If you watch just one stage of this year’s Tour de France it should be Saturday’s penultimate stage. It finishes with the legendary climb up Alpe d'Huez. The 2015 race organisers have kept the best for last and after 4 gruelling days in the Alps the peloton will finally come to one cycling’s greatest arenas.
Dubbed the ‘Hollywood Hill’ Alpe d'Huez was first included in the Tour de France in the 1952. It became an instant legend as it coincided with the arrival of the first motorcycle television crews.
It is a 13.8 kilometre trek with an average gradient of 8.2%. That means for every 12 metres you move forward, you will have climbed a metre. The ascent starts in the Romanche valley at an altitude 744m and rises through 21 hairpin bends to 1,815m. That is twice the height of Ireland’s highest peak Carrauntoohill. On average 300 amateur cyclists take on the challenge every day.
Regarded as the Glastonbury Festival of cycling, Alpe d'Huez attracts huge crowds that can only be described as chaotic. In 1999, Giuseppe Guerini won despite being knocked off his bike by a fan trying to take a picture. GAA fans have also got in on the action with ‘Mayo for Sam’ among the messages written on the road in 2013.
The French journalist Jean-Paul Vespini has written a book on legendary climb, called 'The Tour Is Won on the Alpe.' This year it is last chance for cyclists to claim the yellow jersey before the run into Paris, so it is sure to be the scene of a dramatic conclusion.
