Squint hard and you can just make out the memorial stone and perhaps the summit shop.It looks a way off, but long, sweeping ramps draw you quickly closer to the foot of a series of hairpins, on whose bleached and brittle grades you scale the final escarpment of the Izoard’s southern face.This year the Tour de France will honour the Col d’Izoard with a summit finish for the first time.
I climbed the Col d''Izoard in 1975 and 1983 while riding around Europe for 6 and 7 month tours — with 100 lb bicycles. One of the mythic rides of the Tour de France, the Col de l’Izoard is going to be one of the greatest moments of the 2017 Tour edition..
Il s'agit du Col D'IZOARD ! It begins in the small town of Guillestre, all ramshackle pastel frontages and mountain shadows.Here, if you’re short on supplies of any kind, it’s wise to fill your pockets — we wouldn’t recommend betting on the capricious business hours of the few establishments that exist on the Izoard itself.Following the D902 north-east away from town, the dry, scrubby landscape soon gives way to an impressive and imposing gorge.
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Avec ses passages à plus de 11 % par endroits, ce col mythique, entré dans l'histoire de la Grande Boucle et d'autres courses – c'est également le rendez-vous de compétitions comme le Critérium du Dans ce décor apocalyptique, les coureurs se retrouvent seuls face à la montagne.
Le pied officiel du col est situé au kilomètre 119 de l'étape et son ascension est longue de 14,1 kilomètres à 7,36 % de moyenne.« L'Izoard sera une nouvelle fois le juge de paix du Tour de Interminable et terrifiant, le géant Izoard a notamment bâti sa renommée avec la Casse déserte, à deux kilomètres du sommet, montée uniquement par le versant sud. La route du col D902 est fermée à la circulation dès les premières neige (fin octobre). Il paraît que le Tour se gagne sur les pentes de Briançon avant de se célébrer à Niché entre le pic de Rochebrune (3 308 mètres) et le celui de Côte Belle (2 854 mètres), le col de l'Izoard est l'une des portes d'entrée du parc naturel du Queyras, couloir vers le Briançonnais et transition entre les Alpes du Nord et celles du Sud. Au fil des années, d'autres grands noms du cyclisme sur route ont fait de ces pentes abruptes un lieu hors du commun. In 2017, 103 Tours and 34 ascents of the Izoard later, the col will finally host a Tour de France stage finish at its summit.Philippe Thys, the first man to win over the Izoard (Getty Images)On a day that echoes Thys’s exploits all those years ago, stage 18 will start in Briançon before taking on a sprawling 180km loop to the south which ultimately returns north over the Col de Vars (another Thys first) before tackling the fabled south side of the Izoard.That there has never before been a summit finish here in all this time is almost hard to believe, for there aren’t many giants of the Tour that have missed out on this honour.But as the years pass and the Tour becomes less bike race, more small town on spoked wheels, it becomes ever more difficult to plant that small town on a barren rock in the sky and call it an Arrivée.The logistical hardships of such a feat were neatly illustrated when we were there recently and, having rasped our way over the crest, posed in glassy eyed relief at the summit memorial stone and staggered into the dim shop at the top and tried to pay by card for refreshments, we were told “Pas d’électricité [no electricity]” in a the sort of terse manner that suggested we weren’t the first ones to have been disappointed by this information.The Tour last visited the Izoard in 2014 from the north side on the way to Risoul (Sunada)The presence of strip lights on the ceiling (turned off) and a small cycling museum next door (closed) suggested this was probably a temporary state of affairs, but nevertheless, Tour de France boss Christian Prudhomme and the gang must have spent no small amount of time coming up with a reliable alternative to a 500-socket extension lead run out of the shop utility cupboard.The day Thys made that first climb of the Izoard the stage began, incredibly, on the Riviera in Nice, representing a 274km sea-to-mountains epic.Henri Desgrange, Tour de France founder and notoriously hard taskmaster, probably thought he was giving his charges a rather easy time of it at least in terms of distance; he’d already subjected them to four 400km-plus stages that year, including a brutal 482km outing from Les Sables d’Olonne to Bayonne which dispatched half the length of the country in one go.Of the Izoard itself, the pitiless Desgrange had mused: “The task at hand is so difficult that our riders won’t think of battling any more until the end of the race.”Some of the most famous Coppi-Bartali battles played out on the Alp (Getty Images)That Nice-Briançon route became a 1920s staple, while in the 1948 and ’49 Tours, with the Coppi-Bartali rivalry in full swing, the pair took it in turns to lead the race over the Izoard having set out from Cannes, also on the coast. It would be the last time the peloton was treated to a medicinal lungful of sea air before taking on the Izoard.The following year in 1950, Louison Bobet, darling of the mountain, entered into the fray.
Le coureur belge Phillippe Thys est le tout premier champion à en avoir franchi le sommet en tête (1922).
Pas DE l'Izoard.