Double Alps portion on men's Tour menu, women to finish at L'Alpe d'Huez

PARIS : Next year's Tour de France will be a treacherous affair featuring two treks through the Alps as organisers avoid Paris ahead of the Summer Olympics, while the women's race will have a grand finale at L'Alpe d'Huez in August.

For the first time since its creation in 1903, the men's Tour will not finish in Paris with the winner being crowned in Nice after the race's first Grand Depart in Italy, Florence playing host for the world's greatest cycling race.

There will be four stages in Italy, with some great names being honoured as the second stage will start a few kilometres from the late Marco Pantani's birth town and finish in Rimini, where he died in 2004.

The peloton will enter the Alps as early as the fourth stage and will return for the final block of racing, which will be decided with a mountain stage ending at the Col de la Couillole (15.7km at 7.1 per cent) and a hilly individual time trial between Monaco and Nice.

It will be the first time since 1989 that the last stage of the race will be actually competed.

Since Greg Lemond won a time trial on the Champs-Elysees to pip France's Laurent Fignon by eight seconds in the overall rankings, the final stage has always been a procession with only the final sprint being contested.

"The last three four days will be very tough because we will be in the mountains," Tour director Christian Prudhomme told Reuters.

A brutal finish at the Lioran could do some damage midway through the race in the Massif Central.

Defending champion Jonas Vingegaard and runner-up Tadej Pogacar, if he takes part, will once again be the top favourites.

"We were committed to avoid Paris because of the Olympics," Prudhomme told Reuters.

"There are only 28,000 police forces available and we knew we could