In the pantheon of the Tour de France’s most storied climbs, Sunday’s stage finish at Le Puy de Dôme stands apart for one reason: for 35 years it looked set to remain lost permanently in the mists of Tour history, the climb that would never be repeated.
It became a staple question when interviewing the Tour de France director, Christian Prudhomme: would the race return to the extinct volcano in the Massif Central? Prudhomme would always give a version of the same answer. When he had begun work at the Tour owners, ASO, in 2004, taking the race back to the Puy had been top of the to-do list on his computer, and it would happen when local politics permitted.
Compared with other ascents tackled by the Tour, the Puy de Dôme is not the longest, the highest nor the steepest. It tops out at a relatively modest (for the Tour) 1,415m and the toughest, final section lasts a mere 4km, with a stiffest gradient of about 14%. But the first winner on the summit, Fausto Coppi, said it was “harder than Mont Ventoux” and the man who took the Tour up there for the first time in 1952, Jacques Goddet, described it as “literally a backbreaker”.
What sets the Puy apart is the unremitting nature of the gradient, averaging 12% after the barrier at the foot of the climb with 4.2km to the top, unbroken by a single hairpin as the road spirals round the extinct volcano “like a helter‑skelter in reverse”, according to Geoffrey Nicholson.
Prudhomme, after confirming the climb would return this year, said: “This is what is unique. It’s not just the steepness but the fact the road turns in the same direction. That doesn’t happen anywhere else, it’s what has made this climb mythical.”
Like Ventoux, the almost perfectly conical Pûy can be seen looming threateningly from many miles away, but unlike the Giant of Provence it is covered in lush vegetation and more significantly it is a dead-end road. The Tour was drawn here, Nicholson wrote, because it was a climb of great severity, with a city (Clermont-Ferrand) nearby and a toll gate at its foot. In contrast to every other ascent on the Tour, spectators could be charged for entry.
As ever with the Tour’s great ascents, it’s not just about the toughness, but the history. The climb’s significance is summed up in one image: the two great rivals of the 1960s, Jacques Anquetil and Raymond Poulidor, shoulder to shoulder near the top of the ascent on 12 July 1964, the crowning moment of French bike racing’s defining rivalry.
The memories have now faded, but Poulidor’s enduring popularity could still be seen half a century later at the Tour when he turned up each day to milk the applause; Sunday’s stage starts at his home town of Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat in tribute to him. The duel on the slopes of the mountain that day, in front of a crowd well into six figures, saw Anquetil pushed to the limit before he finally cracked. Poulidor gained enough time to hope for the overall win but, in keeping with a career where hope was usually trumped by reality, not quite enough to take the yellow jersey.
The list of winners on the Pûy includes such illustrious names as Felice Gimondi, Federico Bahamontes, Luis Ocaña and Lucien Van Impe, but it has also created one glorious anticlimax: the finish in 1969, when Eddy Merckx was preceded to the top by the lanterne rouge Pierre Matignon, who took full advantage of a long-distance break. Something similar happened in 1988 when the Danish journeyman Johnny Weltz was the winner.
Merckx has bitter memories of the place, as in 1975 he was punched in the kidneys by one of the crowd 200m from the finish. Merckx crossed the line and rode back to identify his attacker, Nello Breton, whom he took to court for a symbolic one franc in damages.
Since Weltz’s win, a combination of factors have kept the Tour from the mountain. Initially, it was because the Tour caravan had grown to the extent that there was no space at the top of the one-way road to accommodate the many pantechnicons. Under Prudhomme the Tour has learned to adapt to ever-tighter finishes, but then local politics came into play.
The regional president was keen for the top of the extinct volcano to be defined as a Unesco reserve, which meant keeping the Tour out, while the construction of a narrow-gauge railway up the road to the top meant there would be barely enough space for the riders, let alone spectators. Barriers were put up at the start of the steepest section, where even leisure cycling is banned. The top of the climb will be closed to the fans, who will be encouraged to watch the race on the lower slopes where the route climbs out of Clermont-Ferrand.
Fans or no fans, the Tour is back, and 59 years after Anquetil and Poulidor, the 2023 Tour’s first eight days have been marked by another one-on-one duel: Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard, who have torn chunks out of each other in the Basque Country, on the Col du Marie Blanque, and the Cauterets climb.
Round four between the Slovenian and the Dane is set for the slopes of a mountain that has at various times been sacred to the Gauls, the Romans – who built a temple of Mercury on the summit – and the Christians, and which is now about to regain its iconic status in cycling at last.
