Found the Gesink note this morning. I thought the following was cute in Cycling News, a quote of Peter Sagan:
"I didn't really feel the emotion of finishing in Paris, maybe because everybody spoke to me so much about it beforehand," he said. "Ivan [Basso] even told me that on the Champs-Élysées you don't feel pain, but in the finale we were going at 60kph and you need strength in your legs for that."
Basso's "poetic" description that you don't feel pain in the Champs-Élysées... and Sagan expecting that literally!