The fastest time recorded by a current Tour de France road cyclist up the 21-hairpin bends and average gradient of 8%, is 37 minutes and 41 seconds. That time was recorded by French professional rider Romain Bardet. Bardet has remained quiet in this year’s tour so far, but is throwing down the gauntlet, saying in a
recent press conference that "This is where the first hierarchy will take shape."
Bardet’s KOM attempt on Strava saw him average just shy of 20 kph (12 mph). Cars on the other hand, average around 40 kph up the French mountain.
Earlier this month, former professional Stefan Kirchmair took the top spot on Strava’s KOM leaderboard away from Bardet with a time of 37 minutes 30 seconds.
The fastest ever ascent of the French col during a Tour stage, was in 1997, when
Marco Pantani completed a 13.7 km version of the route in 37 minutes. Nearly 2km longer than Bardet’s attempt, and the same finishing time.
But let’s spare a moment for the non-professional riders that take on the challenge, shall we? More than 103,000 people have given it a go, and it’s normal for it to take many hours to complete the ascent. It’s something to think about – perhaps it’s time to bring out the ol’ bike and have a go? Okay, okay, so maybe you won’t make it up in 40 minutes, but there’s always the satisfaction of the achievement. And if you’re really in a rush, maybe it’s best to stick to the car.
* Written by Rosalie Wessel. Additional reporting and editing by Matthew Beedham.
**Editor’s note: Our methodology for this quick comparison was simple. We looked first at Strava to find the King of the Mountain (KOM) times and the segment route itself for the Alpe d’Huez climb.
We then replicated this route in two of TomTom’s traffic information and data programs. This gave us live traffic data, which showed us the typical travel times and average times taken to drive the Strava KOM route.
The drive time and speed data for the route was taken from the last full week of June, before the Tour de France started. We looked at drive times between 9am and 9pm each day from Monday to Sunday. The averages are based on this time frame.
