Key points:
100 days before the first stage of the 2025 Tour de France, which will send the riders on a 185-kilometer course that will start and finish in Lille. The “capital of Flanders” has already dressed itself in the colors of the Tour, and a countdown clock has been officially inaugurated in front of the city’s train station as a daily reminder for onlookers.
From the north to the south of the country, small towns like Auch or Bayeux to large cities like Toulouse, and even to the mountain resort of La Plagne, the Tour is on display everywhere, lighting up public buildings and gathering amateur cyclists for rides for all levels.
The Tour’s Spelling Bee will gather a record class of 35,000 children this year, with the end
LILLE STARTS THE CLOCK
It was a very special time trial that the local authorities in the Hauts-de-France region, involved in the Grand Départ of the 2025 Tour de France, began yesterday. There are only 100 days left to prepare to welcome the world’s greatest cycling champions, the spectators who will cheer them on, the journalists who will follow their efforts, and the advertising caravan who will open the way. To symbolically mark the entry into this final stretch, Lille’s mayor Arnaud Deslandes, the president of the North Departmental Council Christian Poiret, and the president of the Lille Metropolitan Area (MEL) Damien Castelain met Christian Prudhomme on the square in front of Lille-Flandres Station for the official installation of the countdown clock. Positioned at this strategic location where hundreds of thousands of travelers will pass in the coming months, the clock which bears the Tour’s colors is about to become a familiar sight for Lille residents, as Christian Poiret expresses: “The heart beats a little faster. Every day, when we pass in front of the station, we’ll think of the countdown.” This launch day ended with a series of illuminations on the city’s most prestigious buildings, including the facade of the Vieille Bourse on the Grand Place, the Palais des Beaux-Arts, and the Prefecture.
A FRANCE IN YELLOW
Whilst the D-100 countdown focuses essentially on the Grand Départ in Lille, various towns that will be hosting the Tour this summer have also suited up in the season’s color that is yellow. In Toulouse, the majestic facade of the Capitole has changed it’s colors this evening, just like the town hall of Auch, where a large gathering followed by a bicycle parade was also organized. In many other places, XXL replicas of the Yellow Jersey have appeared on the walls of town halls, for example, in Bayeux in Normandy, Ennezat in the Massif Central, and Albertville or La Plagne in the Alps, where a cyclist sculpture was placed to welcome visitors. These sort of references to the Grande Boucle will continue to appear for about a month, with operations carried out by many local authorities on dates corresponding to their own D-100.
THE TOUR DICTATION, AIMING FOR A RECORD
While the riders will still have to wait until July 5th to race in Lille, another competition started yesterday: the 8th edition of the Tour Dictation, which was launched by Christian Prudhomme just like for the champions. Every year, year 5 and 6 students from schools along the race route are invited to participate in a unique dictation, with the text drawn from a local press article about the Tour passing through their region. The first to take part in this unusual test were the young Lille residents, with 475 students gathered in three sessions at the MEL council room to transcribe, as accurately as possible and without any mistakes, the prose read by Professor Prudhomme. Tomorrow, 35 cities involved on the Tour de France and 17 cities from the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift will also participate in this competition, with renowned readers such as Marion Rousse in Clermont-Ferrand, François Pervis in Mayenne, Bernard Thévenet in Chinon, former Minister of Sports Valérie Fourneyron in Rouen, or Audrey Cordon-Ragot in Mûr-de-Bretagne. After putting down their pens, the children will surely await their grades more eagerly than usual, as the top eight have the chance to spend a day on the Tour. Including parallel operations like Paris-Roubaix Dictation and Dictation of the Ardennes in Belgium, 35,000 children are participating in their own way in the D-100 countdown to the Grand Départ.
Tour Dictation, the Figures
8th edition, 35,000 students expected (vs 27,000 in 2024).
70 cities and local authorities mobilized in total.
2,750 children gathered in Mayenne, the department with the most participants.
Dunkirk will have 1,750 students participate, the record for all involved cities this year.
Around 60 texts from local and regional press were selected and adapted to suit children aged 8 to 10.
35,000 pens and rulers featuring Maxoo distributed at the Tour Dictation sites.
25,000 copies of the Tour de France and 10,000 copies of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift are being used by the children.
30,000 copies of the educational booklet “Life on a Bike with Maxoo” (created by the Journal de Mickey) distributed to students.
The names of the winners invited to the Grande Boucle will be announced on May 16, 2025, 50 days before the Grand Départ.
