Bernard Hinault’s remarkable victories while wearing the yellow jersey, an achievement very few riders have ever matched. Hinault even outpaced the pure sprinters in 1982, including the legendary Sean Kelly.

He also recalled Greg LeMond’s dramatic triumph in 1989, when LeMond overturned a 50-second deficit to Laurent Fignon by winning the final time trial on the Champs-Élysées by eight seconds, one of the most thrilling finishes in Tour history.

Other standout moments included Eddy Seigneur’s surprise win in 1994, and of course Mark Cavendish’s dominant run capped by his fourth consecutive victory on the Champs-Élysées in 2012, when he was famously led out by Tour winner Bradley Wiggins.