A myth needs storytellers. Alpe-d’Huez (Isère) is not lacking in it, even after four years without a visit from the Tour de France, which returns there, this Thursday July 14, for its 12e stage. Its winners tell the most electric, noisy and wild of alpine climbs with their words and their references. “L’Alpe” is the meeting between passion and unreason, whistling eardrums, hundreds of friendly pats that will make your back blush and the fear of never being able to break through the crowd.
In 1995, Marco Pantani said he had climbed the 21 bends of the Isère resort “blindly, in the middle of a sea of people which opened before [lui] ». Pierre Rolland defends the same idea, but with a more hexagonal reference than Moses spreading the waters of the Red Sea. “The first time, you have the impression of being Johnny who arrives by surprise at his concert at the Parc des Princes in the middle of his audience”visualizes the rider of the B & B Hotels-KTM, unforgettable winner at the top during the 19e stage, in 2011.
“It’s mythical, because it’s ‘Alpe'”, summarizes Thibaut Pinot. Seven years after raising his arms there, his skin still bristles. The Groupama-FDJ climber takes his interlocutor on a bike “with this first kilometer, in the middle of the rocks, very hard”a bit higher, “the just crazy atmosphere in the bend of the Dutch”and the arrival in the station, “easier, but where you have to get back into gear”.
Since it established itself as the mythical climb of the Tour in the 1970s, Alpe-d’Huez has held “Glastonbury of cycling fans”. This formula of the British journalist Tim Moore gives a good image of popular madness. As in the most famous English rock festival, you set up your tent there and the beer evaporates very quickly. “It’s a bit like riding in the middle of a fairground where everyone is drunk”summed up, one day, the former British cyclist David Millar.
“I can’t imagine a Tour without Alpe-d’Huez”
But, on July 19, 2018, the party turns into a bad farce. Christian Prudhomme piques his anger at the end of the 12e stage, after the fall and abandonment of Vincenzo Nibali, blinded by a cloud of smoke. “ I was not happy with their use, they have nothing to do on a bike raceentrust to World the director of the Tour. It’s a lack of respect for the runners, who no longer see anything and can no longer breathe. Nibali hit a barrier for this reason. »
Even the mayor of the town, Jean-Yves Noyrey, acknowledged, at the microphone of France Bleu Isère, that this step “went badly”. “There was a big, big pressure at the level of the gendarmerie to pay attention to everythingcontinues the chosen one. You can be completely safe, but more discreet. The climb must remain pleasant, jovial. »
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