But Thierry Gouvenou, the Tour’s sports director with a specific responsibility for route design, says that the absence of the Ventoux from the Dauphiné (now known as the Critérium du Dauphiné) is a question of candidacy. ‘The Ventoux region hasn’t put itself forward as a candidate for a Dauphiné stage for a few years now,’ he explained. ‘It’s not that we’re against having it in the Dauphiné . . .’
And taking the Tour up the mountain from Malaucène?
‘I don’t think we can go up that side,’ Gouvenou says. ‘It’s not really possible coming up that way; there’s nowhere for the zone technique.
‘And anyway,’ he says, agreeing with Prudhomme, ‘the climb from Bédoin is the mythical side.’
But the man for many years responsible for the sea of finish-line logistics that outweigh almost every other concern suggests that the north side is also too dangerous for the modern Tour. Jean-Louis Pages, until late 2016 the Tour’s director of sites, knows his car parking and traffic calming. He knows every mini roundabout, every plant pot and every sleeping policeman – or ralentisseur – from Paris to Poitiers, Marseille to Montmartre.
For many years, he owned the finish lines, shepherding, pushing and sometimes hurling the media – particularly photographers – out of the way if they disobeyed. He knows how many cars can be parked in every suburban Palais des Expositions or Salle des Fêtes, how wide each finish-line boulevard needs to be, the turning circle of each team bus and the proximity of the nearest hospital, airport and police station.
Pages argues that the Ventoux’s north side is not as good, or as safe, for spectator viewing – ‘there’s not as much room at the side of the road on the way up,’ he says.
‘Yes, I know it’s still spectacular – the views of Mont Blanc and the Alps are incredible – but when you get further up, especially near the top, the road’s on the edge of a ravine.’
He’s got a point, but then a lack of fans didn’t stop the Tour from climbing the single-track-width Lacets de Montvernier in 2015. And, I say pointedly, when Thévenet won in 1972, climbing up from Malaucène, did anyone fall over the edge? Emboldened, I suggest my grand plan for the 50th anniversary of Tom Simpson’s death: that the race climbs to the summit from Malaucène, then descends to Sault, before looping over the Col Notre Dame des Abeilles and climbing back up from Bédoin to a summit finish.
‘Et voilà,’ I say, ‘that’s an epic and mythical stage, surely?’
Jean-Louis throws his head back and laughs. ‘You think so? Well, then you can tell the riders. You can tell Mark Cavendish!’
In June, July and August, Lycra-clad and slick with sunscreen, cyclists descend on the Vaucluse and teem over the mountain’s three ascents like demented ants, refusing to be daunted by the challenge of the ‘killer mountain’. Of the three routes up – to the north from Malaucène, the east from Sault and the ‘Simpson route’ or ‘race side’ – it is the Simpson side that draws the crowds and Bédoin that has become the base camp. Afterwards, dehydrated, drained and burnt by the sun, the riders come down from the mountain and lounge listlessly in the pizzerias, bars and cafés of the three villages, struggling to recover, gasping like beached fish in the warm evening air.
Bédoin has become the focal point for Ventoux obsessives. Here, a seasonal industry, spanning March to October, has sprung up of kit, bikes and memorabilia. The most long-standing bike shop is the hangar-like Routes du Ventoux, just as you exit the top of the village and head away from Bédoin, towards an avenue of plane trees, leading to the foot of the mountain. There are pictures of past visitors, Sean Kelly, Johan Museeuw and Chris Froome, pinned on the wall behind the counter.
A few metres away, in the old fire station on the other side of the boulodrome, former professional and L’Équipe journalist Jean-Michel Guerinel runs the Ventoux cycling museum, the Expo Cycles Bedoin. His fast-growing collection includes Tour-winning bikes dating back over a century, and Ventoux stage-winning bikes, original and rare racing jerseys, numerous racing caps – or casquettes – and an extensive library.
Most of the museum’s exhibits belong to local collector, Lino Lazzerini, from nearby Cavaillon. Lazzerini’s collection is the fruit of a lifelong fascination and brims with the energy and eccentric enthusiasm of the obsessive. As Lazzerini’s Cavaillon man-cave started overflowing with cycling artefacts, Guerinel stepped in with the ideal solution – the old sapeurs-pompiers garage at the bottom of the Ventoux.
