Tour de France stage 21 preview

(Image credit: Getty)

published 23 July 2022

Stage 21 of the Tour de France 2022 starts in La Défense Arena and concludes with our old friend: the sprint finish on the Champs-Élysées, the classic denouement of the Tour.

When is stage 21 of the Tour de France taking place?

The Tour de France stage 21 takes place on Sunday, July 24 starting at 15:45 BST with an anticipated finish time of 18:34 BST.

How long is stage 21 of the Tour de France?

The Tour de France stage 21 will be 115.6 km long.

Tour de France 2022 stage 21: expected timings

Route	Distance to go	Anticipated Time (BST)
Paris La Défense Arena	115.6km	15:45
Paris Haut de Champs-Élysées (3rd lap)	26.5km	17:55
Paris Champs-Élysées	0km	18:34

Tour de France 2022 stage 21 route

The Tour’s final stage will have its first ever indoor start within the La Défense Arena, a multi-use stadium opened in 2017 that’s home to the Racing 92 rugby club and has hosted concerts by the Rolling Stones, Mylène Farmer and Paul McCartney. Once the riders have had a glass of Champagne and reached central Paris there will be eight laps of the finishing circuit, which has the Louvre at its bottom end and the Arc de Triomphe at the top, before the finish halfway up the Champs-Élysées.

Useful Tour de France 2022 resources

Tour de France 2022 stage 21: what to expect

The stage will begin at the traditional processional pace to enable TV and photographers to get pictures of the yellow jersey and his team-mates toasting each other with Champagne. The pace will only begin to pick up on the way into Paris and will become extremely quick once the race leader’s team has brought the peloton onto the Champs-Élysées the first time.

Although small groups will attempt to break away, there’s very little chance of them escaping the clutches of the sprinters’ teams, who will be absolutely determined not to miss out on the most prestigious sprint of the season.

Tour de France 2022 stage 21: riders to watch

Jumbo-Visma set up Wout van Aert perfectly for this sprint last year, although they received some help from Alpecix-Fenix, who trapped Quick Step’s Mark Cavendish on the barriers as they sought to launch Jasper Philipsen. All three of those teams should feature again, with former Paris winners Dylan Groenewegen (2017) and Caleb Ewan (2019) also likely to be in the frame.

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Peter Cossins has been writing about professional cycling since 1993, with his reporting appearing in numerous publications and websites including Cycling Weekly, Cycle Sport and Procycling - which he edited from 2006 to 2009. Peter is the author of several books on cycling - The Monuments, his history of cycling's five greatest one-day Classic races, was published in 2014, followed in 2015 by Alpe d’Huez, an appraisal of cycling’s greatest climb. Yellow Jersey - his celebration of the iconic Tour de France winner's jersey won the 2020 Telegraph Sports Book Awards Cycling Book of the Year Award.