21 Cycling Climbs Part Two - Flipbook - Page 32
Col du Tourmalet
Stage 10 of the 1910 edition of the Tour de
France took on the Tourmalet. The first high
mountain pass to be included.
It’s been going up it ever since, sometimes
twice, it is the most visited of all the mountain
passes the Tour visits.
This has much to do with its location right in
the middle of the Pyrenees. In fact, it’s quite
difficult not to go up the Tourmalet, as there
isn’t any way around it.
The team that had formed around Henri
Desgrange at the newspaper L’Auto in
the formative years of the Tour de France
included the journalist Alphonse Steinés.
Steinés knew that the continued success of
the tour required ever more tales of bravery,
super-human efforts and death-defying
deeds in the face of overwhelming odds.
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