{"id":16041,"date":"2025-07-22T18:20:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-22T18:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/16041\/"},"modified":"2025-07-22T18:20:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-22T18:20:10","slug":"you-cant-beat-that-165-finishing-stories-of-a-crazy-tour-de-france-ascent-of-mont-ventoux","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/16041\/","title":{"rendered":"‘You can’t beat that’ – 165 finishing stories of a ‘crazy’ Tour de France ascent of Mont Ventoux"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cNo,\u201d Geraint Thomas laughed. He will not be riding back up Mont Ventoux<\/a>. He\u2019s now ridden up the Giant of Provence five times in the Tour de France<\/a>, and five times is enough for a lifetime. \u201cI\u2019ll be down in the vineyards drinking some wine looking up at it,\u201d the Welshman continued. \u201cI don\u2019t see the point in riding up it again, not when you don\u2019t have that atmosphere.\u201d<\/p>\n

The headlines of the Tour\u2019s 19th visit to the fabled Bald Mountain <\/a>are everywhere: Valentin Paret-Peintre won the 16th stage, France\u2019s first victory<\/a> in this Tour, while just behind Jonas Vingegaard repeatedly and valiantly<\/a> tried to shake Tadej Poga\u010dar<\/a> from his wheel, but the yellow jersey predictably out-sprinted him at the top.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re the top stories, but there were 162 other finishers at the top of the Beast of Provence, each with their own individual story, and everyone crossing the line with their own grimacing pain face. For just like it\u2019s a big day out for us amateurs, it\u2019s also a big day out for the pros, and it means just as much; they, too, are cyclists who dream of cycling up these iconic climbs.<\/p>\n

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Frank van den Broek of Picnic PostNL is proof of that. \u201cIt was my second time up it,\u201d the Dutchman said. \u201cMy first time was in 2012 or 2013 when I was around 12 and I rode up it with my Dad.\u201d Even at a young age, the now-24-year-old was testing himself out on Tour ascents. \u201cBut two weeks before we went on holiday my Dad broke his ribs and punctured his lung. He brought his road bike but not his cycling clothing. So he rode up it in normal clothes, and he dragged me up it, but I have to say I had a good day back then. I think it took me one hour and 55 minutes, but I had a five minute break so it was more like two hours.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2025, as a fully-fledged pro who was second on the opening stage of last year\u2019s Tour, Van den Broek went a tad quicker. \u201cI took it quite easy and we were 20 minutes behind the winner, so I guess my time was around 80 minutes. For sure under 90 minutes and I heard that\u2019s the benchmark for cyclists.\u201d<\/p>\n

Which ascent did he enjoy the most? \u201cToday\u2019s. I wasn\u2019t a fat kid but I wasn\u2019t lean, and now I have some more power so it was more enjoyable today.\u201d What he couldn\u2019t do as a kid, though, is what he did after this interview: bomb down the other side to the bottom. \u201cMy Mum and my younger brother followed us in the car, but she got car sick so my Dad had to take over the driving and I wasn\u2019t allowed to descend on my own. Finally I\u2019ll get to enjoy the descent for the first time!\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Mont<\/p>\n

Van den Broek’s teammate Pavel Bittner delighted fans by performing a wheelie on the climb<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Unlike one of those hideous, monstrous days in the mountains with 5,000+m of climbing, for this stage the Tour had loaned the Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a\u2019s race designer and sent the peloton on a 155km flat journey before reaching the HC climb. Sighting the old weather station with its distinctive red and white pole on the horizon for almost the entirety of the stage played mind games on some.<\/p>\n

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\u201cYou see it from a distance and it\u2019s like, \u2018OK, yep, that\u2019s where I\u2019m going’,\u201d Michael Valgren of EF Education-EasyPost said. \u201cYou don\u2019t really want to go there but you have to. It\u2019s really hard in the forest and then you get to the top and it\u2019s so windy. I reckon at the front you could use the wind and sit in the wheel a bit, but for me it didn\u2019t really matter \u2013 it was just a long fight the whole way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Climbing almost 1,400m of elevation in 15.7km is certainly a long way, but the riders did so alongside tens of thousands of fans. In a race where huge crowds are the norm, it could be easy to dismiss the numbers at the side of the road, and for riders to zone out. But not on a climb like Ventoux. All the senses, all the feels, were tingling as much for the actors as for the noise-creators.<\/p>\n

A quartet of Brits all shared memories of the day they climbed Ventoux: \u201cIt doesn\u2019t get any better than that, to be honest,\u201d said Bahrain Victorious\u2019s Fred Wright. \u201cCycling is a special sport when you can have a 15km climb and there are fans the whole way up. It doesn\u2019t get much more iconic than Ventoux.\u201d Groupama-FDJ\u2019s Lewis Askey nodded in agreement. \u201cThere was no part of the climb where there weren\u2019t people on both sides of the road. It was crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ineos Grenadiers duo Connor Swift and Thomas also concurred. \u201cIt\u2019s always nice coming up an iconic climb in the Tour,\u201d the former said. \u201cThe fans on here today were crazy \u2013 literally a line of people from bottom to top. You can\u2019t beat that.\u201d \u201cThat was incredible,\u201d Thomas added. \u201cThe crowd pretty much lined the whole way for 15km and they were super loud. The atmosphere… my ears are still ringing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cNo,\u201d Geraint Thomas laughed. He will not be riding back up Mont Ventoux. He\u2019s now ridden up the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16042,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,82],"class_list":["post-16041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16041\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}