A change of pace today for you. I’ve had Mont Ventoux on the brain for part of my day today because I saw a Facebook post that announced the beginning of roadworks on the summit (closing it to car traffic for many months) and then ran across a ‘live’ video on the Equipe website of Armstrong gifting a Ventoux summit win to Pantani in 2000 (can you believe that’s 20 years ago now?).
During this broadcast they listed all the riders who’d won on Ventoux since the beginning. It took about 5 seconds to read them off. This is one reason why this climb is so mythic and special – check out the number of times equally-famous Alpe d’Huez has hosted a stage finish in the Tour since 1952.
The blank spaces you see for 2001 and 2004 were Armstrong. I guess it wouldn’t have mattered if he’d taken that stage from Pantani in the end!
And the list of Le Geant since around the same time.
30 for AdH and 10 for Ventoux.
And 2016 wasn’t even a summit finish (recall ‘running man’, Froome, finishing at Chalet Reynard because of high winds at the top).
Once May 11th hits and assuming I have some fitness, I’ll be getting over there to climb Ol’ Baldy on car-free roads. Care to join me?
The Vicious Cycle 
Would love to join you, Gerry! Original plans were to ride in Majorca end of May; alas, original plans have been scrapped. I’m curious when I’ll get back “home” during these weird Corona times…. It’s good that you will finally be allowed to ride outdoors again! (Makes little sense to me to forbid riding solo…) Take care.
Majorca is going to suffer a lot this year with no cyclists coming their way. Do you have any idea when you’ll come over to Europe or are you just waiting and seeing? It’s hard to make plans these days.
I hope that you don’t have to wait too long.
I hope so, too. It’s not like I’ve got a lot else to do, so I’m sure it’ll be soon.
Apparently we have to stay 10m apart, so not so interesting to ride together, but like you, can’t wait to get out of the house to ride on May 11th.
John and I are already talking about this. You can’t have much of a good chat, but riding far apart is probably better than riding alone. We’ll see soon enough.
Meet you at the house in Caromb…you are always at least 10 meters ahead of me anyway…nothing new 🙂
Get over here! Caromb is less than 100 km from Nimes, so we’re good.
I dusted off my old LA DVDs During this lockdown to get my cycling fix and of course watched the iconic A d’Huez and M Ventoux stages. Wow!! Super cycling even if they were all doped (that was the other fun part, pick a ‘name + doping’ and google). A million people on A d’Huez to watch that time trial with no winner 🤔. I would love to ride up Mt Ventoux with you but would have to do some mechanical doping to stay at that 10 meter distance. By the way i joined strava but can’t seem to sync my garmin.
Send you ‘athlete ID’ or whatever they call it and I’ll look for you. Or just give me your last name.
Yeah, those old videos are fun to watch. The riding seems so different these days. I’m still scratching my head over why Ulrich pulled those guys nearly the whole way up Ventoux. He wasn’t the master of tactics!