Tour de France
Traffic chaos on Alpe d'Huez
2011-07-23 16:32
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Grenoble - The Alpe d'Huez is legendary in cycle racing, a classic and punishing climb that has often crowned the winner of the Tour de France. All the riders struggle to get up it. This year they also struggled to get down.
At midnight after Friday's stage it was taking vehicles more than three hours to complete the 14km to the bottom of the mountain, partly because of a Tour truck that had shed a wheel on the last bend before the bottom. Those on foot went down faster.
Luckily for the riders, they all spent the night in hotels at the top of the mountain. Or at least they thought they were lucky, until they tried to come down on Saturday morning and discovered the traffic chaos was continuing.
World time-trial champion Fabian Cancellara woke at 6 a.m. to travel to Grenoble in time to look at the course before he competed. But his car took 90 minutes to cover 50km, so he didn't have time and he had to ride blind.
"Traffic nightmare. What a mess," tweeted American George Hincapie, a veteran of 16 Tours.
British rider Geraint Thomas added: "Forget roller coasters ... Try getting from l'Alpe d'Huez to Grenoble in time for TT start. White knuckle ride!!"