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Montargis
185 km
Thursday 8 July
The finish of the Tour is still a long way off - it’s not yet time to celebrate with champagne… Leaving Epernay, the pack will barely glimpse the surrounding hillsides of the Champagne region. The race will then pass through Brie and Gâtinais and finish in Montargis. A stage that is tailor-made for sprinters.
• 3 times a stage town
• Population: 27,000
• Sub-prefecture of Marne (51)
Épernay, another champagne capital, hosted the first stage finish of the 1963 Tour. Eddy Pauwels triumphed in a double win, sweeping both the stage and the overall classification. This was no lucky accident: already yellow jersey holder for two days in 1959, the Belgian rider went on to win a total of four stages and finished five times among the top twenty in Paris. The Tour returned twice to Epernay, in 1978 and in 2002, also for stage starts.
• 3 times a stage town
• Population: 16,000
• Sub-prefecture of Loiret (45)
Montargis has already appeared on the route of the Tour in three previous editions and powerful finishers have always triumphed there. Herman Van Springel was the first to win here in 1969. In 1976, when the town hosted the start of a stage that finished in Créteil, another Belgian rider, Freddy Maertens, triumphed. On the Tour’s most recent visit, in 2002, the most Belgian of Australians, Robbie McEwen, was victorious…
