Mont Ventoux, one of the Tour de France's most famous and vaunted climbs with a deadly history

RNZ News

21-07-2025

By
Simon Smale
, ABC
Tadej Pogačar will be hoping to taste glory on the slopes of Mont Ventoux.
Photo:
AFP / Loic Venance
Cycling's ability to assign its climbs into the legendarium of its own mythology is renowned.
In a sport fuelled by tales of absolute heroism, utter villainy and the most epic of landscapes, the mythical is not such a giant leap, after all.
Among the most mythologised locations of all is Mont Ventoux, which the Tour will visit for the first time since 2021 on Tuesday.
Mont Ventoux holds a morbid hold over cycling.
It was the scene - in 1967 - of one of the most horrifying and divisive moments in the sport's history, with the death of British former world champion Tom Simpson.
On the 13th stage of that year's race - on 13 July - Simpson fell to the road in a state of delirium.
As a result of a lingering stomach bug, the desperately oppressive heat and, of course, the potent mix of amphetamines and alcohol he had used to fuel his charge that day, the 29-year-old was well beyond his limit.
Pierre Dumas, the Tour doctor, and Harry Hall, Simpson's team manager, attempted to resuscitate the stricken rider to no avail.
He died a kilometre from the summit.
There is a monument on the side of the road, at the spot where Simpson fell. British cyclists in the Tour down the years have often doffed their caps or thrown a bidon at it as an offering to go alongside the pain of their exertions, an attempt to pacify the gods who call this Alpine extremity home.
Simpson's death was a brutal illustration of how the riders of the professional peloton were playing with their lives by ingesting a cocktail of drugs to push themselves harder and further than their bodies could take.
Those times may be in the past, but Ventoux remains an extraordinary test.
Tom Simpson died 24 hours after this photo was taken, a victim of cycling's doping culture and the punishing Mont Ventoux.
Photo:
AFP
The Giant of Provence is not the steepest climb - it boasts an average gradient of 7.43 percent.
It's not even the highest of summits, topping out at 1910m officially.
It is by far the most intimidating, though.
Its inclusion on the Tour de France route is far rarer than that of the other storied climbs of the Alps or Pyrenees.
That scarcity adds to its mythology.
After all, there is comfort in familiarity - and Ventoux is not a place for comfort..
The professional peloton has always been a kaleidoscope of colour as it winds its way through France every summer, a festival of athletic achievement and joie de vivre.
On Ventoux, the palette seems, inexplicably, more muted, the multicoloured jerseys a jarring intrusion into this exposed, unnatural monument.
Jacques Goddet, who directed the Tour de France from 1935 to 1986, wrote that when the Tour visited Ventoux for the first time, the riders appeared to be "these minuscule beings climbing a fiery Calvary with a backdrop of desolation".
The entire mountain is crowned by glaring white limestone that looks like snow from afar, the moon from up close, and the white-hot coals of a furnace from within.
Not everyone in the peloton would have visited its windswept summit, devoid of nature and frequently shrouded in ethereal clouds. It is so unlike the valleys below that as riders rise from the forested section it is as if they have been transported into some otherworldly realm.
A realm where the only currency is sweat and pain and, yes, even a little fear.
Provençal writer Frédéric Mistral recounted being told by a local that those who had been to Ventoux were wise not to return, but mad if they did.
Madness and the Giant of Provence go hand-in-hand.
France, Vaucluse, Provence, cycling on the Mont Ventoux, arrival at the top, monument in memory of Tom Simpson.
Photo:
AFP / Renault Philippe
Whether it be riders raving in the madness of oxygen and glucose debt or Chris Froome running up the climb without his bike in 2016, the mountain seems to possess all those exposed to it.
In William Fotheringham's book about Tom Simpson, Put me back on my bike, he wrote that the Ventoux, "has an aura which is not quite of this world".
Its imposition across the landscape comes from its isolated position, visible for kilometres in every direction. Its shadow looms ominously for miles.
Local legend says that the caves on the Ventoux lead down into hell.
As the riders of the professional peloton dig deep into their personal reservoirs of resilience - legs and lungs screaming for respite - they might feel those legends have it the wrong way around.
Hell is up. Any form of descent would be sweet relief.
French philosopher Roland Barthes had his own views of the Ventoux, theatrically conveyed in his essay on the Tour de France in his book, Mythologies.
"A god of evil, to which sacrifice must be made," he wrote of the mountain.
"A veritable Moloch, despot of the cyclists, it never forgives the weak and exacts an unjust tribute of suffering."
