Road Cycling Holidays Alpe d’Huez and Bourg d’Oisans in the French Alps with Tour d’Oisans

While the Tour de France was at Mount Ventoux a long with most of our guests I cycled up Alpe d’Huez testing out some new jersey for next year – they are made by Columba in a sportwool fabric. Check the guys out at the following website – http://colomba.cc/index.php as they will be making us a special version of the jersey.

Anyway here are some Tour de France fact about Alpe d’Huez.

• The first stage was in 1952 with Fausto Coppi winning the stage. This is also the longest stage to Alpe d’Huez of 260KM
• The tour did not come back until 1976 and it was won by Joop Zoetemelk
• In 1979 the Tour de France fininshed twice on Alpe d’Huez with Joaquim Agostinho and Joop Zoetemelk winning again
• Interestingly between 1952 and 1978 the climb was classed as a 1st catergory climb since then it has become a HC climb
• In 1984 an amateur Luis Herrera of Columbia one the stage
• The first english speaking person to win the stage was Andrew Hampsten in 1992 Lance Armstrong then won it in 2001
• The stage has been won by Netherlands 8 times, Italy 7 times, Spain 3 times, Portugal 1 time, United States 2 times, Switzerland 1 time, Columbia 1 time, France 1 time  and Luxembourg 1 time.
• Due to their early domination of the Alpe d’Huez stage the Dutch very much consider it their mountain and have an anual Alpe d’Huzes event (although they have not won here since 1989)
• At the time of writing the Tour last visited in 2008 – its expected and hoped it will return in 2010.
• The Tour has visited Alpe d’Huez 26 times
• Bourg d’Oisans at the bottom of Alpe d’Huez started the 2004 Time Trial up to Alpe d’Huez a total of 15.5 KM. It was won by Lance Armstrong in a time of 37:46 minutes

Tags: Alpe D'Huez, Andrew Hampsten, Bourg D'Oisans, Fausto Coppi, Joaquim Agostinho, Joop Zoetemelk, Lance Armstrong, Mount Ventoux

This entry was posted on 25/07/2009 at 6:40 pm and is filed under Alpe D'Huez, Bourg D'Oisans, Cycling Accommodation, Cycling Holidays, Lance Armstrong, Mount Ventoux, Tour De France, Tour de France 2009, Tour de France Climbs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.