Wout van Aert laments Montmarte climb's addition to Tour de France: "Safety is an even more important theme"

At the 2024 Olympic Games Road Race, Mathieu van der Poel and Wout van Aert looked to be the strongest on the cobbled climb to Montmarte that proved to be the main obstacle during the race. However, despite this, the Belgian is against it's addition to the Tour de France where he believes circumstances will be very different.

“The course itself is something that must suit me or other classic riders, if you see that the final passage is about six kilometers from the finish. But I am not a big fan of this. This could be a very dangerous stage this way,” van Aert shared in words to Het Nieuwsblad this morning at the Giro d'Italia.

The route has been confirmed this morning and will include three ascents of the cobbled hill, in the very final day of the Grand Boucle - a meaningful change, after decades of tradition that this last day was for commemoration and the sprinters to race it out for victory.

Now no longer the case - in 2025 at least. The final ascent of Montmartre will come with only 6 kilometers to go, before the arrival at Champs-Élysées. "But this cannot be compared to the passage of the Olympic Games. Then we arrived at the foot of the Montmartre with a group of 50 riders. Now a complete Tour peloton will have to go over it at the same time," the Team Visma | Lease a Bike rider argued. 

"And there are also a lot of [overall] classification riders who can still win or lose a lot on the last day. If we are sent over the same narrow streets as then just before the climb, I expect chaos in the peloton. It is a shame that we are going to look for something like that". Van Aert will be present, and could potentially be one of the main favourites to win the stage however.

“I understand that the organization was a big fan of such a passage after the Olympic Games, because the atmosphere was really great on that course. But safety is an even more important theme this year and the organization does not seem to take that into account with this decision,” he concluded.