Mountains According to G
In an extract from his new book of favourite climbs, Geraint Thomas profiles Alpe d’Huez, where he won during the 2018 Tour de France
So you know all about Alpe d’Huez. Everyone does. It’s an icon, a target, a dream. It’s a t-shirt, a poster, a tattoo. You’ve followed the battles and counted the hairpins and maybe even been among the street-corner parties that watch it all go by.
But you don’t really know Alpe d’Huez, not until you’ve ridden it, not until you’ve ridden it in the Tour.
Alpe d’Huez is all those things, but it’s also a drag queen. During the day, when there’s no one around and all is calm, it’s a straight-laced businessman. It’s neat and organised and clean. When the night comes, when the punters are in and the bar’s packed and everyone’s watching – then it’s showtime. Out comes the flamboyance and the colour, the noise and the madness, the drama and the adventures you can never forget.
All climbs are different on a training ride rather than in a race. That’s what you come to expect, as a pro rider. Training is silence, except for your breathing, and maybe the occasional topic of conversation with your teammate. Racing is giving it all meaning. Racing is hitting a switch and lighting the whole place up.
But there are transformations and then there is the Alpe when the Tour comes calling. I’ve ridden up it in the Dauphiné, a big stage race in its own right, a big race with big names who have lofty ambitions. I was in the green jersey. There were plenty of spectators. It was fine. It was lively.
And then I’ve done it in the Tour, wearing the yellow jersey, and suddenly, you can’t see the road. It’s all faces and flags and chaos. It’s Moses parting the Red Sea, right in front of your face. It’s pedalling into a thick cloud of orange smoke and sucking half of it down into your lungs. It’s noise in your ear so loud it’s distorting, as if you’re standing next to the biggest speaker in a heaving nightclub.
The training ride is walking into the same nightclub at midday on a Saturday. It’s empty and quiet. The Dauphiné is strolling across the dancefloor at 7pm that evening, when the early birds are standing around with vodka-tonics. The Tour? It’s 2am and the main DJ’s on and everyone is wasted, and you can’t tell if that bloke coming your way wants to punch you or tell you he loves you.
Because Alpe d’Huez is so famous, such a regular visitor, you can forget what it’s really like. Familiarity breeds confusion. In my head, I’ve sometimes dismissed it as all hairpins and glamour. This is a mistake, because it’s hard, and it is hard from the start. The run-in is almost boring, flying
along a long, straight valley road with the wind in your sails. But it’s tense, the anticipation of what is to come building with every pedal stroke. You try to take on any final solid foods, or just a few extra gels. You’ll need it.
The peloton is one long line. Nobody wants to expend any more energy than necessary until the final kilometre before the climbs. Then the rush – you flick past a couple of roundabouts in Bourg-d’Oisans, and you hit it: just under fourteen kilometres at an average of just over 8%, but those first two kilometres all above 10%, and all that follows a slog – a long, relentless slog. It tails off a little at the end, but even then, it kicks up again. Alpe d’Huez never lets you go, not truly.
And so that unparalleled support makes the climb easier. It brings its dangers; you know any one of those thousands of people could have a devastating effect on the race, as that wandering fan did when he brought down Vincenzo Nibali in 2018. But that feeling of being at the front, leading the charge through the parting sea of fans, of them being so close you can smell them, let alone see or hear them – it’s amazing to experience. It draws your attention away from what your legs and lungs are screaming at you. On your recon ride you always know precisely where you are and how long you’ve got left to suffer. Oh God, it’s only hairpin number eighteen. Oh no, look at my data, I’m hurting and I’m not even putting out 400 watts.
Climbing is not pleasant, not really. It can be satisfying, but it’s rarely fun. But Alpe d’Huez can genuinely be enjoyable, partly because of the atmosphere on that day, partly for all that has come before. As a kid, it was the Alpe that I imagined myself to be racing when I was inching up Caerphilly Mountain. It was the Alpe where the drama happened on the TV coverage of the Tour: Giuseppe Guerini leading the field up there in 1999, getting knocked off by a fan trying to take a photo, remounting and somehow going away again to win. It’s Lance Armstrong and his look to Jan Ullrich, even
“As a kid, it was the Alpe that I imagined myself to be racing when I was inching up Caerphilly Mountain. It was the Alpe where the drama happened on the TV coverage of the Tour”
if we now look at both of them in a different way. There is only one road up it and you don’t do it by accident.
In short: if you only ride one climb in this book, make it Alpe d’Huez. If you only ride two climbs in the world, ride Alpe d’Huez and Mont Ventoux. But this is better than Ventoux. It has the hairpins, it has the party corners. It has more happening on the way up; it has a town at the top. It’s not just a beautiful bleak mountain with slopes like a lunar crater.