The museum, initially a short-term pop-up for the summer of 2015, has become a fixture on the tourist itinerary. ‘We get a lot of foreigners coming here,’ Jean-Michel tells me as he shows me around. ‘The Ventoux fascinates them. It’s legendary, probably because it’s the only climb where a rider has died riding uphill.’
But the collection doesn’t dwell on the Simpson story. ‘We have bikes from Tour winners, four of whom won on the Ventoux. Louison Bobet’s from 1955, Raymond Poulidor’s in 1965, Merckx from 1970, and Thévenet’s from 1972.’
There is further memorabilia too, and rider postcards and team calendars from the pre-digital age, characterised by the cheesiest portraits imaginable, cover the walls. Here, gathered under one roof, are some of the worst examples of team launch photo shoots ever to see the light of day. Some of the old woollen trade jerseys stand out too, as much for their heavyweight characteristics as for the vintage fonts and retro logos painstakingly stitched in.
Guerinel continues to source further additions to Lazzerini’s collection. ‘We’re hoping to get Marco Pantani’s bike from 2000,’ he says, ‘Chris Froome’s from 2013, and Virenque’s from 2002.’ The bike he covets, more than any other, is Charly Gaul’s from the 1958 Tour’s time trial to the summit of Ventoux. ‘It may be a little difficult to get our hands on it.’
There are younger and female Ventoux-philes too. Belgian cyclist Betty Kals is the latest of a crop of extreme Ventourists and holder of the women’s record for the most Ventoux ascents in 24 hours. Although she only started cycling in 2010, Betty’s obsession quickly took hold. Now, she says, she knows the Ventoux ‘by heart’.
Betty admits that until she started riding she was known as a party girl. ‘I was always partying, I smoked, hung out with all my friends. But then I wanted to stop – overnight. So I took up cycling. I had an old mountain bike, which I took in to be fixed and the mechanic lent me a road bike. I rode 300 kilometres that week – on my own. After that, I was addicted.
‘When I arrived in France I climbed all three routes up the Ventoux. I was really attracted to it, as if I wanted to tame it. One day I began thinking about doing it ten times and of beating the record for the number of successive climbs from Bédoin. It’s a bit of a crazy idea, but my record for the eight climbs also became a women’s record for vertical distance in 24 hours.’
Betty, used only to the short sharp hills of the Belgian Ardennes, was thrown a curve ball the day before her 2015 Ventoux record bid. ‘I only knew the day before that I had to do both the climbs and the descents by bike. I’d planned to come back down in the car. I was supposed to do nine climbs by bike and nine descents in the car.’
Descending by car would have afforded Betty valuable recovery time, to rest, nap and eat. Now she had no choice but to ride down Ventoux, in the dark, whatever the conditions. ‘The rules were only made clear to me the day before, so I was rushed. I decided to go for the record for vertical distance covered in 24 hours by bike.’
She left the start line, just in front of the Routes du Ventoux shop, at five in the morning on 14 May 2015, needing to surpass 11,000 metres of climbing in 24 hours. At first the conditions suited her. It was warm and sunny throughout the day, but as night fell on the mountain, the weather changed. ‘I’d done seven climbs and that took me to 11,200 metres so I’d already broken the record, but even though I felt OK, I stopped the eighth climb at Chalet Reynard, because a huge storm had come in.’ By that point she’d ridden 331 kilometres in 24 hours, and climbed 12,336 metres.
Talking ab
out her ride a year later, Betty has no great sense of achievement. ‘Mont Ventoux seems to me to be relatively easy,’ she says. ‘I can’t really explain this. For people who’ve never climbed it, it can definitely be very difficult. For me, it just seems normal. I like the last two kilometres before the summit because I get an adrenaline rush. Maybe because it means the pain is over, and I like getting up there quickly. It’s the adrenaline that pushes me to the top.’
Betty’s status, as the Ventoux’s Queen of Pain, is rivalled perhaps by the members of the Cingles du Ventoux, a growing but select club formed of those who’ve completed all three climbs to the summit – from Sault, Malaucene and Bédoin – in one day. Obviously 50 per cent of the total distance of 135 kilometres is descending, which doesn’t sound so bad, until you look at achieving an altitude gain of 4,300 metres in just 67 kilometres. According to fitness, this can be as little as a seven-hour day, or almost double that, and involve riding from dawn to dusk.
