France · Pyrenees
Col du Tourmalet
The highest paved pass in the French Pyrenees and the most visited Tour de France col. The statue of the Géant du Tourmalet awaits at the summit.
- Length
- 17.1 km
- Avg gradient
- 7.3%
- Max gradient
- 13%
- Elevation gain
- 1,268 m
- Summit
- 2,115 m
- Hairpins
- 19
Versants
- From Sainte-Marie-de-Campan — 17.1 km at 7.3% (max 13%)
- From Luz-Saint-Sauveur — 18.9 km at 7.4% (max 11%)
History
Before 1910 the Tour de France stayed out of the high mountains. The man who changed that was Alphonse Steinès, a Tour organiser sent by race director Henri Desgrange to check whether the Tourmalet's rough gravel track could actually carry the race. Steinès went up on foot in May, got caught in deep snow near the summit, lost his guide, and stumbled down in the dark — then wired Desgrange that the road was perfectly passable. It wasn't, quite, but the telegram was enough: Stage 10 of the 1910 Tour sent riders over the Tourmalet for the first time, into a mountain landscape none of them had raced through before.
Octave Lapize was the first man over the top that day, and famously furious about it — he's said to have shouted "assassins" at the race officials waiting for him at the summit. He went on to win the stage, and the overall Tour.
More than 80 Tour crossings later, the Tourmalet is the most-used climb in the race's history, and still one of its defining ones — the pass that proved the Tour could survive the high mountains, and that riders would keep coming back for more.