For the first time in history, the Tour de France will conclude outside of Paris due to the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. The usual Champs Elysées sprint has been replaced by a time trial in the French Riviera, a finale that could have provided a suspenseful last chance in the battle for the yellow jersey had Tadej Pogačar not already played such a dominant hand.
The last occasion the Tour finished with a time trial, in 1989, Greg LeMond stripped the yellow Jersey from the shoulders of Laurent Fignon on the Champs-Elysées by just eight seconds. LeMond, however, went into that 24.5km stage 35 years ago with a deficit of just 50 seconds.
Pogačar, on the other hand, is entering Sunday's 33.7km hilly time trial from Monaco to Nice that ends the 111th edition with a 5:14 margin on the overall to second-placed Jonas Vingegaard.
The Visma-Lease a Bike rider had already conceded after stage 19 that a third victory in a row was now out of reach and instead turned his attention to consolidating his second place. Vingegaard stretched the buffer to world time trial champion and stage 7 time trial winner Remco Evenepoel to 2:50 on the penultimate day of racing.
The size of the margins makes a change in the overall podium extremely unlikely – unless disaster strikes for one of the top three – particularly given fourth placed João Almeida is 16:45 from his yellow-clad team leader and 8:41 from Evenepoel in third.
However, gaps as tight as one second can be found elsewhere in the top ten so as the race against the clock gets underway on the Formula 1 start grid in Monaco, there will still be significant placings to protect.
Almeida has just a 40-second gap to fifth-placed Mikel Landa, while it is even tighter between sixth and seventh, with Adam Yates just a second ahead of Carlos Rodriguez.
Then eighth-placed Matteo Jorgenson has Derek Gee just 24 seconds in arrears while eleventh-placed Santiago Buitrago is just 22 seconds away from the top ten spot currently held by Giulio Ciccone.
All will finally be decided on a route that climbs to La Turbie (8.1km at 5.7%) and then goes up the summit of the uncategorised Col d'Eze (1.6km at 8.1%) before heading into a long but technical descent to Nice.
The final five kilometres will follow the Quai des Etats-Unis and then there is an out-and-back on the Promenade des Anglais before a left to the finish in Place Masséna.
After the clock stops, Pogačar, who has so far held yellow for all but two stages of this year's Tour de France, is of course expected to be centre stage at the celebrations. At this point, it would take something extraordinary to stop the 2020 and 2021 winner from regaining his Tour de France crown and he has made clear that he won't be taking any unnecessary risks.
"Just one more day to go – the ITT. That one, I’m going to enjoy it too," said Pogačar. "I will just try to come safe to Nice."
Start times for the stage 21 time trial can be found here and an analysis of the route by Joe Dombrowski here.
Stage 21 Mountains
- La Turbie (8.1km at 5.7%), cat. 2, km 11.2
Stage 21 Time Checks
- Kilometre 11.2
- Kilometre 17.1
- Kilometre 28.6
