The director of the Tour of France, Christian Prudhomme, confirmed it as soon as Peter Sagan, with the candidates to unse of July 14, National Festival of France, which had to end at the top of Mont Ventoux, will end at the Vereci villa, six kilometers below.
The forecast of fortune winds of more than 120 kilometers per hour in its final stretch, that of the lunar landscape without vegetation, has made the organization give up. For the first time in history, the Tour of France will not go up to the Military Observatory that crowns the Giant of Provence, a buttress of the alpine foothills exposed to the violence of the Mistral by the four cardinal points. "A pity," laments Nairo Quintana, who longed to conquer Mount Pelado and invest the favorable psychological trend to Froome.
Now, the duel will not be able to go from the villa Reynard, where the forest ends, just over 1,400 meters high, where a scarce vagua curve the ventoux, opening it to the wind and extreme temperatures, refusing plant life and creating a Calvary with legend of cursed champions.
The last time the Tour reached
VentouxIn 2013, Froome won and consolidated his yellow jersey. Exultant, the two -time champion said it was the best victory of his career, privileging the shocking stage and his history of great winners: Jean Robic, Louison Bobet, Charly Gaul, Raymond Poulidor, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Thévenet ...
65 years have passed from the first climb of 1951, but every time Tom Simpson's ghost, world champion in Lasarte two years before his death in the terrible final stretch.
Every year that the Tour or Dauphiné program Mont Ventoux, the chronicles return on that scorch July 13, 1967, when the British champion took the exit with a stomach infection and, according to witnesses, he threw a good drink of Brandy that was accompanying of amphetamines during the stage, until it falls like a peelle to the asphalt, victim of a galloping dehydration.
Chronicles that tell, the greatest glory of the black legend, how he asked the team auxiliaries to place him again on the bicycle and how Tom, already more dead than alive, zigzagueó on the road a few hundred meters like an automaton until he fell Definitely under an inclement sun about two kilometers from the top, where moments had previously won Julio Jiménez, the watchmaker of Ávila.
Mont Ventoux has never been able to abstract the stigma of that fateful 1967, although in its history there is much more. The fans still have fresh the image of Lance Armstrong and Marco Pantani chopped on their ramps, in that ascension of the 2000 tour, the day the North American let the Italian win and then proclaimed his concession to the four winds.
The Pirate mounted in anger, to the point of replicating with a chain of attacks that were his particular song of the sports swan: he won overwhelming Beille's Plateau and then wanted to overthrow the American one blow, playing the tour in the Alps with a Attack on more than 150 kilometers from Morzine's goal and four ports in between, including the terrible Joux Plaine -also the race in 2016-.
Pantani did not go well and left the road, victim of gastroenteritis, but Armstrong spent so many forces in the persecution that, after losing units of his team, his yellow jersey staggered in the Joux Plaine victim of a dehydration before the thrust of Virenque and Ullrich.
The revenge of the pirate for the affront of Ventoux about to be decisive, but beyond that, the photo of the two champions entering the finish line with the antenna of the Ventoux Observatory behind, since then occupies a privileged place in the gallery of Images of the history of the Tour de France.
And then there is a name: they were May. Yurre's Biscayan, the prince of Arratia for the Basque fans, surprised the world in the Dauphiné Liberé of 2004 with which today is the fastest ascent in history to Mont Ventoux: May won in the 21 kilometers of chrono -scarce with 55 : 51 minutes for Bedain's slope, and surpassed Armstrong in almost two minutes, precisely the day the North American made a general trial with the new material that he would use later in the chrono -scarce to Alpe d'Huez, the day indicated for Let your sixth tour of France topped.
The May 11 flight that June 11 not only earned him the absolute triumph in the Dauphiné, but sown of doubts to Armstrong, complicated the forecasts about his new victory in Paris and marked a milestone in the giant of Provence, which he saw May save the 1,600 meters of unevenness between Bedoin and Mont Ventoux as if its orbea were a motorcycle.
