'It'll be a nice cherry on top to finish in Paris' – these riders already know they're racing their final Tour de France
The Class of '26 includes two previous stage winners
In July 2013, second-year pro Luke Durbridge watched the final stage of the Tour de France on the Champs-Élysées. He collected the hats tossed out to the fans at the roadside, and gaped at the lights show on the Arc de Triomphe, as Chris Froome was crowned the winner on the race’s 100th anniversary. “This looks like the big show,” Durbridge told himself. “I thought, ‘Next year, I really want to go.’”
Twelve months on, the Australian was back, and this time he was part of the peloton. He has since raced 12 of the last 13 Tours – more than 200 stages – each one with the same team, now named Jayco AlUla. This edition, however, will be his last; after next January’s Australian Road Championships, the 35-year-old will retire from professional cycling, calling time on a 15-year road career.
“I’m just incredibly lucky to be able to do as many [Tours] as I did,” he tells Cycling Weekly. “I just wanted to do one.”
Durbridge is one of at least five riders who have decided, on their terms, that this will be their final Tour. Alongside him in the Class of ‘26 are Damiano Caruso (Bahrain Victorious), Magnus Cort (Uno-X Mobility), Damien Howson (Pinarello Q36.5) and Ion Izagirre (Cofidis), all of whom are due to retire at the end of this season.
Riders don’t always have the luxury of knowing when their final Tour will be. Some careers end in crashes or contract breakdowns; other times, riders just never make the cut for the eight-man squad again.
While there’s often great fanfare around debutants at the Tour – take Paul Seixas and Isaac del Toro, for example – the final-timers tend to exit stage left, without a curtain call. Cycling Weekly spoke to three of them at this year’s race, and asked them about their best memories through the years, their toughest moments, and the wisdom they have for the next generation.
“Probably the most standout memory is actually the people,” says Durbridge. “All of my best friends and all of my closest relationships have come from just being in the trenches at the Tour. You probably remember the hard moments with your mates more than you do the ones where you might have got a nice victory.”
What, then, was his hardest moment? “Alpe d’Huez, 2018,” he replies, no need to stop and think. “I made the time cut by 50 seconds, last guy on the road.
“I was quite good on the climb beforehand, and then I just completely cooked it up in the heat nutrition-wise. Then I was just dipping into the soul. I got a lot of help from the crowd that day. That’s a pretty iconic moment for me. I’m pretty proud of myself that I got it done.”
Howson's final Tour is Pinarello Q36.5's first.
Durbridge’s compatriot and former team-mate Howson is riding his third Tour de France. After competing in back-to-back editions in 2017 and 2018, he began to wonder if he’d ever return to the biggest bike race in the world. Now, eight years on, he’s back with debutants Pinarello Q36.5.
“I set it as a goal when I changed teams four years ago to Q36.5,” the 33-year-old says. “It was a goal of mine to get back to the Tour de France, and it was a goal of theirs to make the Tour de France, so it’s cool to be here in my final year, along with the team, both achieving our goals that we set many years ago.”
Howson chose the eve of this year’s Grand Départ in Barcelona to announce his retirement. Already, his farewell Tour has brought a full-circle moment.
“We started in Carcassonne the other day, and that’s the place where I fractured my scaphoid in my last Tour de France and ended my race there on stage 15,” he says.
“That was another reason I wanted to come back; after feeling the finish in Paris [in 2017], it’s an iconic moment in sport, and to get so close and break the scaphoid, I wasn’t able to get there that year. Now, eight years later, we’re back at the Tour de France and trying to tick off the team’s objectives and ambitions. But it’ll be a nice little cherry on the top for me to finish in Paris.”
Danish champion Cort is a two-time stage winner.
Uno-X’s Magnus Cort has only failed to finish one of the eight Tours he started. Funnily, that uncompleted edition in 2022, which began in his native Denmark, is also the one that gave him the fondest memories.
“I was in the polka dot jersey,” he says of the opening stages out of Copenhagen. “Then I got a second day where I was riding alone in the breakaway. That was also very special.
“It’s something I won’t get the chance to do again now. It was the one time I had the opportunity to do something, and I was very happy that I could do it.”
Cort is one of two riders in the Class of ‘26, alongside Izagirre, who can call themselves stage winners. The Dane earned the first of his two victories on his debut in 2018, while the second came five days before he withdrew in 2022.
Rather than his wins, some fans might remember Cort more for his tongue-in-cheek hotel reviews, which he began posting on Instagram as early as 2019. “Many of them are not the best hotels, so I don’t think that’s a part I will miss,” he says. “I know a lot of people have told me they’ll miss my reviews.”
What’s the biggest hotel nightmare he’s had at the race? “It was this one we stayed in two years ago,” he says. “We stayed in a slightly different part of the hotel, and I don’t know if it was the weather in the different part, but it was a lot more moist there. There was water basically running down the walls. It was really, really nasty there.”
The rough nights, though, have taken nothing away from Cort's Tour experience. “It’s been great,” he says, but he won't reminisce any deeper just yet. That will come later. “For the moment, I’m thinking about the race and doing everything I can like every other year.”
After 12 years, Durbridge is still taking it one stage at a time.
Durbridge, too, isn’t letting himself sit back and reflect on his 13 Tours just yet. With two days still to go until Paris, he's sticking to the mantra he's always had: “I’m trying to keep it one stage at a time.”
It’s the same wisdom the Jayco AlUla road captain gives to any rider at the start of their Tour journey. “Try and take it all in,” he says. “Try not to get overwhelmed, because you want to do many Tours. I think in my first Tour de France I got a bit overwhelmed by just the size and the craziness of it, and I didn’t quite perform. But performing at the Tour is what you want to do – it’s not just about getting selected for the Tour.”
Howson’s advice is similar. “The hype is real,” he says. “But at the end of the day, it is still just a bike race, so don’t let it overwhelm you; embrace it rather than let it hold you back.”
Come Sunday evening, when the race closes on the Champs-Élysées, all the cameras will be pointed at the stage winner, the yellow jersey, and the other podium finishers. Spare a thought then for the final-timers – Durbridge, Cort, Howson, Izagirre and Caruso – and the legacies they leave behind. They might not be on the start line next year, but they'll be part of the Tour's history forever.
