Today’s stage of the Tour de France includes one of the most iconic climbs in the race – the Col du Tourmalet. It was first used in the 1910 race, and has featured in the race over seventy times since.

Below is the remarkable story of the reconnaissance trip made in 1910 to determine if the Tourmalet was safe to use in the Tour. This is an extract from The Shattered Peloton by Graham Healy.


 

The 1910 Tour was the first time that the race would venture into the high mountains. A number of months prior to the start, Desgrange had dispatched his assistant at L’Auto, Alphonse Steines, on a reconnaissance trip to the Pyrenees. Steines had been involved in drawing up the course since its inception in 1903, and it had been his suggestion to include some of the Pyrenean climbs in the race, which Desgrange had initially considered to be sheer lunacy, but eventually warmed to the idea.

Steines arrived at an inn near to the Col du Tourmalet at the end of January, and asked the owner for directions. The innkeeper told him that it was difficult enough to cross in July, let alone in winter. Steines decided to persevere and hired a car to travel over the pass. However, he had to come to a halt near to the top due to heavy snow, as the sun was setting. He pressed on regardless by foot in snow that was four metres deep, and at one stage fell into a ravine. Steines was now in trouble. “I was lost and alone in the darkness. I didn’t want to die on a hostile, unknown mountain at an altitude of 2,255 metres.”

Luckily for Steines however, search parties were sent up the mountain to look for him and he was found disheveled at 3am. He was helped down the mountain where the locals gave him food and helped to warm him up. Despite his remarkable adventure and near-death experience the night before, the following morning, Steines sent the famous telegram to Desgrange in Paris, which read: ‘Crossed Tourmalet. Very Good Road. Perfectly Passable. Signed Steines’. This was the green light for the race to enter the high mountains for the first time.

It’s difficult to understand why Steines would have sent that message to Desgrange given his experiences of the night before, but perhaps it was the fear of telling his paymaster that his idea of routing the race through the mountains was an unworkable idea and that his journey had been a waste of time and money. Regardless of the reason, the entry into the mountains that year would make the Tour an even more epic race than it was already. Shortly afterwards, Desgrange announced in L’Auto that the race would traverse the climbs of the Col d’Aspin, the Col de Peyresourde, the Col d’Aubisque and the Col du Tourmalet. Both the organisers and government authorities provided funds for the Pyrenean roads to be paved in the month leading up to the race to make them a little more roadworthy than they had been for Steines.

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