Icons: Avenue de Grammont
For nearly 30 years this legendary stretch of road has hosted the finish of Paris-tours
It may not have the glamour of the Champs-elysées but with few finishing straights in cycling as long, the Avenue de Grammont’s place in cycling history is assured as today’s trademark finish of Paris-tours, the ‘Sprinters’ Classic’.
The first Paris-tours was an amateur race used to mark the opening of the new Velodrome de Tours in 1896. The 246km race was hailed a huge success but its second edition wouldn’t be held until 1901 and it was a further five years before it became an annual event.
By then Paris-tours was organised by Henri Desgrange’s sports paper L’auto alongside Victor Lefèvre, a local racer who had finished sixth in 1901. Lefèvre also owned the velodrome in Tours and so there the finish remained for decades, with crowds seated in the stands awaiting the arrival of the riders.
Return of tradition
Today it may be known as the Sprinters’ Classic but in the 1950s the organisers of Paris-tours were far from happy with bunch sprint finishes, which they considered dull. By now L’equipe had assumed responsibility for the event and introduced a series of route changes, first moving the finish to the Rue du Champs de Mars and then to the summit of the Côte de l’alouette as they went in search of more interesting races. Ultimately their efforts were hampered by the natural terrain of the area and in the mid-1970s they renamed the race the Grand Prix d’automne and moved the finish away from Tours completely.
“The return of tradition,” was the headline of the French daily La Nouvelle République’s front page story announcing the 1988 return of the race to Tours, complete with what it called a “majestic finish on the Avenue de Grammont”. The move provided the sprinters in the peloton the very best opportunity to showcase their high-speed skills with a 2.6km pan-flat, dead-straight run-in on the tree-lined avenue. Ninety-two years after its first edition, instead of fighting against it, Paris-tours had finally embraced what it was — a race for the fastmen and the opportunistic. Dutchman Peter Pieters was the first to take a sprint on the now legendary finish.
And there the race has stayed. In 2011 the finish was tweaked yet again as a result of a tramway having been built on part of the avenue, meaning that instead of traversing the entire length of its spiritual home, the race now has ‘only’ an 800m straight-line dash to the finish.
These days the Sprinters’ Classic is more likely to end in a narrow win from a small break than a bunch sprint, but the sight of one or two riders fighting to hold off a rampaging peloton is equally as compelling as watching the organised madness that is a mass sprint.