Remco Evenepoel (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) has asked for ropes and barriers on Alpe d’Huez, saying the dense crowds expected for Friday’s Tour de France stage 19 could interfere with the racing and create safety risks.
Speaking to reporters before the 127.9km stage from Gap, Evenepoel said he was excited to race up the Tour’s most famous Alpine climb for the first time, but remained apprehensive about the roadside conditions.
“I look forward to climbing Alpe d’Huez during a race, but it still scares me a bit,” Evenepoel told Wieler Revue. “Hopefully they place ropes from the foot and barriers in the last 5 kilometres.”
Evenepoel said spectators narrowing the road could prevent riders from changing position or responding to attacks. “Sometimes, all that crowd can influence a stage, especially when you want to respond to an attack but can’t move back up because you’re blocked,” he said. “We’ll see how extreme it will be.”
Evenepoel is no stranger to spectators interfering with his racing at this year’s Tour as the Belgian was slowed on the Col du Haag on stage 14 as the crowd encroached on the road, forcing the race director car to stop, hindering Evenepoel’s progress.
Road closed to vehicles adds fuel to paid entrance fee argument
The Isère prefecture closed the RD211 to all vehicles travelling uphill from the southern roundabout at 14:00 on Thursday, citing “very high attendance”. The closure is scheduled to remain in place until midnight on Saturday to allow everyone time to get off the mountain after the racing.
Pedestrians and cyclists are still permitted to travel up the mountain, except while Friday’s race was passing. The measures are put in place for everyone’s collective safety with too many vehicles potentially causing havoc on the mountain.
The Tour also issued safety instructions asking spectators not to touch riders, use flares, step into the road or obstruct the race with flags. Fans were told to keep phones behind the barriers, with the message ending: “Just don’t do anything stupid.”
This has been the message from the Tour and all ASO-led races as fan encroachment appears to be more of an issue in recent years. Although it definitely is not a new phenomenon in cycling by any means.
Visma | Lease a Bike manager Richard Plugge has called for tighter controls beyond those official measures. He criticised people whom he characterised as treating the mountain like a carnival and drinking until their behaviour became unpredictable.
“There are also now quite a lot of people who think it is a carnival, who drink beer all day and at some point no longer know what they are doing,” Plugge said in the same Wieler Revue piece.
Plugge proposed charging people a small amount of money to go up the mountain and watch the race. “If you want to walk up, you should pay a symbolic amount, one euro, ten euros, I don’t know how much,” he said. “In any case, that creates a threshold, so that only the real fans go up.”
His suggestion has not been adopted by the Tour or local authorities. No entrance fee has been announced, and pedestrian access remained available under the restrictions published for Friday. One of cycling’s biggest selling points is that it is free to stand on the roadside and watch the biggest names in the sport fly by. Unfortunately, this is becoming more and more of a problem as more fans see it as a big party and potentially cause dangerous situations.
The volume and proximity of spectators form part of Alpe d’Huez’s identity. Its wide hairpins and steep road through the ski resort create natural viewing areas, while the crowd lining the route can make the 13km ascent feel like a stadium. Some parts have even been given endearing names, with ‘Dutch Corner’ taking residence on hairpin number seven of the 21.
That concentration of people can leave riders with only a narrow channel through the crowd. In 2018, Vincenzo Nibali crashed amid spectators and race vehicles on Alpe d’Huez, later leaving the Tour with a fractured vertebra.
Friday’s stage uses the complete traditional ascent. Stage 20 returns to the summit on Saturday after crossing the Col de Sarenne, joining Alpe d’Huez for the final five kilometres rather than repeating all 21 hairpins. Hopefully the number of fans on the whole climb don’t ascent onto the final 5km the day after as that would be ridiculous chaos. Especially with the Sarenne designated a fan free climb to protect the natural space.
Time will tell if the crowds purely add a cacophony of incredible noise and atmosphere or whether they hinder and intrude onto the race. Let's hope for the former.
Cover image credit: Charly Lopez
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