Above: French pro cyclist Thibaut Pinot rides up La Super Planche des Belles Filles, near his hometown of Mélisey, France.
The 2022 Tour de France will feature the notorious climb La Super Planche des Belles Filles once again. And while the men will climb it early in the race during Stage 7 on July 8, the newly resurrected women’s Tour de France Femmes will ascend its grueling slopes the final day of their race, July 31, on Stage 8.
Being the first mountain stage of the men’s Tour de France, things could get very interesting.
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“This year as the first summit finish, with the climb being so steep, it’s a bit hard to find your climbing rhythm again after so many flatter stages, so it makes it a pretty explosive climb—the opposite of the long alpine-style climbs later in the Tour,” American Sepp Kuss of Team Jumbo-Visma, who won Stage 15 in last year’s Tour de France, told Bicycling.
Chris Horner, the first American to win the Vuelta a España and who now works for NBC Sports as a Tour de France analyst, agrees. “The big thing is that it is the first mountain summit. Because it is the first mountain summit, everyone can climb; everyone has a lot of power in their legs because they are just coming off of the flat stages,” Horner told Bicycling.
Unlike many climbs, where you have a sharp right or left turn to get onto the actual ascent, which requires riders to scrub some speed, the road up La Planche des Belles Filles transitions from the flats to the steeps without any turns. “You carry all your speed, so those fast, strong, flat [terrain] guys who have been hurting you throughout the first week of the Tour are still hurting you at this moment, too,” said Horner.
The paved road from the valley floor up to the small ski station at the top climbs 1,805 feet (547m) in 3.6 miles (5.9km) for an average grade of 8.5 percent. But to believe those relatively tame statistics would be a huge mistake.
The road snakes up the mountain in three steep sections, separated by two short and relatively flat “plateaus.” The steep sections present double-digit grades to the riders, the last one being the final 200 meters to the end of the pavement at the top, at a leg-breaking 20 percent. As Phil Liggett likes to say, “it’s the sting in the tail!”
Can’t get to France? Try this U.S. climb instead: According to Strava, the U.S. climb that is most similar to La Super Planche des Belles Filles is a segment called “Flagstaff Week” in Boulder, Colorado.
“You go into this climb at full gas, 100 percent speed. The whole peloton is strung out—it’s not curb-to-curb and everyone’s talking about what they are going to do after the stage. And you are dropping from the big chainring to the small chainring, and your legs are trying this spin versus the power you have been pushing on the pedals on the flats for the first week. All of a sudden, now your muscles are changing because you need a small gear,” Horner said.
“When I did it in 2012 against Team Sky, it was the first time I had seen the ‘Sky train.’ I looked down at my power meter, and it was off the chart. It was hitting 600 [watt] numbers at the bottom as we were sprinting with Sky doing their train up there for Wiggins and Froome,” continued Horner.
And what about the 20-percent stretch of pavement at the top? “You come around that right turn and you look up and you are thinking, ‘just get this thing over with, would you?’” said Horner.
This year, for the second time ever, the climb will continue onto a steep gravel section above the pavement—which turns the climb into La Super Planche des Belles Filles. That lengthens the climb to 4.3 miles (7km) with an average grade of 8.7 percent, with the final kicker to the finish reaching a grade of 24 percent. How will that affect the race? “It’s pretty smooth, but if you are suffering, the gravel makes it harder to get out of the saddle, so it fits some riders’ characteristics better than others,” said Kuss.
Horner agrees: “He’s 100 percent right. If you have the climbing technique—which I use—of standing, you are going to be in trouble because you don’t get the same traction on the back wheel.”
And which of the overall contenders will shine on this stage? “It’s Tadej Pogačar for sure. It is ideal for his style” said Horner. But also, “Primož Roglič really likes that high cadence spin. He is so explosive in the last kilometer. He does like to just sit and spin everybody off his rear wheel. He will throw in his big acceleration, and then sit down and power to the line.”
The women’s race will most likely be decided on La Super Planche des Belles Filles’s cruel slopes. Dutch rider Annemiek van Vleuten has arguably been the best climber in the women’s pro peloton over the past several years. But riders such as South African Ashleigh Moolman Pasio and Americans Kristen Faulkner and Veronica Ewers could be a factor in the lead group as well. Those two 20-percent sections right at the top will surely create a very worthy overall winner.
The History of La Planche des Belles Filles
While most Tour de France fans are familiar with the legendary climbs in the Alps and Pyrenees, the first ever official mountain stage in “La Grande Boucle” took place in the Vosges Mountains. Nestled in the northeast corner of France, near the border of Germany, the Vosges feature mountain passes that climb to just under 5,000 feet.
In that historic 1905 stage over the Ballon d’Alsace, at 4,091 feet (1,247m), Tour de France organizers realized that racers would have difficulty riding their fixed gear machines up such a long, steep climb. So, they introduced a new rule which allowed riders to switch to a bike with lower gears for the ascent. It was only the third year of the Tour de France, but the mountains were here to stay.
While the Ballon d’Alsace still gets climbed in the race every once and a while—the women will climb it in the Tour de France Femmes this year—it is the relatively new climb, about five miles away as the crow flies, of La Planche des Belles Filles that has created some of the most exciting moments in recent editions of the Tour.
La Planche des Belles Filles was first included in the Tour de France in 2012, which saw Chris Froome as the stage winner. Controversially, Froome dropped his Team Sky leader, Bradley Wiggins, which led to speculation as to which rider was actually the strongest on the team. Wiggins would eventually go on to win this edition of the Tour, but Froome would win the Tour in four of the next five years.
The “Shark of Messina,” Vincenzo Nibali, was the next to conquer La Planche de Belles Filles, winning Stage 10 of the 2014 Tour de France. He would go on to wear the yellow jersey in Paris, and become one of an exceptionally elite group of riders to win all three Grand Tours—the Tour de France, the Giro d’Italia and the Vuelta a España.
In 2017, the climb was included in Stage 5 of the Tour. Italian Fabio Aru bested Irishman Dan Martin, but Chris Froome would go on to win his fourth Tour de France.
The 2019 Tour de France heralded a significant change to the climb, which was quickly approaching legendary status. Race organizers spotted a small dirt road leading up to the top of the ridge overlooking the ski station and decided the final 200 meters of 20-percent grade paved road wasn’t enough to cause grief for the racers. Belgian Dylan Teuns conquered the final 20+ percent gravel section, and La Super Planche des Belle Filles was born.
Trek-Segrafredo rider and Latvian national champion Toms Skujins used one word to describe the newly rebranded climb: “brutal.”
Maybe Tour de France organizers realized they had crossed a line. When La Planche des Belles Filles returned the following year in 2020, the stage ended at the pavement, but in a cruel twist they made the stage an individual time trial. And moving the stage from the beginning to the end of the race greatly increased its significance.
Slovenian Primož Roglič entered the stage with a seemingly insurmountable one minute lead over fellow countryman Tadej Pogačar, who was racing for a rival team. Pogačar was just 21 years old and in his first Tour de France. He was supposed to be riding in support of teammate Fabio Aru, but he crushed the climb and became the second-youngest rider to win the Tour de France. Pogačar hasn’t lost since and is well-positioned in the overall standings of this year's Tour as he prepares to hit the mountains.
