A big day for Tour de France
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Mont Ventoux.
The Ventoux is a place where stuff happens on the Tour, very little of it good, beginning with Jean Malléjac’s near-death in 1955 and continuing with Tom Simpson’s dramatic demise in 1967. That event, which I investigated in my 2002 biography of Simpson, Put Me Back on My Bike, remains the mountain’s defining moment, lending a note of pilgrimage to every ascent to the desolate waste of wind- and frost-blasted limestone scree on its pointed summit. The generation that raced with Simpson has largely passed on – the death in April of Barry Hoban being a case in point – but the poignancy of his death and the tales around it lose nothing in the telling.
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The downhill speeds are also insane considering the two half inch wide tyres they're balancing on round corners. One car speedo registered 53mph.
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The downhill speeds are also insane considering the two half inch wide tyres they're balancing on round corners. One car speedo registered 53mph.
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The downhill speeds are also insane considering the two half inch wide tyres they're balancing on round corners. One car speedo registered 53mph.
