- Oct 13, 2021
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Stage 16: Montpellier – Mont Ventoux (171.5k)
Much thanks to @Devil's Elbow to making this beautiful race profiles, likely a perfect day for a Pogstomp.After twelve years, the Tour has a Ventoux MTF once more. It’s the hardest and most iconic climb in this year’s race, so especially with the unipuerto format certain people will relish their second chance to break a supposedly-unbeatable climbing time…
Map and profile
Start
Both rest days are in a major city this year, which coupled with the Grand Départ in Lille means I get to kick off all three weeks with a big introductory section. On this occasion, it’s time to talk about Montpellier. Although founded relatively late, at the end of the 10th century, it rose to prominence quite soon thereafter for two reasons. Firstly, trade was about to start growing rapidly again, and with the Mediterranean Sea to one side and hundreds of kilometres of Cevennes and Massif Central to the other side, lots of traffic was naturally funnelled through the coastal part of the Languedoc. Montpellier was especially well located because a pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela, which was just emerging as the main pilgrimage centre in Europe, ran through the town. Secondly, the local lords, the Guilhems, actively pursued pro-trade policies that helped the new town get ahead of the curve. They were also religiously tolerant, as evidenced by the presence of Jewish and Muslim communities. By 1100, there were 5000 inhabitants in a place that had been uninhabited just over a century prior.
After another century of rapid growth, the Guilhems were abruptly deposed by the Kings of Aragón in 1204 (the kingdom was divided in two in 1276, with Montpellier becoming part of the Mallorcan half). However, the new rulers were just as willing to help the city expand further, and grow it did. The 13th century saw the establishment of its university and the development of a trading network with outposts all over the Mediterranean. In addition to becoming a central node in the international trade networks, it was also known for its production of luxury goods, especially red-dyed textiles and spiced wine. By the end of the century, it had reached 40000 inhabitants, second to only Paris of what is now France.
And then, hard times arrived. Like the rest of Europe, Montpellier was hit hard by a cooling of the climate and the arrival of the Black Death, but unlike most of Europe, the damage was permanent here. The primary reason for this was the acquisition of Montpellier by the French kings in 1349, who had always held nominal power but were now finally able to exercise it after being able to buy Montpellier courtesy of a civil war in Mallorca. The French kings ended most of the city’s autonomy, prioritised the port of Marseille and coupled this with heavy taxation to fund their ongoing wars (mainly the Hundred Years’ War). As a result, when trade recovered in the late 14th century, Montpellier found itself in a peripheral spot. Although there would be something of a revival from the mid-15th century, the city would never again be anywhere near as powerful as it had been prior to the arrival of the French.
Perhaps because of its history of religious tolerance, Montpellier became a hotbed of Protestantism in the late 15th century. After the assassination of Henry IV (who I discussed when talking about Pau) in 1610, France was once again ruled by stridently Catholic kings (Louis XIII and XIV), who sought to reverse Henry’s tolerant religious policies. Although it would be the more famous younger Louis (the Sun King) who outlawed the religion altogether, it is the older who concerns us here. Once again, it was Pau where this part of history starts, in this case the suppression of Protestant rights in 1620 I also discussed previously. Fearing the worst for their own future, French Protestants went into rebellion three times in the next decade. All three would fail. The first of these Huguenot Rebellions is the one that matters for the story of Montpellier, as its decisive act was the siege of the city in 1622. After two months of siege, Louis offered the rebels a treaty: peace in exchange for the destruction of the city fortifications of Montpellier. This was accepted, and thus Montpellier suffered once more at the hands of the French kings. A good sign of how it was viewed at the time was the construction of a citadel overlooking the old city upon the demolishment of the fortifications. Having said that, the next few centuries did see urban expansion and renewal, indicating that not all was bad.
In the 19th century, the region experienced a great boom in wine-making, causing renewed growth in Montpellier. However, overproduction in conjunction with the French government stimulating imports from the then-colony of Algeria caused a market collapse. This, coupled with long-standing regional resentment towards ‘the north’, led to the largest demonstration in the history of the French Third Republic (i.e. 1871 to 1940), with at least 600000 people marching in a city of 77000. The uprising was eventually suppressed, having nearly toppled then-prime minister Clemenceau (a forgotten what-if moment in world history, given that it was Clemenceau who pushed hardest to punish Germany after the First World War). The overproduction issue was eventually resolved in the most French way possible, by allotting every WOI soldier a wine ration that reached three-quarters of a litre per day by the end of the war.