There is a fourth climb, too, which begins in Bédoin but diverts to the little known track of the Route des Cèdres, to be found on the left of the road, about three kilometres above St Estève. This is a route forestière, winding across the southern slopes to meet the climb from Malaucène, just above Mont Serein, at approximately 1,500 metres in altitude. The track is closed to traffic and in parts is potholed, rocky and fractured. If you complete all three climbs and still have the energy for the Route des Cèdres, you can become a Galerien, having ridden 187 kilometres and climbed 6,052 metres.
Alastair Campbell’s obsession with the Ventoux dates back half a lifetime, to his days working as a journalist in Fleet Street. Since then, the mountain has become a fixture in the rhythm of his life. ‘Fiona and I have been going down there for 30 years now, every summer since the kids were born,’ he says of his annual family visits to the Vaucluse. ‘At first, I viewed the mountain as a piece of striking scenery. I was a latecomer to cycling and only really got into it when I took up triathlon in 2005.’
But it’s also been a refuge during the difficult times. ‘When I had a breakdown in the 1980s, I went there for the rest and recuperation I’d been told I needed. It has been an important part of our lives. I like the climate, the scenery, the people.’
Now, with an entrenched love of cycling, as well as a friendship with both Chris Froome and Dave Brailsford, Campbell, a man who lives life intensely, has joined the growing band of Ventoux obsessives. ‘I tried to climb up by moonlight once, but had a massive asthma attack a few miles up. Fiona seemed to sense that it was a crazy idea and drove up to find me gasping at the roadside.’
Ever competitive, he has taken to racing his son Rory to the summit. ‘He is a much faster cyclist but we have developed a handicap system. He gave me a minute’s start for every year older and every kilo heavier. So I set off 57 minutes earlier and was well over halfway by the time he left – I was convinced I was going to win. But he caught me on the last but one bend and had barely broken sweat.’
Campbell’s relationship with Tony Blair was cemented in a holiday home in Flassan village, hidden in the rolling landscape stretching south of the Ventoux. This is the Comtat Venaissin, now a land of milk and honey, of holiday homes and character hotels, of heady wines and runny cheeses, fertile figs and fecund fruits, where the water sways lazily in the pool at sunset and a haze of barbecue smoke thickens the twilight.
The region flourished under the Romans – the architectural vestiges of these five centuries can be found in Carpentras, Orange and Vaison-la-Romaine and across the Rhône valley in St Rémy-de-Provence – and by the 14th century, had become the seat of Pope Clement, who divided his time between Malaucène, Carpentras and Avignon. The Popes enjoyed the wines, cheeses and figs just as much as the Romans had before them and Comtat Venaissin remained a Papal state until a bloody dispute during the French Revolution.
High above the Comtat, the Ventoux’s summit stands sentinel, and awaits the next day’s obsessives. By night, the mountain is quiet, except perhaps for some wide-eyed, spliffed-up students, shivering in their sleeping bags as they wait to welcome the sunrise over the Italian Alps.
But under darkness, even unseen, the Ventoux dominates the landscape, presiding over it. There are no lights on the deserted mountain. Only a winking red beacon, above the summit, on top of the observatory – a warning to low-flying aircraft to steer clear – gives away its presence.
Bédoin is where Tom Simpson slugged his last apocryphal gulp of cognac in July 1967. On any morning in high summer, the Lycra tribes from across Europe congregate here, before they make their pilgrimage to the deadly slopes.
They pedal under the plane trees, past the pavement cafés and bakeries, estate agents and gift shops, some stopping for a caffeine hit at the café-restaurant du Mont Ventoux, others purposefully speeding through, big-ringing their way past, before turning right towards the mountain.
Some, like Betty Kals, are sleek, Froome-thin climbers, with an elegant pedal stroke, who you know will find a regular cadence as they climb through St Estève, the Virage du Bois and on past Chalet Reynard towards the summit. Others, some on borrowed bikes and in borrowed kit, egged on by their mates, look less well suited to the demands of the Ventoux. These are the ones Caritoux spoke of, the ones you fear for. These are the ones who buy the sugary treats. These are my people.
A few ignore the mountain, pedalling towards the winding Col de la Madeleine, which meanders lazily over the Ventoux’s foothills and leads north to Malaucène and then beyond, into the deserted Drôme. Others bypass the start of the climb and take the rolling road over to Flassan, dropping down towards Villes-sur-Auzon before heading into the grand and spectacular Gorges de la Nesque.