The "accursed terrain … a higher hell in which the cyclist will define the truth of his salvation" is, he describes, only conquered in one of two ways.
"He will vanquish the dragon either with the help of a god, or else by pure Prometheanism, opposing this god of Evil by a still harsher demon."
Heady stuff.
Barthes's argument held that the fearsome Alpine and Pyrenean passes the Tour regularly features were exactly that - passes from one place to another, a necessary hardship to traverse these mighty peaks.
Climbing Mont Ventoux, on the other hand, gets you nowhere other than into a world of hurt and anguish. It is just pure sadism.
Pogačar climbs Mont Ventoux during the 11th stage of the Tour de France cycling race in 2021.
Photo:
AFP / Anne-Christine Poujoulat
Luxembourger Charly Gaul, l'Ange de la Montagne (the Angel of the Mountains), was the first rider to win on a Ventoux summit finish in 1958 and was whom Barthes assumed needed the assistance of a god to help him ascend its flanks.
Louison Bobet, the at-times temperamental three-time Tour de France winner who won the stage the first time Ventoux was included in the Tour, was somewhat unfairly considered that "harsher demon".
When France's most famous race ascended the climb for the first time in 1951 the fallout was near-catastrophic.
Swiss rider Ferdinand Kübler collapsed just short of the summit, reportedly foaming at the mouth and still pedalling as he lay on the ground.
He, somewhat incredibly, managed to remount and descend to the finish in Avignon, at which point he abandoned the Tour, never to return.
"Ferdi killed himself on the Ventoux," he told the press, by way of explanation.
That same day, French rider Jean Malléjac also collapsed and needed CPR.
While being transported to hospital by ambulance by Dr Dumas, he had to be strapped down as he raved about being drugged against his will.
Gaul too was nearly bought to a standstill on the climb. But, having paid his dues, he returned and won the 21km uphill time trial in 1955 - in a time that would not be bettered for 41 years.
The list of summit finish winners on the Giant of Provence during the Tour de France include some of the sport's greatest names including Gaul (1958), Raymond Poulidor (1965), Eddy Merckx (1970), Marco Pantani (2000) and Chris Froome (2013).
Although not in the Tour, Australia's own Cadel Evans has won on Mont Ventoux during the 2008 Paris-Nice stage race, out-sprinting Robert Gesink to the finish.
So how hard is the climb? Merckx - still the sport's GOAT despite Tadej Pogačar's recent efforts to take that crown - was, reportedly, given oxygen at the finish following his victory, saying it was "impossible".
Pantani's triumph, when "gifted" the win by Lance Armstong, holds particular interest, two quasi-tragic figures of cycling's appalling doping history going head-to-head up its most haunted climb.
Lance Armstrong suffers in the Mont Ventoux during the 14th stage of the 89th Tour de France in 2002.
Photo:
AFP / Joel Saget
Armstrong never won a Tour stage on Ventoux, punishment for the audacity he displayed in offering the win to his Italian rival that one time.
Froome has had contrasting days on its slopes. In 2013, his dominance was equal to that of some of the all-time greats, an imperious climb towards his first overall title.
But. in 2016, he was forced to run up the climb, in the yellow jersey, after a collision with a motorbike in the chaos of the crowds - surely one of the Tour's most remarkable moments.
That day the race was shortened due to the blustering Mistral winds howling across the summit - one of the other dangers in this region.
The Mistral, legends say, is the son of the Celtic god, Vintur, who was worshipped in pre-Roman times by the Albiques.
It is said he playfully blows, causing mischief, unless that trickery no longer sates him and he becomes violent, whipping pebbles up from the ground and tossing them into unassuming adventurers.
In 2021 the Tour came up Ventoux twice in a single day - an act of such boldness that surely it risked angering the cycling gods who hold sway in this impossible region.
Incredibly, Belgian puncheur Wout van Aert - who also won the sprint on the Champs-Élysées and that year's time trial - claimed victory as behind him the favourites Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard laid gloves on each other.
A puncheur winning on the climbers' biggest prize? Perhaps the gods do have a sense of humour after all.
Vingegaard had the better of Pogačar when the road went up that day, but the Slovenian managed to regain contact before the race finish and went on to claim a second successive yellow jersey in Paris.
As the peloton roars up its slopes for stage 16 on Tuesday, it will, again, be Vingegaard and Pogačar doing battle, adding their own layer of stories to this impossible mountain.
The race will all be about Mont Ventoux - there are roughly 150km of almost pan-flat roads from Montpellier to the base of the climb proper in Bédoin.
After that, the gloves will come off and the race will be on, this mythic monument ready to stamp its mark on another set of intrepid - and perhaps a little mad - riders.
-ABC