Montpellier would go through more upheaval between then and the present – bombings during the Second World War, the massive immigration wave after the independence of French colonies – but mostly weathered these challenges. Its historic reputation for tolerance has continued to manifest itself, with France’s first girls’ high school opening here in 1881 and the country’s first same-sex marriage being officiated in the city in 2013. Built on its university, the wine production of the surrounding countryside, a variety of technological sectors and a strong service sector, Montpellier has been the fastest-growing major city in France for most of this century, and it is now among the ten largest cities in France by both municipal and urban area population. Notable students of its university include Francesco Petrarca, the founder of humanism, Nostradamus (‘The Prophecies’), Montpellier-born Auguste Comte, founder of positivism (the first major school of philosophy of science), and Albanian communist dictator Enver Hoxha. Despite 30 previous editions where it hosted a stage, it has not been seen in the Tour since 2016, when Peter Sagan won the stage here after a late attack by him and Chris Froome before a stage start which should also have finished on the Ventoux (the finish was moved to Chalet Reynard) where Froome practiced his running.
(picture by Jorge Franganillo at Flickr, reuploaded to Wikimedia Commons)
The route
The stage has been set up to avoid the major cities between Montpellier and the bottom of the Ventoux. There are two ways of doing this: via the windswept Camargue, prime echelon terrain, or via the mostly sheltered, slightly rolling terrain to either side of the Gard valley. Take a guess which one we’re doing.
As a result, I really have very little to talk about in this section, as this is as uninteresting a route as they could have picked in terms of sport, scenery and history alike. The main town in the first half of the stage is Uzès, once the northernmost town of the Umayyad Caliphate and now a production centre for Haribo. The Classic Haribo, which (supposedly) handed out the winner’s weight in candy as a prize, was held here until 2006. After crossing the Rhône, we soon arrive at the intermediate sprint in Châteauneuf-du-Pape. The castle here was constructed on papal orders after the papacy was moved to nearby Avignon in 1309 courtesy of infighting in Rome and French pressure, beginning a period where the Pope was increasingly under French control. The reigning Pope Gregory XI eventually moved the papacy back to Rome in 1377, then abruptly died, causing a schism with competing conclaves electing a new Pope in Rome and what is now regarded as an antipope in Avignon. Eventually, France withdrew its support for the Avignon antipopes and the situation was finally resolved with the election of a new Pope and the excommunication of the Avignon clique in 1417.
There are some exposed sections around the intermediate sprint, but the odds of decisive splits are very long. As such, this should remain a very slow day until we make it to Bédoin.
Final kilometres
Isolated from all other good terrain or no, let’s be real, Ventoux is a fantastic climb, not just because of the difficulty but also because it’s so suited to making things hard early and thanks to the sheer aura of the landscape.
Mont Ventoux is the sort of place that really shouldn’t need any introduction to you if you’re the kind of person who is sixteen long posts deep on a cycling forum. There have been nine stage finishes here, plus the 2016 stage where they had to move the finish down to Chalet Reynard, plus seven stages where the climb was used as a pass instead. It has seen one of the Tour’s darkest days (the fatal heatstroke of Tom Simpson in 1967), one of its strangest ones (Eros Poli’s solo win in 1994) two of its more controversial ones (Armstrong gifting Pantani the win in 2000 and the moto crash that prompted Chris Froome’s moment of madness in 2016), but surprisingly few race-defining ones. Charly Gaul would not have won his first and only Tour without the MTT here in 1958 and the other MTT in 1987 was pretty key in setting up the great conclusion to that Tour, but elsewise? Perhaps 2025 is the year that Ventoux finally gets another stage truly worth remembering…
(picture by FrogsLegs71 at Wikimedia Commons)
What to expect?
This is a very easy stage to control and the current era has not exactly been defined by giving breakaways a lot of space, so we should be able to have all eyes on the GC riders. Especially if it’s really hot, this is also a great day for big gaps. Especially if it isn’t really hot, we could see an insane climbing time – the Mayo record from the 2004 Dauphiné MTT has traditionally been taken to be unbeatable, but with Miguel Ángel López coming within two minutes in the 2021 Mont Ventoux Dénivelé Challenge and Ruben Guerreiro of all people being only 40 seconds slower than that time a year later, we need to reckon with the idea that it might not be unassailable anymore…
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