In the past, it used to be said that whoever led the Tour de France at L’Alpe d’Huez would win overall. In recent years, something similar could be stated of the Alsatian climb to La Planche des Belles Filles, nicknamed “Le Petit Alpe d’Huez” by cyclists who struggle up there each year in the Trois Ballons sportive, and climbed by the Tour at the finish of Wednesday’s fifth stage.
The Tour has visited “the Plank” twice, in 2012 and 2014, and the rider in the yellow jersey that day – Sir Bradley Wiggins and Vincenzo Nibali – has gone on to take the Tour. As well as providing a springboard for Wiggins’s win, the finish also ended in a moment that is significant with hindsight: Chris Froome’s first stage victory in the Tour.
This year, as in those two other Tours, it will be the first occasion when the race favourites have to unveil their A-game. “It’s going to be the first GC [general classification] battle, the first real test for us GC guys to see where we are at,” said Froome. In the inevitable French jargon, it is le premier juge de paix.
The time gaps opened up on its slopes are usually measured in seconds, but the sheer toughness of the Plank, its steepness and the lack of any respite, means that it offers a condensed verdict on the strength of each contender for the overall standings.
The climb goes to a relatively low altitude, just over 1,000m, and is not long, at 5.9km. It is, however, longer than it once was. Before the Tour’s first visit in 2012, there was controversy when the work to accommodate the race included an extension of the road up the climb to include a final kilometre at a gradient of 20%, prompting protests from environmentalists who felt that the normal development rules had been waived in favour of the Tour.
It is this final push to a single building on a large car park in the middle of upland meadows that makes the climb so difficult, coming as it does after an opening phase that must feel like hitting the side of a house, with an initial gradient of about one in six.
What is different this year is what precedes the climb. Five years ago, it was tackled after two third-category ascents, and, as this year, it came relatively early, seven stages into the race. In 2014, it was preceded by six ascents including three first-category climbs, with the final one – the short, steep, hair-pinned Col des Chevrères – coming in the final 30km. That was termed the toughest medium-mountain stage in Tour history by the organisers and it came after two days heavy-duty climbing in the mountains of eastern France.
On the day, heavy rain and thick fog turned the stage into a slog, marked mainly by the severe crash by Alberto Contador that put the double Tour-winner out of the race. Froome, it should be noted, did not make it to the Vosges, having fallen off and broken his wrist on the stage over the cobbles a couple of days earlier.
This year, the run-in is relatively straightforward, with only one third-category ascent that is unlikely to split the field to any extent. There is a strong chance that a substantial group will hit the foot of the climb together and burst asunder like a wave hitting a cliff face.
Before the final run-in eastwards to the start of the climb at Plancher-les-Mines, the race goes within a couple of kilometres of Mélisey, home town of Thibaut Pinot, whose father is mayor there. Pinot will, therefore, be the “regional” of the stage, with all the pressure that entails. In reality, however, the heat will be on all the contenders, who know that they need to show their hands here.
Nowhere near as long as L’Alpe d’Huez, nowhere near as spectacular as Mont Ventoux or the Galibier, the Plank will never have the legendary status of those ascents or the Puy de Dôme, the extinct volcano in the Massif Central that hosted the French equivalent of the Stanley Matthews Cup final, the Anquetil-Poulidor duel of 1964.
The Plank’s relative brevity and its steepness does not make for a drawn-out mano a mano of that kind, but its geographical location suggests something else. Given the penchant of the organiser, Christian Prudhomme, for hilltop finishes on the final Saturday, there has to be a good chance that the near future will see the Tour climb the Plank for a final showdown before the last transfer to Paris.
