The Pyrenees

The Pyrenees were the first mountains included in the Tour de France, beginning in 1910, and have provided defining moments in Tour history ever since.  For the first several years, riders mostly pushed their bikes over the mountains for reasons suggested in this 1923 photo.  The 1910 route included the famous “Circle of Death,” (Col de Peyresourde, Col d'Aspin, Col du Tourmalet and the Col d'Aubisque), as well as the famous scream, “Assassins!” hurled at Tour organizers by Octave Lapize, the eventual winner, as he climbed Tourmalet.

The Circle of Death is on our itinerary, except we’ll do it in 2 days, making it Semi-Circles of Death.  You can bet we’ll be yelling “Assassins!” to our tour guides whenever we get the urge.  Of course, paved roads and 16 lb. bikes mean our experience will be like Lapize’s only in imagination--although a few of us might still be pushing our bikes to the top of the mountain.

Another classic tale of the Pyrenees occurred in 1913 when Eugene Christophe's steel forks broke while descending Tourmalet and leading the Tour by 18 minutes.  Following the rules of the time, he carried his bike down some number of kilometers until he found a forge in the hamlet Sainte-Marie-de-Campan and, still following the rules of the time, welded the forks himself.  He lost an estimated 4 hours, and eventually reached Paris in 7th place overall.  Later, it came to light that the blacksmith's son had aided Christophe by operating the bellows that allowed him to weld the forks and Christophe, in violation of the "no other help" rule, was disqualified altogether!  

And then, of course, there's our American hero,  Lance, who burned his legend into these mountains with a couple well-known exploits.  The first was his win at La Mongie (a ski town 4.5 km from the summit of Tourmalet) in 2002, which catapulted him into the lead and toward his fourth Tour win.  He set a ferocious pace up the mountain that day, a pace none of his rivals could hold.  The better known, though, is his stage win at Luz Ardiden in 2003 when he was taken down by a spectator’s purse on the finishing climb.  He remounted his bike and rode furiously up Ardiden until he caught back on Jan Ulrich’s wheel, then won the stage at the summit finish. The spectator’s purse was later found to contain PEDs (JK, JK!)  


In all, Col du Tourmalet has appeared in Le Tour 77 times since 1910, most of any mountain.  It also is often the highest elevation of the Tour, at 2,115 m (6,940 ft).  This is the history that surrounds us as we look out our hotel window.