The same month as Paris 2024, the Tour de France 2024 will be a puzzle: how to exist next to such an event, which route will be the most suitable to avoid colliding with the Olympics?
According to the Italian daily Gazzetta dello Sport in its edition of June 8, ASO (Amaury Sport Organisation) the organizer of the Tour - who did not wish to comment on the Italian information - may have found a solution.
For the first since the first Tour de France in 1903, the Grande Boucle may not arrive in Paris.
The Tour de France should end on July 21, 2024, less than a week before the opening of Paris 2024 (July 26 to August 11).
Difficult in these conditions to envisage an arrival on the Champs-Élysées.
The solution envisaged, according to the Gazzetta, could be on the Côte d'Azur.
Nice, which hosted the Grand Départ in 2020, could be the final arrival city of the 111th edition of the Tour chosen by the organizers.
This information, if not confirmed by ASO, is not confirmed by the city of Nice either.
#Tour de France 2024, omaggio all'Italia: il via da Firenze nel mito di Bartali, Coppi e Pantani https://t.co/2m9vNCtfEP
— La Gazzetta dello Sport (@Gazzetta_it) June 8, 2022
Regarding the departure in 2024, the Gazzetta dello Sport also announces that it will take place in Italy.
The Peninsula is the only country bordering France to have never hosted a Grand Départ.
Remember that at the beginning of July, the 2022 Tour will leave from Denmark and in 2023 from Bilbao in Spain.
For our transalpine colleagues, it is Florence which would have been chosen as the launch pad for the Tour 2024, on June 29.
Florence is the city of Gino Bartali, double winner of the Tour in 1938 and 1948.
The first stage could end in Rimini on the shores of the Adriatic, in the city where Marco Pantani, the winner of the 1998 Tour, died.
After this opening, the Tour should spend several more days in Italy with a stage which could leave from Cesenatico to arrive in Bologna before a third stage announced in Emilia-Romagna between Modena and Piacenza and the start of the fourth stage in Pinerolo (Piedmont) for a follow-up on French territory.
If the information from the Gazzetta is confirmed, with a start in Italy and an arrival in Nice, the Tour 2024 will surely be very southern.
The Tour is unlikely to go much north of the Loire.
But all this remains to be confirmed.
