How it feels to tackle the Tour de France's 'final battle' – the Col d'Izoard | Life and style
They parked their motorhomes in laybys on the steep slopes of the Col d’Izoard five days early to be assured of a prime spot to witness their Tour de France heroes ride past. On Sunday, they got us as the warm-up act.
Deckchairs out, barbecues lit â€" and with occasional bursts of dodgy Europop â€" they willed on a ragtag river of 12,200 amateur cyclists testing their mettle on the mountainsides of what will today be the route of the 18th stage of the Tour.
The Etape du Tour â€" a mass-participation event offering amateur cyclists the chance to race over a full stage â€" has been growing rapidly since 1,700 took part in 1993. This year, it took two hours to get the last rider through the start line in the alpine city of Briançon.
By the time the race reached what will be the Tour’s first ever summit finish on the Izoard some 110 miles later organisers Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO) estimated that riders were stretched across 40 miles of road. There was rarely more than a metre or two between us; leave half a handlebar’s width and someone’s front wheel would soon nudge in.
Villages on the route, bedecked with bike-related art, seemed to be practising for the real thing. On Thursday 20 July the crowds will be many people deep but four days early they still mustered impressive support. Around half of the field were French and a quarter British. A piece of encouragement scrawled on the road seemed to sum it up: “Allez Bardez … et papa.â€
Shouts of “allezâ€, “courage†and “bravo†pushed us up the hills, while children stretched out their hands for high fives. The most welcome shout on an intensely hot day, though, was “douche!â€. A nod brought a slosh of icy mountain stream water down the back. Part agony, part bliss: much like the Etape itself.
Tour director Henri Desgranges first sent the race over the 2,360m Col d’Izoard â€" and the barren moonscape of the Casse Déserte just before the summit â€" in 1922 on a 170-mile stage from Nice on the Mediterranean coast to Briançon. Like this year, it went via the Col de Vars.
“The task at hand is so hard that our men won’t even think about battling each other until the finish line,†Desgranges said before the stage. “With their racing instinct they’ve sensed that they first have to survive, to finish, and that with such difficulties and such suffering ahead of them it would perhaps be a consolation to have comrades with whom to share their misery.â€
The Belgian rider Philippe Thys won the stage. When the Tour returned in 1923, the leader at the summit was Henri Pélissier, of whom Desgrange once remarked: “He does not know how to suffer, and will never win the Tour.†He won that year.
While, in summer, a lush green carpets much of the Alps, the treeless upper slopes of the Izoard can be more reminiscent of the lunar Mont Ventoux. Jacques Goddet, Desgranges’ successor as director, described it as “a new version of hellâ€; calling it a “terrible exigency, which establishes the border of the difficult and the terrifyingâ€.
Italian Gino Bartali led over the Izoard on his way to victory in the 1938 Tour, and repeated both feats 10 years later as Europe, recovering from the destruction of the second world war, once again embraced cycling.
His young countryman Fausto Coppi â€" the radical atheist to Bartali’s pious Catholicism â€" led over the climb in 1949. He won the stage by 20 minutes and he too went on to victory in Paris.
Coppi won the Gap-Briançon stage over the Izoard again in 1951 before it was the turn of Frenchman Louison Bobet to dominate. Bobet led over the Izoard in 1950, 1953 and 1954, the latter two leading to overall victory. Both riders are honoured by a monument near the summit.
The Izoard fell out of popularity in the 1960s and Eddy Merckx, widely regarded as the greatest ever cyclist, only rode to victory on its otherwordly slopes once, in 1972. Three years later, Bernard Thévenet beat Merckx over the stage, consolidating his lead in the Tour with a daring solo climb.
Those barren scree slopes seem to be back on the Tour agenda, with Andy Schleck’s long solo attack in 2011, and Joaquim RodrÃguez leading a group of 10 over the summit in 2014. This year â€" the climb’s 35th inclusion â€" will see the first summit finish.
During Sunday’s Etape there was the small matter of 100 miles to tackle first, including the third category Côte des Demoiselles Coiffée and the first category Col de Vars.
It was on the steep descent of the first climb that I rounded a hairpin to find two riders stopped in the road and a third looking dazed after being catapulted over the metal barrier. Locking the brakes I managed to hold the slide speedway style â€" and was quite pleased with myself until I heard a loud pop and saw the gaping hole in my rear tyre.
It could have been the end of my day had one of the stopped riders not suggested using a folded-up race number to plug the hole; enough to get to the bottom of the hill, although not to the next feed station and possible help. The wheel blew again as I neared a group of spectators watching from a grass verge, and I walked along asking if anyone happened to have a spare tyre to hand. Success! Johannes got a bike from his car, took off the tyre and tube and got me back on the road, refusing all offers of payment â€" the kind of act that restores faith in humanity.
Almost 1,000 riders gave up. The fastest Etape rider, Norwegian Jonas Abrahamsen, completed in a time of 5 hrs 15 minutes, around the predicted time the autobus of sprinters and strugglers will take to avoid being cut off and ejected from the race.
Current Tour director Christian Prudhomme is billing this year’s Izoard stage as the “final battle†between the climbers ahead of the race’s last three stages: a relatively flat likely breakaway or sprint; an individual time trial around Marseilles; and the closing procession to Paris. The mountain also hosts this year’s La Course (an elite women’s two-day road race), although many are disappointed that the women’s route is only 40 miles long.
When the pros tackle the ride today they will barely be able to see their surroundings for the sheer volume of spectators crowding the roadside â€" but they will suffer just the same.
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