Tour de France route goes twice through Alps, no Paris finish - ESPN

PARIS — Next year's Tour de France will feature two treks through the Alps as organizers avoid Paris as it hosts 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 on July 21 after the race's first Grand Depart in Florence, Italy, on June 29.

With the Olympics being staged in Paris from July 26 to Aug. 11, organizers decided, following talks with the government, to ease the pressure on the police force by avoiding the capital.

«We were committed to avoid Paris because of the Olympics,» Tour director Christian Prudhomme told Reuters. «There are only 28,000 police forces available, and we knew we could not get more.»