It’s a lovely road surface, smooth, flawless, as fast as a 10% climb can be. That makes sense; it’s the family dinner service that only comes out for the most special of occasions. It’s polished and buffed and lovingly cared for. It’s incredible if you’re Dutch, because the fans pretty much push you up, and if you’re French and full of the natural panache, you’ll get the same. But there’s Irish corner and there’s Welsh corner now, too, on hairpin number thirteen, and if you’re a Cardiff boy riding up the mountain you always obsessed over, and you look up and there’s a huge banner of you in national kit winning Commonwealth gold in 2014, and a load of your compatriots dancing about with dragons painted on their faces and lagers in their hands, there’s no other climb in the world where you’d rather be.
But it’s cruel. You can lead all day and halfway up the climb and be chewed up and spat out as if you never even featured. When your advantage starts going on Alpe d’Huez it drains away at a spectacular pace. Even if you’re caught a few kilometres from the finish, you can still end up losing minutes if the front group keep racing. Any weakness you have, any doubts swirling around you – all are exposed on this mountain.
The beauty of the landscape? The Alpine meadows and the wild flowers in the grass? You notice none of this. Just the thin path of tarmac opening up in front of you.
It’s not normal tarmac colour though. It’s covered in blues, oranges and reds. Graffiti from adoring fans. Rider and team names written across the road, not that you can read any of it. If you’re on the front of your group, the fans don’t part in time for you to see that far ahead. If you’re on someone’s wheel, again, no chance. The further down the mountain you are, the more time you’ll have to see it, but by then all the tyres from the riders, cars and motorbikes ahead have turned the road into a colourful, messy collage.
You watch Alpe d’Huez on TV and it’s all picturesque shots from the helicopter and snowy peaks and vistas down the valley. You race it and they may as well be another country. Only coming back down in the team bus later that day or the next morning do you get a chance to see other mountains in the distance, the camping
“You watch Alpe d’Huez on television and it’s all picturesque shots from the helicopter and snowy peaks and vistas down the valley. You race it and they may as well be another country”
stoves and barbecues, the way the road snakes back on itself, chasing its own tail up the green mountainside.
And it might sound strange, but you get an even deeper appreciation for the steepness of the climb, when going down in the bus. Maybe deep in the race mentality you don’t let yourself believe how steep it is. Or it’s the fact that you’re sat on a vehicle that’s too big for these curves, rocking from side to side, higher up off the ground than you’re used to, hurtling down the mountain with big dropoffs all around you. Did I just ride up that?
On that baking day in 2018 [the year Geraint won on Alpe d’Huez and the Tour de France overall], I felt confident I could hold the wheel in front, whether it was Nibali or Dumoulin, and just follow. If I had to jump across to the next man up the road, I could. But holding a fraction back can be harder than going all in. You ride at 100% and it’s all you can do. You throw everything on the fire and just blaze. Ride at 95% and there’s none of the mad freedom. It’s almost as much pain but no longer for a finite time.
It’s slowly twisting the knife in your guts rather than plunging it in. You save some power for the brain. As we approached the final few kilometres that day, there was a brief, strange truce. Four of us – Froome, Bardet, Dumoulin and me – were in a line across the road, all looking at each other, all cat and mouse, all waiting for someone else to twitch first. The strangest sensation, going from 500 watts down to 200, the most prestigious stage in the world’s biggest race suddenly transformed into a Sunday club ride.
I hadn’t had a dig yet. I didn’t have to. All the way up the mountain I hadn’t thought any further ahead than the next corner. Now we were on the open section, it hit me. I’m in this. I can see the finish. I’ve got the legs to do it.
And then I got on the right wheel, with Mikel Landa having caught us and hit the front, and I got the line right around the final corner and kept my speed and then kicked like we used to kick in our team-pursuit training on the track. Back then
I was gritting my teeth giving my all just to hold the wheel of Ed Clancy; now I was kicking and gritting my teeth to win on the greatest mountain of them all. No one around me and the finish line flashing past under my wheels. You don’t forget those moments. You don’t forget those feelings.
“My first experience of mountains, in Mallorca as a junior, was a shock to the system – completely different to anything I'd ridden in Wales. My only experience up until then was watching the big days of the Tour de France, with the huge crowds parting as the riders go through them. Since day one, I'd dreamed of doing it myself.
“The first mountain stage of any tour is always apprehensive: confident in how you're going, but unsure about everyone else. You should know, having raced with the same guys all year, but there's still that uncertainty. But I'm still excited that it's the first big day and will settle into a rhythm once the nerves at the start have gone.
“Are there any climbs I've never been able to crack? Yes, a lot of them! I've never had a good day on Mont Ventoux, but I haven't raced it in recent years. It's long, steep and exposed, and often hot. I've got better at dealing with heat over the years, but I'll always be from Cardiff and still prefer 25 degrees to 35. I like the idea of going back to the mountains with a bunch of mates once I've retired and doing it for fun, though I'm not sure how much I'd enjoy going half the speed that I used to. But I like the sound of all the other stuff that goes with it – the beers, and eating all of the cheese fondue and food of the Alps that we never get to sample now. I'd definitely go back to Alpe d'Huez, though. Maybe when I'm 50, I'll get a group of mates together and have a good holiday. ”