All seat belts fastened for the toughest eleven kilometers of this Tour

The thirteenth stage in the Tour de France also goes over a mountain that already has the necessary history between Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Pogačar: Peyragudes. This time, the organization has cast the Pyrenean col in a time trial, so we'll see serious time differences. And that's again to the disadvantage of the men who don't like climbing at all, because they too will have to drag themselves upward. Because you have to distribute the effort well, these are possibly the toughest eleven kilometers of this entire Tour.

The time trial brings the riders from the valley in Loudenvielle to the runway of the airport atop Peyragudes. After a (very) short, flat run-up, it's mainly climbing for the rest of the time trial to a height of almost 1600 meters. Peyragudes (8 kilometers at 7.8%) is almost a hyperbolic graph: the climb becomes steeper and steeper as it progresses. The gradient percentage in the last kilometers hardly drops below 10%, and the steepest section of 16% is in the last kilometer of the time trial. Along the way, the intermediate points lie after 3.5 kilometers and 8.5 kilometers.

The question is to what extent it makes sense to do a bike change. In recent years, we've seen riders switch between their time trial machine and a climbing bike at the foot of the last hill in hilly time trials. But now only the first three kilometers are flat, not afterward. Does everyone therefore start on a regular climbing bike?

Vingegaard and Pogačar fought their last duel here in 2022. The Slovenian won then (with a lot of thanks to Brandon McNulty, who pulled for kilometers), but failed to really break Vingegaard. As a result, the Dane could maintain his lead of about two minutes in the classification and begin the last four stages in a comfortable position. Yet Peyragudes doesn't have such a long history. The climb only debuted in the Tour in 2012, when escapee Alejandro Valverde soloed to victory. Five years later, Romain Bardet's head was the first to rise above the finish line on the steep airfield.

Now this steep finish straight is the setting for the apotheosis of a climbing time trial. A very specific discipline, which has really only been in the Tour five times since the turn of the century. The first was in 2001, when Lance Armstrong triumphed in a climbing time trial to Chamrousse. Three years later, the stripped winner did that again neatly to l'Alpe d'Huez. Then we also had the duel between Chris Froome and Tom Dumoulin to Mégève, with the Brit coming out on top. And then there was also the climbing time trial in 2020 to La Planche des Belles Filles. There, to everyone's surprise, Pogačar won the Tour at the expense of Primož Roglič.

18 Jul 2025	Tour de France - Stage 13
20 Jul 2022	Tour de France - Stage 17
13 Jul 2017	Tour de France - Stage 12
8 Sep 2013	Vuelta a España - Stage 15
19 Jul 2012	Tour de France - Stage 17
19 Jun 2010	Route du Sud - Stage 3
20 Jun 2000	Route du Sud - Stage 4

Peyragudes(Midi-Pyrénées)