The January 2017 edition of Procycling is a very special issue. Chris Froome, the three-time winner of the Tour de France, has taken over the editorial chair for a month and put together a magazine which takes us inside his world. Procycling is available online in a digital edition and in all good news agents. Click the links for the digital edition or print edition subscriptions.
1. Col de la Madone: Length, 12.8km/average grade 7%
Like Monte Serra in Tuscany, Italy, and the Coll de Rates near Calpe, Spain, the Col de la Madone belongs to a subset of climbs whose cachet owes entirely to professional racers, but not to professional racing.
Tony Rominger of Switzerland, the four-time major tour winner, frequently referenced the Madone as his training climb of choice in the mid-90s. Those were the days long before Strava, Instagram, and Twitter, when whispers of top riders' exploits on the Madone or Monte Serra offered tantalising insights into their abilities and current form - and also the remote and exotic playgrounds where these were honed. For the most part they were roads that most fans would never ride or indeed ever see in photographs.
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More than with Rominger, the Madone would eventually become synonymous with his controversial coach, Michele Ferrari, and with Ferrari's best-known protegé, Lance Armstrong. Armstrong moved to Cap Ferrat, between Nice and Monaco, in January 1998, ready to embark on his comeback from testicular cancer. On his first timed ascent of the Madone that spring, Armstrong clocked 36 minutes. Just over a year later, in the run-up to the 1999 Tour de France, he flew up the Madone in 30 minutes, 47 seconds. The rest - the seven Tour wins and their subsequent annulment for Armstrong's doping conviction - is heavily airbrushed history.
One of Armstrong's few lasting, undoctored, unashamed legacies in pro racing today is the Trek frame named after the Madone and ridden by the Wisconsin-based firm's eponymous WorldTour team. Armstrong has also bequeathed his complicated connection with the climb and, indirectly, anyone who rides it.
The dark shadows that Ferrari and Armstrong have cast across the Madone are not lost on Chris Froome. He acknowledged them thus in his autobiography, The Climb: "The Col de la Madone de Gorbio is a fallen woman. Her name is tainted by the sins of a former lover…The Col de la Madone had poor luck. That's the only way you can explain it when a mountain falls in with a bad crowd."
2. Col de Turini: Length 15km/Average Gradient 7.2%
3. Col Saint Roch: Length 25.1km/Average Gradient 3.4%
4. Monte Zoncolan: Length 10.1km/Average Gradient 11.9%
5. Planche des Belles Filles: Length 5.9km/Average Gradient 8.5%
6. Mont Ventoux: Length 21.5km/Average Gradient 7.2%
7. Munro Drive: Length 0.9km/Average Gradient 5%
8. Peña Cabarga: Length 6km/Average Gradient 9.4%
9. Mirador de Masca: Length 4.2km/Average Gradient 10.3%
10. Mirador de Chirche: Length 3.5km/Average Gradient 11.6%
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
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