Tour de France's first summit finish: a power climb – Preview

Luis Ocaña (centre) and Lucien Van Impe go on the attack with race leader Joop Zoetemelk and Joaquim Agostinho on stage 11 of the 1971 Tour de France between Grenoble and Orcières-Merlette
Luis Ocaña (centre) and Lucien Van Impe go on the attack with race leader Joop Zoetemelk and Joaquim Agostinho on stage 11 of the 1971 Tour de France between Grenoble and Orcières-Merlette (Image credit: Getty Images Sport)

While Orcières-Merlette has the honour of being the 2020 Tour de France's first summit finish for stage 4 on Tuesday, in one sense it wouldn't matter much if it were missed off the route for another two or three decades. And that's because whatever happens today, when it comes to the sheer scale of the events there back in 1971, it's very, very unlikely to match them.

Yet here it is, back in the Tour. And as most French newspapers will doubtless reflect this morning, the return of Orcières-Merlette gives the cycling world a wonderful chance to rewind briefly to the events of 49 years ago when a relatively anonymous 7.1-kilometre climb in the southern half of the Alps marked the final, crucial act of one of Eddy Merckx's most significant defeats in the Tour de France, at the hands of Spain's Luis Ocaña.

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Alasdair Fotheringham

Alasdair Fotheringham has been reporting on cycling since 1991. He has covered every Tour de France since 1992 bar one, as well as numerous other bike races of all shapes and sizes, ranging from the Olympic Games in 2008 to the now sadly defunct Subida a Urkiola hill climb in Spain. As well as working for Cyclingnews, he has also written for The IndependentThe GuardianProCycling, The Express and Reuters.