During the hard part, the Basque generated 394 watts of power for three quarters of an hour, 6.7 watios per kilo, and was even able to take Narong nine seconds in the most bearable ascent that Bedoin leads to the toughest part of the toughest part of the toughest part of the toughest part of the Ventoux, which while the forest lasts atosiga to more than 10% for almost nine kilometers, which precedes the 'rest' to 5% that follows the villa Reynard, the door that leads to the lunar landscape and the cycling hell.
Too much for Armstrong, despite going up to his revolutionary
Trek Equipped with bontrager wheels of $ 1,000 each, of just over 400 grams, carbon tire, titanium axes, 14 titanium radios, more 19 millimeter cotton tubular, as described that afternoon Carlos Arribas in ‘El País’.
The technological arsenal did not prevent him from giving time gradually, until he ended up at the top of 1:57 minutes from the orbea that Mayo led to more than 23 kilometers per hour of average. Tremendous.
No one has been able to approach that. That day, Tyler Hamilton, then condemned by doping, was second to 35 seconds; And Óscar Sevilla, also section, was third at 1:03 minutes.
Those times, more that of Armstrong and the 57:39 that another Spanish marked, Juan Miguel Mercado, are among the ten best of all time in Mont Ventoux, of course, subject to all kinds of questions because it was happening later.
Under the heat that squeezed 33 degrees from that afternoon, Mayo sentenced his victory in the Dauphiné and the Ventoux issued that Armstrong embedded his greatest partial defeat in his cycle of seven victorious seven years.
Years later, the EPO crossed on the road to May in 2007 and Armstrong ended up admitting that it was the product of the greatest collective doping gear in the history of sport. And today, the effect of time and the fall in disgrace of both corridors deleting from the collective memory that shocking result signed by runners who still lead the historical table of Mont Ventoux times.
An almost proscribed list, hardly sustainable if the subsequent events chronicle is handled. A fact: the 2013 Chris Froome, engaged almost from the foot of Ventoux in a persecution of Nairo Quintana, marked 59 exact minutes after being able to leave the Colombian behind in the last kilometer.
And what that day was an exhibition, actually remained 3:09 minutes from what they did May, the day the Basque, be as it may, dominated the insatiable Armstrong and humanized the top of the terrible Provencano giant, the Hell where the Mistral has come to blow at 320 kilometers per hour and that has made the Tour seek refuge in the Vereci villa, before the fear of adding cyclists fired by the wind to the black legend of Mount Pelado.
Now, the duel will not be able to go from the villa Reynard, where the forest ends, just over 1,400 meters high, where a scarce vagua curve the ventoux, opening it to the wind and extreme temperatures, refusing plant life and creating a Calvary with legend of cursed champions.
The last time the Tour reached VentouxIn 2013, Froome won and consolidated his yellow jersey. Exultant, the two -time champion said it was the best victory of his career, privileging the shocking stage and his history of great winners: Jean Robic, Louison Bobet, Charly Gaul, Raymond Poulidor, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Thévenet ...
65 years have passed from the first climb of 1951, but every time Tom Simpson's ghost, world champion in Lasarte two years before his death in the terrible final stretch.
Every year that the Tour or Dauphiné program Mont Ventoux, the chronicles return on that scorch July 13, 1967, when the British champion took the exit with a stomach infection and, according to witnesses, he threw a good drink of Brandy that was accompanying of amphetamines during the stage, until it falls like a peelle to the asphalt, victim of a galloping dehydration.
Chronicles that tell, the greatest glory of the black legend, how he asked the team auxiliaries to place him again on the bicycle and how Tom, already more dead than alive, zigzagueó on the road a few hundred meters like an automaton until he fell Definitely under an inclement sun about two kilometers from the top, where moments had previously won Julio Jiménez, the watchmaker of Ávila.
Mont Ventoux has never been able to abstract the stigma of that fateful 1967, although in its history there is much more. The fans still have fresh the image of Lance Armstrong and Marco Pantani chopped on their ramps, in that ascension of the 2000 tour, the day the North American let the Italian win and then proclaimed his concession to the four winds.
