Two days away but we can't wait for the highlight of this weekend's TdF2023 action — the iconic Puy de Dôme returns to the Tour after 35 years...
One of cycling’s dormant legends, the Puy de Dôme, will explode back into life on stage nine of the 2023 Tour de France.
The Puy is an atmospheric, evocative climb, unlike any other used by the Tour. Unlike the hairpin bends of the Alps, its road, which only replaced the original railway in 1926, spirals like a corkscrew around the mountain in one relentlessly steep gradient to the summit.
In 1964 Maître Jacques Anquetil was four Tours to the good, an imperious, undroppable, but not extremely popular presence at his home race. Meanwhile, the younger Raymond Poulidor, who finished third overall two years previously, had emerged as his closest rival for the yellow jersey, and the true owner of the French public’s affections.
Despite the pyrotechnics, it was all too little, too late: the defending champion remained in yellow – by 14 seconds. “That’s 13 more than I need,” he said at the finish. As Maître Jacques slumped exhausted onto the bonnet of his team manager’s car at the top of the volcano, the myth of Anquetil and Poulidor’s rivalry – and of the Puy de Dôme – was born.
Successful experiments at smaller-scale summit finish operations, such as those on the Galibier and Tourmalet, as well as the Super Planche des Belles Filles, showed Prudhomme that his goal was at least possible, and whispers of a return to the Puy duly intensified by the early 2020s. Those rumours were finally confirmed last October, when the Tour director confirmed that, after 35 long years, the Puy de Dôme would host the summit finish of stage nine of the 2023 Tour.
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