Paris-Tours

Paris-Tours is a men's one-day bike race in France, run in October to the city of Tours. It was first held in 1896 and was long known as the sprinters' classic; since 2018 the finale has crossed unpaved tracks between vineyards. It is also listed as Paris-Tours Elite, to tell it from the under-23 Paris-Tours Espoirs held on the same day.

Paris-Tours is a French one-day race for men, run in October to the city of Tours and first held in 1896. It was long known as the sprinters’ classic. Since 2018 the last part of the route has crossed unpaved tracks between vineyards, and most of the winners have come from attacks.

Why is Paris-Tours called the sprinters’ classic?

The label comes from a flat route and from the Avenue de Grammont in Tours, where the race finished from 1988 to 2024. The avenue once gave the race a finishing straight more than two kilometers long. A tramway built along it cut the straight to 800 meters in 2011.

The winners list is less one-sided than the label. Inrng counted the finishes on the avenue from 1988 through 2016 and found 18 wins for breakaways against 11 bunch sprints. Paris-Tours is also one of the few classics Eddy Merckx never won.

Eugène Prévost wins the first edition in 1896

Eugène Prévost won the first Paris-Tours in 1896, covering 250 kilometers at an average of 31.2 kilometers per hour. The race was not held again until 1901, and from 1906 it was run every year except 1915, 1916 and 1940, as the organizer’s winners list shows. By 1906 the organizer was L’Auto, the newspaper behind the Tour de France, and the company that runs the Tour still runs Paris-Tours. Since 1951 it has been held at the end of the season.

The name has outlived the route. During the First World War a Tours-Paris race was also held twice, and in the 1970s the race went from Tours to Versailles. It came back to Tours in 1988. The start has not been in Paris for decades. It moved between towns outside the capital, among them Dreux in 2016 and Brou in 2017, and every edition from 2018 to 2025 set off from Chartres.

Matteo Trentin’s Ruban Jaune ride in 2015

The 2015 edition ran 231 kilometers from Chartres. Crosswinds split the field early, and a group of 31 riders went clear with Matteo Trentin and two of his Etixx-Quick-Step teammates in it. On the Côte de Beau Soleil, a narrow climb 10 kilometers from the finish, Trentin accelerated, and only Greg Van Avermaet and Tosh Van der Sande were with him on the run into Tours. Van Avermaet punctured in the last kilometer, and Trentin beat Van der Sande in a two-rider sprint.

His average of 49.641 kilometers per hour took the Ruban Jaune, the record for the fastest race over 200 kilometers. The previous mark, 48.629, was set by Marco Marcato in the 2012 Paris-Tours. Trentin won again in 2017, ahead of Søren Kragh Andersen.

The vineyard tracks added in 2018

In 2018 the organizer rebuilt the finale around chemins de vigne, unpaved tracks between the vines of Touraine, with short climbs between them. That first year the tracks added up to 12.5 kilometers. The main group was down to 34 riders when the early breakaway was caught 45 kilometers from the finish. Kragh Andersen went clear with Niki Terpstra and Benoît Cosnefroy, left them 11 kilometers out and won alone by 25 seconds.

A year later Jelle Wallays attacked more than 50 kilometers from Tours and won by close to 40 seconds. Of the eight editions from 2018 to 2025, only the 2022 race ended in a bunch sprint, and Arnaud Démare won it. Démare, who had also won in 2021, rode the last race of his career here in 2025 and said of the gravel route: “I wasn’t necessarily a fan of the new layout at the start. But I learned to love it and I won it twice in the end.”

Côte de Rochecorbon, the last climb before Tours

The last gravel track and the last climb are both at Rochecorbon, and in 2025 the top of the climb was 8.7 kilometers from the line. In 2021 Franck Bonnamour and Stan Dewulf were still in front there. Démare and Jasper Stuyven dropped the other chasers on the climb and were eight seconds behind with 10 kilometers to go. They caught the two leaders 350 meters from the line, and Démare won the sprint. He was the first French winner since Frédéric Guesdon in 2006.

In 2023 Lewis Askey, who had been in the breakaway all day, was caught on the Rochecorbon climb by four riders who had gone clear about 20 kilometers from the finish. One of them was Riley Sheehan, a 23-year-old American riding as a trainee for Israel-Premier Tech, and he won the five-rider sprint. No American had won the race before.

Trentin’s third win on Boulevard Béranger

In 2025 the finish left the Avenue de Grammont for Boulevard Béranger, a straight of 800 meters that runs perpendicular to it. The change took two kilometers of city streets out of the finale. Paul Lapeira and Thibaud Gruel attacked with 35 kilometers left and led by 35 seconds with 22 to go. Christophe Laporte, Albert Withen Philipsen, Stefan Bissegger and Trentin chased and caught them inside the last kilometer. Trentin, 36, won the sprint from Laporte and Withen Philipsen. It was his third win, which equaled the record held by Gustave Danneels, Paul Maye, Guido Reybrouck and Erik Zabel.

In 2025 Paul Lapeira and Thibaud Gruel attacked with 35 kilometers left and were still in front inside the last kilometer in Tours. Four chasers caught them there, and Matteo Trentin won the sprint for his third victory, after 2015 and 2017. In 2021 Arnaud Démare caught the two leaders 350 meters from the line and won.