As part of celebrations to mark the 100th edition of the Tour de France, the cycle race organisers are set to invite every rider who has ever finished the Tour to the final stage on the Champs-Élysées next year.
Just over 2,000 of the 8,300 riders to have finished the Tour are still living.
Organisers hope at least a quarter of them will be able to make the journey to Paris next July.
France has the most surviving Tour finishers, with 491, followed by Italy (358), Spain (301) and Belgium (256), while a further 37 nations, including New Zealand, have had at least one Tour finisher.
The oldest surviving Tour finisher is 98-year-old Pierre Cogan.
The Frenchman rode his first Tour in 1935, when he was just 21.
