The Tour de France makes a brief but intense visit to the Pyrenees this year, starting with a long trek from Pau to Peyragudes, the Tour's second of three summit finishes on Thursday, then following that up with a short, punchy stage to Foix.
Neither stage is a traditionally formatted one for the Pyrenees, with Thursday's opening mountain stage 214 kilometres long but nonetheless avoiding such emblematic climbs like the Tourmalet, the Aubisque and Luz Ardiden.
Possibly the best known climb is the Col de Menté, the first really difficult ascent of stage 12 after a long, rolling build up over from the ultra-Tour friendly city of Pau of 139 kilometres. The Menté, which begins with a long drag up wooded climbs before a steeper summit, has been tackled a total of 18 times in the Tour. Its descent, where Luis Ocaña crashed out when leading the 1971 Tour on a sweeping left-hand bend (now complete with a plaque to Ocaña on the rockface above), is arguably better known, thanks to the Spaniard's catastrophic accident, than the climb itself.
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Next on the menu is the most testing ascent of stage 12 - and of the entire Pyrenean leg of this year's Tour. The Hors Categorie Port de Balès was last tackled in 2014, but its most famous previous appearance was arguably in 2012, on a stage that, like this year, was then completed with the combination of the first category Peyresourde and and second category Peyragudes. (This trio of climbs was also used in the 2013 Vuelta a España, too, with victory going to France's Alexandre Geniez).
Very narrow and twisting at the top with multiple changes of gradient, the 11.7 kilometre Balès is also well-known from the 2010 Tour, for the Alberto Contador attack on Andy Schleck when the Luxemberg rider had his mechanical. Its descent is more treacherous, too, than the Menté, which is better surfaced and wider than back in 1971. Fortunately, although it will be colder and cloudier than usual for this time of year, no rain is forecast - this Tour hardly needs any more big crashes.
Next up is the Peyresourde, one of the Tour's most hallowed climbs. this is a relatively straightforward nine kilometre grind, although 1959 Tour winner Federico Martin Bahamontes, once voted the Tour's greatest ever climber by L'Equipe newspaper, says it is the hardest single ascent of the Pyrenees. Either way, the second category ascent of Peyragudes which follows, has been redesigned to be much harder than when the Tour last visited it in 2012. As Chris Froome pointed out, the Peyragudes may only be 2.4 kilometres long, but the additional new final segment onto the altiport runway, with slopes of 20 percent, will be more than challenging after 200 kilometres racing.
Two days in contrast
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