Last night stage 15 of le Tour de France finished up on l’Alpe d’Huez, fantastic racing and amazing scenery as always. I did think that with the camera cutting back and forth you just couldn’t get much of an idea of how steep that mountain really is.
From the http://www.cyclingnews.com/ special page on l’Alpe d’Huez: Unofficially, the top twelve times are as follows:
- Marco Pantani (1995) 36’ 50
- Marco Pantani (1997) 36’ 55
- Marco Pantani (1994) 37’ 15
- Lance Armstrong (2004) 37’ 36
- Jan Ullrich (1997) 37’ 40
- Lance Armstrong (2001) 38’ 05
- Miguel Indurain (1995) 38’ 10
- Alex Zülle (1995) 38’ 10
- Bjarne Riis (1995) 38’ 15
- Richard Virenque (1997) 38’ 20
- Iban Mayo (2003) 39’ 06
- Giuseppe Guerini (1999) 41’ 52
… and from , the very non-competitive time:
- Adrian Tritschler (2001) 74'
OK, OK, so there’s probably a lot of other times between numbers 12 and 13! Oh, and I hadn’t ridden 150km at a race pace before hand, nor was I two weeks into a three week race, and I stopped at the main square in l’Alpe!