The Pirate mounted in anger, to the point of replicating with a chain of attacks that were his particular song of the sports swan: he won overwhelming Beille's Plateau and then wanted to overthrow the American one blow, playing the tour in the Alps with a Attack on more than 150 kilometers from Morzine's goal and four ports in between, including the terrible Joux Plaine -also the race in 2016-.
Pantani did not go well and left the road, victim of gastroenteritis, but Armstrong spent so many forces in the persecution that, after losing units of his team, his yellow jersey staggered in the Joux Plaine victim of a dehydration before the thrust of Virenque and Ullrich.
The revenge of the pirate for the affront of Ventoux about to be decisive, but beyond that, the photo of the two champions entering the finish line with the antenna of the Ventoux Observatory behind, since then occupies a privileged place in the gallery of Images of the history of the Tour de France.
And then there is a name: they were May. Yurre's Biscayan, the prince of Arratia for the Basque fans, surprised the world in the Dauphiné Liberé of 2004 with which today is the fastest ascent in history to Mont Ventoux: May won in the 21 kilometers of chrono -scarce with 55 : 51 minutes for Bedain's slope, and surpassed Armstrong in almost two minutes, precisely the day the North American made a general trial with the new material that he would use later in the chrono -scarce to Alpe d'Huez, the day indicated for Let your sixth tour of France topped.
The May 11 flight that June 11 not only earned him the absolute triumph in the Dauphiné, but sown of doubts to Armstrong, complicated the forecasts about his new victory in Paris and marked a milestone in the giant of Provence, which he saw May save the 1,600 meters of unevenness between Bedoin and Mont Ventoux as if its orbea were a motorcycle.
During the hard part, the Basque generated 394 watts of power for three quarters of an hour, 6.7 watios per kilo, and was even able to take Narong nine seconds in the most bearable ascent that Bedoin leads to the toughest part of the toughest part of the toughest part of the toughest part of the Ventoux, which while the forest lasts atosiga to more than 10% for almost nine kilometers, which precedes the 'rest' to 5% that follows the villa Reynard, the door that leads to the lunar landscape and the cycling hell.
Too much for Armstrong, despite going up to his revolutionary Trek Equipped with bontrager wheels of $ 1,000 each, of just over 400 grams, carbon tire, titanium axes, 14 titanium radios, more 19 millimeter cotton tubular, as described that afternoon Carlos Arribas in ‘El País’.
The technological arsenal did not prevent him from giving time gradually, until he ended up at the top of 1:57 minutes from the orbea that Mayo led to more than 23 kilometers per hour of average. Tremendous.
No one has been able to approach that. That day, Tyler Hamilton, then condemned by doping, was second to 35 seconds; And Óscar Sevilla, also section, was third at 1:03 minutes.
Those times, more that of Armstrong and the 57:39 that another Spanish marked, Juan Miguel Mercado, are among the ten best of all time in Mont Ventoux, of course, subject to all kinds of questions because it was happening later.
Under the heat that squeezed 33 degrees from that afternoon, Mayo sentenced his victory in the Dauphiné and the Ventoux issued that Armstrong embedded his greatest partial defeat in his cycle of seven victorious seven years.
Years later, the EPO crossed on the road to May in 2007 and Armstrong ended up admitting that it was the product of the greatest collective doping gear in the history of sport. And today, the effect of time and the fall in disgrace of both corridors deleting from the collective memory that shocking result signed by runners who still lead the historical table of Mont Ventoux times.
An almost proscribed list, hardly sustainable if the subsequent events chronicle is handled. A fact: the 2013 Chris Froome, engaged almost from the foot of Ventoux in a persecution of Nairo Quintana, marked 59 exact minutes after being able to leave the Colombian behind in the last kilometer.
And what that day was an exhibition, actually remained 3:09 minutes from what they did May, the day the Basque, be as it may, dominated the insatiable Armstrong and humanized the top of the terrible Provencano giant, the Hell where the Mistral has come to blow at 320 kilometers per hour and that has made the Tour seek refuge in the Vereci villa, before the fear of adding cyclists fired by the wind to the black legend of Mount Pelado.
