The Tour de France, the queen event of world cycling, has had to modify one of its most iconic stages due to extreme weather conditions. The director of the carrera, Christian Prudhomme, confirmed it after the victory of Peter Sagan, when the main contenders were still assimilating the strategic blow from Chris Froome at the finish in Montpellier.
Finally, the much-anticipated stage on July 14th, coinciding with the French National Day, will not end at the summit of Mont Ventoux as planned. Instead, the finish will be moved forward to Chalet Reynard, six kilometers before the summit. The reason behind this decision is the forecast of strong winds of more than 120 km/h, which would make the final ascent through the vegetation-free lunar stretch extremely dangerous.
This decision has been a blow for cyclists like Nairo Quintana, who aspired to conquer the Bald Mountain and change the psychological momentum in favor of Froome in the fight for the title. The Mont Ventoux, one of the most mythical climbs of the Tour, is a benchmark in the world of road cycling bikes, where every year thousands of cyclists try to take on its elevation gain and legendary difficulty.
Although the cancellation of the summit finish at the Giant of Provence affects the riders' plans, it remains a demanding section for any cyclist, whether on high-competition road bikes or in individual cyclotourism challenges. And although the Tour de France focuses on asphalt, the epic nature of its mountain passes inspires many lovers of mountain bikes, who seek demanding routes and challenging elevation gains in their discipline.
Despite the modification, the stage will remain decisive in the battle for the yellow jersey, keeping the excitement in one of the most anticipated events on the cycling calendar.
Mont Ventoux: a legendary climb in road cycling
Now, the duel can't go beyond the Chalet Reynard, where the forest ends, at just over 1,400 meters high, a place where a hollow curve strips the Ventoux bare, exposing it to the wind and extreme temperatures, denying it plant life and creating a calvary with the legend of cursed champions. The last time the Tour reached Ventoux, in 2013, Froome won and consolidated his yellow jersey. Exultant, the two-time champion said it was the best victory of his carrera, highlighting the stunning setting and its history of great winners: Jean Robic, Louison Bobet, Charly Gaul, Raymond Poulidor, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Thévenet… 65 years have passed since the first climb in 1951, but every time they return, the ghost of Tom Simpson, world champion in Lasarte two years before his death on the terrible final stretch, hovers overhead. 
Every year that the Tour or the Dauphiné schedule Mont Ventoux, the stories resurface about that scorching July 13, 1967, when the British champion started the stage with a stomach infection and, according to witnesses, took a good swig of brandy that he washed down with amphetamines during the stage, until he collapsed like a rag doll on the asphalt, victim of galloping dehydration. Stories that tell, to further the legend, how he asked the team assistants to put him back on the bike and how Tom, more dead than alive, zigzagged along the road for a few hundred meters like an automaton until he finally fell for good under a relentless sun about two kilometers from the summit, where moments before Julio Jiménez, the Watchmaker of Ávila, had won. Mont Ventoux has never been able to escape the stigma of that fateful 1967, although its history holds much more. Fans still have fresh in their minds the image of Lance Armstrong and Marco Pantani battling on its slopes, in that 2000 Tour ascent, the day the American let the Italian win and then bragged about his concession to the four winds. 
A port with history: from the myth of Tom Simpson to the battle between Armstrong and Pantani
The Pirate flew into a rage, to the point of responding with a series of attacks that were his own sporting swan song: he won by dominating at Plateau de Beille and then tried to overthrow the American in one blow, gambling the Tour in the Alps with an attack more than 150 kilometers from the finish in Morzine and four mountain passes in between, including the terrible Joux Plaine—also the judge of the carrera in 2016. Pantani's bold move did not work out and he abandoned along the way, a victim of gastroenteritis, but Armstrong spent so much energy in the chase that, after losing members of his team, his yellow jersey wavered on the Joux Plaine, a victim of dehydration under the pressure from Virenque and Ullrich. The Pirate's revenge for the Ventoux affront almost proved decisive, but beyond that, the photo of the two champions crossing the finish line with the Ventoux observatory antenna behind them has since held a privileged place in the gallery of images in the history of the Tour de France. 
Iban Mayo and the fastest ascent to Mont Ventoux
And then there is a name: Iban Mayo. The Biscayan from Yurre, the Prince of Arratia for the Basque fans, surprised the world at the 2004 Dauphiné Libéré with what is still today the fastest ascent in history to Mont Ventoux: Mayo won the 21-kilometer mountain time trial with 55:51 minutes via the Bedoin side, beating Armstrong by almost two minutes, precisely on the day the American was doing a dress rehearsal with the new equipment he would later use in the Alpe d’Huez time trial, the day marked to seal his sixth Tour de France. Mayo's flight that June 11 not only earned him the overall victory in the Dauphiné, but also sowed doubts in Armstrong, complicated the predictions for his new victory in Paris, and marked a milestone on the Giant of Provence, which saw Mayo overcome the 1,600 meters of elevation gain between Bedoin and Mont Ventoux as if his Orbea were a motorcycle. During the hardest part, the Basque generated 394 watts of power for three quarters of an hour, 6.7 watts per kilo, and was even able to gain nine seconds on Armstrong in the more manageable ascent from Bedoin to the hardest part of Ventoux, the one that while the forest lasts crushes at more than 10% for almost nine kilometers, the one that precedes the 'rest' at 5% after Chalet Reynard, the gateway to the lunar landscape and the cyclist's hell. 
Mont Ventoux and its impact on road and mountain cycling
Too much for Armstrong, despite riding his revolutionary Trek
equipped with $1,000 Bontrager wheels each, weighing just over 400 grams, carbon rims, titanium axles, 14 titanium spokes, plus 19-millimeter cotton tubular tires, as described that afternoon by Carlos Arribas in ‘El País’. The technological arsenal did not prevent him from gradually losing time, until he finished at the summit 1:57 minutes behind the Orbea that Mayo led at over 23 kilometers per hour on average. Tremendous. No one has come close to that. That day, Tyler Hamilton, later convicted of doping, was second 35 seconds behind Mayo; and Óscar Sevilla, also sidelined, was third at 1:03 minutes. Those times, plus Armstrong's and the 57:39 clocked by another Spaniard, Juan Miguel Mercado, are among the ten best ever at Mont Ventoux, of course, subject to all kinds of questions given what happened afterwards. Under the sweltering 33-degree heat of that afternoon, Mayo sealed his victory in the Dauphiné and Ventoux dictated that Armstrong suffered his greatest partial defeat in his cycle of seven victorious years.
Mont Ventoux, an eternal icon of cycling
Years later, EPO crossed Mayo's path in 2007 and Armstrong ended up admitting he was the product of the biggest collective doping operation in sports history. And today, the effect of time and the fall from grace of both riders are gradually erasing from collective memory that shocking result achieved by riders who still top the historical time table at Mont Ventoux. An almost outlawed list, hardly sustainable if one considers the subsequent chronicle of events. A fact: Chris Froome in 2013, engaged almost from the foot of the Ventoux in a chase after Nairo Quintana, clocked exactly 59 minutes after managing to leave the Colombian behind in the final kilometer. And what was an exhibition that day, in reality was still 3:09 minutes slower than what Iban Mayo did, the day the Basque, one way or another, tamed the insatiable Armstrong and humanized the summit of the terrible Provençal Giant, the hell where the Mistral has blown up to 320 kilometers per hour and has made the Tour seek refuge in the Chalet Reynard, for fear of adding cyclists blown away by the wind to the black legend of the Bald Mountain.