The Col du Tourmalet has broken the best and today it puts the riders’ final reserves of spirit and courage to the test When Alberto Contador and Andy Schleck fight for victory in the 2010 Tour de France on the pitiless slopes of the Col du Tourmalet this afternoon, they will be accompanied by the words of Henri Desgrange as he surveyed the success of his decision, exactly 100 years ago, to add stages in the high mountains to his great invention. “The Tour de France only became the Tour de France,” the founder said, “when we sent the riders into the mountains.” The Tourmalet was the first of those mountains, inserted into the eighth edition of the race in 1910 after Alphonse Steinès, Desgrange’s assistant, had reconnoitred the route the previous year. Discovering an unmade road rendered impassable by snow, Steinès dismissed his driver and continued on foot. He got lost, fell down a ravine and had to be rescued, but the following morning, in a gendarmerie in the hamlet of Barèges on the way down from the 2,115m summit, he cabled his boss: “Tourmalet crossed stop very good road stop perfectly practicable stop Steines.” Whether or not they know his name, generations of riders have had reason both to bless and to curse the assistant race director’s judgment.
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