There are numerous sportives or challenges on, close to and around the Ventoux. There have been time-trial challenges up the Gorges de la Nesque, combined with full-blown sportives the following day. Then, of course there is the Étape du Tour, the Tour organisation’s own mass participation ride following the parcours of a selected Tour stage each July, although that too has had a chequered history on the Ventoux.
Maybe it’s the connection to the dramas of the Tour de France, but the extreme conditions of the Ventoux have, as they always seem to, played a big part. In July 2000, the Étape to the summit of the Ventoux, which included Greg LeMond and Alain Prost in the field, was effectively abandoned after numerous riders suffered hypothermia, due to near-freezing temperatures in the final kilometres of the climb.
A couple of days later, in the Tour stage itself, Lance Armstrong and Marco Pantani raced frenetically through buffeting crosswinds to their infamous denouement at the summit of the Giant. The Mistral was so strong that day that the Tour organisers curtailed their usual post-race presentation and associated showboating, which may have been just as well given the bitter atmosphere between the two riders.
The 2009 Étape du Tour, from Montelimar to the summit, was variously described as carnage, chaos and catastrophic. Heatstroke, a lack of water at feed stations and the relentless route saw many riders suffering from exhaustion as they tackled the mountain, with some walking, others vomiting at the roadside and others in a state of collapse. That may have also been partly down to the nature of the Étape, which attracts its fair share of have-a-go weekend warriors, Mamils and corporate teams, some better prepared than others. Certainly, anyone who may have thought it was a bit like tackling an upmarket London to Brighton but in the south of France endured a baptism of fire.
There are plenty of other sportives in the Vaucluse, some more intimate and less prone to the ‘lifting your bike above your head at the summit and posting it on Instagram and the company intranet page’ mindset of the average Étape-iste.
There’s a succinct report on the Velo101 website – a useful source for all fans of French regional cycling news – of the GFNY world series randonnée on the Ventoux in July 2015. The event was one of a series of sportives around the world, with legs in Spain, Italy, Brazil, Mexico and New York. Ridd
en in a canicule – a heatwave – entry to the GFNY Ventoux cost 75 euros. For that, the riders got a jersey, a bottle of local red and, handily, a lavender sachet.
Weaving its way through the foothills north of Ventoux, the route took in the Col de la Péronière, the Col des Aires, the Col de Macuègne, the Col de l’Homme Mort, and then the Gorges de la Nesque before arriving at the foot of the mountain. As in July 2009, the Ventoux was, according to Velo101, a furnace that day, provoking numerous withdrawals due to heat exhaustion. Greater disappointment for some came at the afterparty in Vaison-la-Romaine. The post-race meal, daube de boeuf à la provençale, was ‘really not seasonal’, says the report a little huffily, before stating that it would have been better to adapt the buffet to the ‘climatic conditions’.
But then I’ve come down from the summit of Ventoux in high summer, dazed by heatstroke, sapped by exhaustion, burnt by the sun. And on those baking afternoons, not even the most expertly adapted buffet would have accelerated my recovery from the ravages of the Giant.
Carpe Diem
It’s hard to remember exactly where we were on the Ventoux when my mum’s ageing Mini Metro decided it had suffered enough. I do know, however, that it wasn’t on the way up the bastard, in the airless and claustrophobic woods that shroud the mountain’s lower slopes. Instead, my mum’s car confronted mechanical mortality on the way down.
Back then, in the mid-1980s, Mont Ventoux was road cycling’s Everest, unattainable, tainted by a half-remembered tragedy, a backwater of the Tour’s past and relatively little known to non-Francophiles. I first read about it in long-gone French magazine Miroir du Cyclisme, sometimes available in a specialist newsagent’s in Old Compton Street, in the heart of Soho, and only then after painstakingly translating a flowery and overwritten description of the mountain’s torrid past.
Riders – bamboozled by the gradients, the sunlight, the fierce winds and swirling mists, the intense and relentless heat – lose their minds up there, the feature claimed, voyeuristically. Look at this, the picture captions read, here’s Ferdi Kübler zigzagging at walking pace and, also in 1955, Jean Malléjac, lying like a drunk at the side of the road, and see over there – there’s Simpson, in ’67, spreadeagled on the rocks, breathing his last.
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