The Summit finish

Text by Keir Plaice with photos by Chris Auld

By Soigneur

May 22^nd, 2018

hollywood climbs

“It is a climb in the style of Hollywood,” journalist and Tour historian Jacques Augendre wrote after the race’s first finish on Alpe d’Huez. The spectacle was novel for the time—all the drama of a grand tour stage packed into a single primetime slot, the race won and lost in less than an hour of climbing to the top of an alpine arena. The race had become a televisual event.

From the first switchback, the men on motorbikes roared ahead, jabbering into their microphones, their cameras whirring. At the fifth bend, Fausto Coppi glided away from his last competitor and seized the made-for-TV moment, soaring through the frenzied crowds solo. He rounded the corners, all poise and fluid power, the race officials swaying out of the Alfa Romeo Matta behind him, as the great Alps stood all around, as if to applaud him. It was a dream for the silver-screen, and the people were enthralled. Broadcast all over France, Coppi’s victory became an instant legend, heightened by television’s aura.

Not everyone was wholly pleased.

L’Equipe’s head reporter, Claude Tillet described the first 250km of the stage as ‘perfectly insipid’, noting that the summit finish resulted in just 15 kilometres of racing and didn’t bring out the best from the riders. He was not yet ready to denounce mountaintop finishes after one outing, but he certainly was not convinced of their merit. Those in power concurred. Tour Director Jacques Goddet said that the stage “offered no reason to lobby for more stage finishes at altitude.”

Coppi went on to decimate his rivals on the finishing climbs to Sestrières and the Puy de Dôme to win that 1952 Tour, which prompted the organisers to pull back from their experiment the following year in the hope of creating a more open and competitive race.

The genie was out though.

Televisions would soon become ubiquitous in European households, and other races would add their own mountaintop finishes. To a TV producer, they made perfect sense. Having the finish at the summit of a climb meant that they could guarantee decisive action at a certain time of day, just as most Europeans were turning on their sets, usually late in the afternoon on a weekend. That boosted peak audience figures and made the sport more attractive to advertisers. Sure, the newspaper men might yearn for the drawn-out, unpredictable races of old, but their novelistic accounts would soon be obsolete. By 1958, the Tour featured a finale on Mont Ventoux. Cycling’s television era arrived.

Mountain towns burgeoned by the skiing boom saw an opportunity to fill hotel rooms and promote themselves as all-year destinations. They bought stage finishes and turned them into massive open-air carnivals, for which people now camp for days, excited to see the racers race past and perhaps be seen on television. How else to explain the ludicrous costumes? The exhibitionism? The runners, chasing after the leaders for their 15 metres of fame?

Still, long after the cameras have passed and the races are won, the parties go on, and so does the racing.

Domestiques who have pedalled to the very end of their strength must drag their empty, trembling bodies up the last slopes. Leaders who have cracked don’t even have the luxury of letting up. For them, it is a desperate, losing fight for seconds right to the bitter end. And the riders in the gruppetto have not had a roll around the park. For most, it has been a day-long struggle. They are either sick or injured or just don’t have the form, or they are too big really to be racing in the high mountains with the lither riders at the fore. When they are dropped, they often still have several hours of hard riding ahead. They band together to try to make the time cut, but theirs is a coalition of the weak and unwilling, whereas the strong and truly motivated riders are often nearly an hour ahead. If it is close by the time they hit the base of the final climb, they then face a flat-out race to the top to even have a chance of fighting another day. And they cannot offer each other any real respite.

UP AGAINST GRAVITY, EVERY ONE IS ALONE.

EXCEPT THAT THIS ALL HAPPENS AMIDST A BOOZY FESTIVAL.

There is not another sport in the world that lets its fans get so close. Once the broadcasters are gone and the heroes have had their oxygen-starved dance to victory or defeat, the rest of the stories play out, away from the TV cameras’ and commissaires’ gaze.

For the drunk and sunburnt fan, who has climbed a mountain and spent many aimless hours in a manic throng to see ten seconds of action, the sight of the riders’ quiet, focused suffering adds a semblance of purpose to his experience. For the riders, immersed in the empty pain of their task, the fans’ absurdity reminds them that what they are doing is not so deathly serious, that it is, after all, a game.

An impromptu push, a handed-out beer; a bloody rider, just ahead of the broomwagon, his kit ripped open to show his gravel-filled wounds—they complement each other. He looks up, smiles, and carries on.

All of which should not disguise the fact that mountaintop finishes tend to make the racing rather boring.It is a procession to the bottom of the final climb, and then the top domestiques take over to reign in any attacks. Only in the last few kilometres do we get to see who can produce the highest number of watts per kilogram. No one in their right mind would risk an early raid if they harbour any hopes of winning the GC. The favourites all know that they have to arrive at the bottom of the last mountain with as much energy as possible if they are to have any chance of making it to the top with the best. A wasted effort early in the race can easily mean many lost minutes by the end. And the teams are so strong that there is next to no chance that any contender would be allowed to start the last climb ahead. So, all the drama is condensed into the final hour, just as the TV producers planned.

THERE JUST ISN’T VERY MUCH DRAMA.

The sport has to change. Television’s era is almost over. For many people, watching racing is no longer a matter of sitting down in the living room before the family TV for an hour or two on a weekend afternoon. We watch stage summaries and video clips, or the best part of the race, at night on our tablets, follow live tickers on our computers during the day at work. One afternoon, we might hear that something really exciting is happening and, wherever we are, find a live feed to watch on our phones. The old TV producer’s logic no longer holds.

So, perhaps the grand tour organisers should look more to the classics when they are planning their races. Put the decisive climbs further out and include several that could make or break the stage. Encourage racing that is more open, protracted, and unpredictable. Make the racing the draw. Mountain stages that finish after the final descent or on a shorter hill are often the most compelling. And if the racing’s exciting, fans will accumulate all over the course. Wherever they are, they can now watch when they want.