'You can't beat that' - 165 finishing stories of a 'crazy' Tour de France ascent of Mont Ventoux

“No,” Geraint Thomas laughed. He will not be riding back up Mont Ventoux. He’s now ridden up the Giant of Provence five times in the Tour de France, and five times is enough for a lifetime. “I’ll be down in the vineyards drinking some wine looking up at it,” the Welshman continued. “I don’t see the point in riding up it again, not when you don’t have that atmosphere.”

The headlines of the Tour’s 19th visit to the fabled Bald Mountain are everywhere: Valentin Paret-Peintre won the 16th stage, France’s first victory in this Tour, while just behind Jonas Vingegaard repeatedly and valiantly tried to shake Tadej Pogačar from his wheel, but the yellow jersey predictably out-sprinted him at the top.

They’re the top stories, but there were 162 other finishers at the top of the Beast of Provence, each with their own individual story, and everyone crossing the line with their own grimacing pain face. For just like it’s a big day out for us amateurs, it’s also a big day out for the pros, and it means just as much; they, too, are cyclists who dream of cycling up these iconic climbs.

Frank van den Broek of Picnic PostNL is proof of that. “It was my second time up it,” the Dutchman said. “My first time was in 2012 or 2013 when I was around 12 and I rode up it with my Dad.” Even at a young age, the now-24-year-old was testing himself out on Tour ascents. “But two weeks before we went on holiday my Dad broke his ribs and punctured his lung. He brought his road bike but not his cycling clothing. So he rode up it in normal clothes, and he dragged me up it, but I have to say I had a good day back then. I think it took me one hour and 55 minutes, but I had a five minute break so it was more like two hours.”

In 2025, as a fully-fledged pro who was second on the opening stage of last year’s Tour, Van den Broek went a tad quicker. “I took it quite easy and we were 20 minutes behind the winner, so I guess my time was around 80 minutes. For sure under 90 minutes and I heard that’s the benchmark for cyclists.”

Which ascent did he enjoy the most? “Today’s. I wasn’t a fat kid but I wasn’t lean, and now I have some more power so it was more enjoyable today.” What he couldn’t do as a kid, though, is what he did after this interview: bomb down the other side to the bottom. “My Mum and my younger brother followed us in the car, but she got car sick so my Dad had to take over the driving and I wasn’t allowed to descend on my own. Finally I’ll get to enjoy the descent for the first time!”

Unlike one of those hideous, monstrous days in the mountains with 5,000+m of climbing, for this stage the Tour had loaned the Vuelta a España’s race designer and sent the peloton on a 155km flat journey before reaching the HC climb. Sighting the old weather station with its distinctive red and white pole on the horizon for almost the entirety of the stage played mind games on some.

“You see it from a distance and it’s like, ‘OK, yep, that’s where I’m going',” Michael Valgren of EF Education-EasyPost said. “You don’t really want to go there but you have to. It’s really hard in the forest and then you get to the top and it’s so windy. I reckon at the front you could use the wind and sit in the wheel a bit, but for me it didn’t really matter – it was just a long fight the whole way.”

Climbing almost 1,400m of elevation in 15.7km is certainly a long way, but the riders did so alongside tens of thousands of fans. In a race where huge crowds are the norm, it could be easy to dismiss the numbers at the side of the road, and for riders to zone out. But not on a climb like Ventoux. All the senses, all the feels, were tingling as much for the actors as for the noise-creators.

A quartet of Brits all shared memories of the day they climbed Ventoux: “It doesn’t get any better than that, to be honest,” said Bahrain Victorious’s Fred Wright. “Cycling is a special sport when you can have a 15km climb and there are fans the whole way up. It doesn’t get much more iconic than Ventoux.” Groupama-FDJ’s Lewis Askey nodded in agreement. “There was no part of the climb where there weren’t people on both sides of the road. It was crazy.”

Ineos Grenadiers duo Connor Swift and Thomas also concurred. “It’s always nice coming up an iconic climb in the Tour,” the former said. “The fans on here today were crazy – literally a line of people from bottom to top. You can’t beat that.” “That was incredible,” Thomas added. “The crowd pretty much lined the whole way for 15km and they were super loud. The atmosphere... my ears are still ringing.”