So far there have been 29 winners on Alpe d’Huez in the Tour de France, and another name will be added to the list on Friday. But far fewer among that number – just three in fact since the Alpe was first tackled in 1952 – can say that when they reached the top of the climb’s 21 curves, they were also en route to victory in the race overall.
“If you ask me how much it means to win on Alpe d’Huez, there’s an easy way to explain that,” says Carlos Sastre, who claimed the outright victory in Paris just 48 hours after he had conquered the climb in the 2008 Tour. Having retired in 2011, Sastre still feels the power of that accomplishment.
“It means that 18 years later, I’m still getting calls from journalists like you, asking me about it. That tells you how much it matters. And I’m still getting emotional talking to you about it, too.”
For Sastre, victory on Alpe d’Huez arguably marked the high point of his professional career. After dropping the field at the foot of the climb and then riding the whole ascent alone, he also had enough of an advantage at the summit over favourite Cadel Evans to defend his lead in the Tour’s closing time trial. But as Sastre also says, the memory of the victory on Alpe d’Huez, more than two minutes ahead of fellow Spaniard Samuel Sanchez, was in itself indelible.
“It’s famous for being a really tough climb, and rightly so. Any really spectacular high mountain achievement in cycling needs a spectacular ascent to happen, and Alpe d’Huez certainly fits the bill,” Sastre says.
“And this year obviously it depends on how they tackle it, but on a short, punchy stage like Friday’s, for sure they’ll go flat out to the foot of the climb. There’ll be those who are going for the breakaway, and others who want some GC success, so that kind of distance does help the action.
“But what makes it so hard, no matter what happens before, is that Alpe d’Huez has a very similar kind of gradient all the way up, which means that there are no breaks in the steepness at all.
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“On top of that, you reach the climb after a very flat run-in, and then suddenly it kicks up to 13%, 14%. It’s very unforgiving, and it really benefits the out-and-out climbers because the gradient doesn’t change.
“They can use that constant steepness both to accelerate hard, and then to open up a gap as well, on any of the non-specialists. It’s like Alpe d’Huez was made for mountain climbers to have a real chance.”
Sastre first tackled Alpe d’Huez in the 2001 Tour, and he has ridden up it around 15 times in total, he says. He’s been up it both in training when the climb is completely deserted, and in the 2004 Tour, when what is believed to be the biggest number of fans ever on the ascent, estimated at around 1.5 million people, lined the route.
“There’s a really fantastic atmosphere, that’s for sure, but I wouldn’t say it was so different to the Tour in general. These days things are much more widely followed than they used to be, even on the quietest stage.
“Of course there are a few idiots who want to get on telly by causing crashes, but the vast majority on the climb are people who just enjoy cycling, who get really emotional when they see the riders go past, and I vividly remember how special it was, too, back in 2004, when we had the mountain time trial there. It’s something magical.”
As for the best tactics to get up the climb, Sastre says it depends too much on each rider, and their goals on the day, to give a general rule, but in his own case in 2008 en route to yellow, “I just went for it, right from the bottom. I knew it was my best chance to win outright and I took it.
“I knew I had to get as much time on [key rival] Cadel Evans as possible because there was the time trial afterwards, so I went for it as soon as I could.
“I didn’t use my power meter. I could see the number of kilometres left on my bike computer, but I didn’t pay any attention to either. I just based it all on energy, experience and my level of motivation to try and win the stage. And to try and win the Tour.”
The hardest part, Sastre says, was right at the start, when he attacked but was shadowed by multiple Grand Tour winner Denis Menchov. That was not ideal for either him or the team, but fortunately Menchov made some kind of movement or gesture that Sastre knew was a sign the Russian’s energy was ebbing, so he attacked him again.
“And that was it. The first four kilometres were very difficult because the guys behind were only 15 seconds further back for quite a while. But finally my effort began to pay off and [team director Bjarne] Riis came up in the team car, and he said, ‘Carlitos, you’ve got them at 30 seconds now’.
“Then it went up to a minute, then it was even more, and that was when I said to myself – heck, I’m on my way now. That’s when being an out-and-out climber turned into a real advantage, and by the summit, I had two minutes on them all.”
It’s often commented that riders will tick off the 21 hairpins as a way of motivating themselves on Alpe d’Huez, but Sastre said that he was not doing that at all.
“I wasn’t there to count curves, and I wasn’t there to count the number of fans on the side of the road, either,” Sastre said. “I was just focused 100% on my effort.
“A coach friend of mine had said to me in English before the stage – ‘Today you are going to fight like a lion and fly like an eagle’ – and that’s all I was thinking about, to tell you the truth.
“I kept that in mind, and I was suffering. But there comes a point when your suffering fuses with your performance. You know it hurts, but at the same time you know you’re getting more and more time on the riders behind. And that is something that feels like magic.
“But that’s how it has got to be. Every morning of my life as soon as I’ve got up, it’s been tough going, and some people might say they’ve felt great on the bike, but I’ve suffered even when I’ve won. So that feeling you get” – gaining time on the rivals on a climb – “that’s a real privilege.”
As for what Alpe d’Huez means to him now, Sastre first points to the fact that journalists like Cyclingnews are still calling him 18 years on, but then he goes a whole lot deeper on those feelings.
“To me it’s everything, I’m still getting emotional talking to you about it. You remember it all your life.
“Alpe d’Huez is one of those epic, emblematic climbs that only a few of us have had the chance to be able to win there. In my case, not just that, but also take the yellow jersey and take it all the way to Paris.
“So for me, Alpe d’Huez is the place where I’ve lived through some magical moments. It’s my magic mountain.”
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