The race went on as three riders went down in a mad pack sprint. Abdoujaparov, a Soviet who was the overall points leader in the race and winner of two stages, was on the outside of the pack and hit the metal barrier restraining the crowd. He was thrown headfirst from his bicycle.

Phil Anderson of Australia said he was directly in front of Abdoujaparov. "We were both going full out and he just put his head down and ran into the wall," said Anderson, who finished fifth in the stage.

Abdoujaparov, who broke his left collarbone, is to remain hospitalized for 48 hours of observation because of the head injury, said Gerard Porte, medical director of the Tour.

The last day of the Tour is always one for wild sprints, as the riders jockey for position and a last gasp of glory as they make eight laps between the Place de la Concorde and the Arc de Triomphe to conclude the 23-day, 2,462-mile race. Indurain rode into Paris with his victory secure and ended with a 3-minute 36-second advantage over Italian Gianni Bugno.

Three-time champion Greg LeMond led the riders onto the Champs Elysees, a minute ahead in a stirring breakaway. But the peloton swallowed him on the third lap, and he finished 30th in the stage, enough to maintain his seventh place overall, 13:13 behind Indurain.

LeMond finished as the top U.S. rider, despite the efforts of Andy Hampsten. As late as Friday, the Boulder, Colo., resident was in seventh place and held a 2:42 lead over LeMond. But Hampsten dropped to eighth Saturday when LeMond finished ahead of him by 3:11.

Even Indurain got into the spirit of fearless, full-throttle racing that characterized today's finish. As late as the seventh lap he was pushing Claudio Chiappucci for the lead before settling back and crossing 35th.

"On the final laps, we had to tell him to go easy and come back," said Indurain's Banesto teammate Pedro Delgado, a former Tour winner. "The [stage] victory wasn't important and too much can happen.

"We saw that."

Abdoujaparov was placed 158th, last in the field, but maintained his points victory in his second Tour de France. Medical officials from the Tour worked on him for almost a half-hour in front of the winner's platform, finally hoisting him upright and walking him slowly up the Champs Elysees. But Abdoujaparov suddenly slumped and was assisted into an ambulance and sped to a hospital.

The Tour never broke stride during the confusing swirl of activity around Abdoujaparov. Indurain got his kisses onstage and said things like, "I never thought about winning until after yesterday's stage."

But they were thinking of it back in Villava, a Spanish village tucked into the Pyrenees that is Indurain's home town and where his family lives. The mayor of Villava announced that a street will be named after Indurain, who lives in nearby Pamplona.

Villava straddles the Basque border, so it was fitting that when Indurain seized control of the Tour in his beloved Pyrenees, fans ran alongside his bicycle in Basque berets and waving Basque flags.

"He rode all out, that was his strategy," said LeMond. "He was going to win it all or he was going to lose it all."

Few expected such assertion from Indurain, a rider some Spanish journalists refer to as "the invisible man" because of his easy-going, almost colorless style.

With today's victory comes the prize of 2,000,000 francs, or about $330,000, which is traditionally shared with teammates. Indurain has received much support from the other Banesto riders, notably Delgado and Jean-Francois Bernard, whose pace on the grueling climb up Alpe d'Huez was so crucial and who finished ninth himself.

Indurain, in addition to endorsements, already makes a reported $550,000 a year from Banesto and stands to increase that dramatically when the contract expires next year.

Clearly, the '90s have arrived for the Tour de France.

Given that LeMond began this Tour answering questions about whether his dominance might be on the wane at 30, it was not surprising he was asked about it again at the end.

Is it true what they are saying, someone wanted to know, that this Tour has been witness to the changing of the guard in the sport, as the generation of LeMond and Laurent Fignon (31) is replaced by Indurain and others like Claudio Chiappucci (28)?

"In a sense, they could be right," LeMond said, but he wasn't willing to concede yet. "To me, a generation gap is not two or three years. It's six or seven years.

"I still think that I'm going to come to the Tour de France next year as the favorite, with Indurain."

They won't be anything but the sentimental favorites, but few will forget the Soviets, winners of five stages including today's by Dimitri Konyshev (his second of the Tour). And if the memory fades, there will always be the chilling replays of the crash by Abdoujaparov so near his moment of triumph.