“197 average heart rate” – Contador reveals the brutal truth of Mont Ventoux

Stage 16 of the 2025 Tour de France will begin with calm roads and end with chaos, as riders face one of the sport’s most iconic climbs: Mont Ventoux. The 171 kilometer stage from Montpellier features a flat profile until the final 15.7 kilometers, where the peloton hits the “Géant de Provence” for the first time in four years. Alberto Contador, previewing the stage for Eurosport, made clear that the day’s difficulty is sharply concentrated, and completely unforgiving.

“15.7 km at 8.8% average gradient, but beware that the previous kilometers are very hard,” Contador warned. “Because on the approach the peloton sometimes gets bogged down by the wind. I remember once in a Dauphiné or in a Tour de France arriving before the start of the pass at 180 or 190 heartbeats on the approach alone.”

Mont Ventoux doesn’t wait. As the race moves into its final week, many riders will treat the first 150 kilometers as survival mode, knowing full well what’s coming. And when they pass the sign marking the official start of the climb, it hits. Hard.

“It’s just passing the banner at the start of the official pass and starting the ramps that are constantly maintained at 9 and 10 percent,” Contador said. “It’s a pretty complicated pass because it doesn’t have many curves in the initial part and you see how little by little you’re leaving the group. The first 8 kilometers are very hard.”

The wooded lower slopes of Ventoux are tough enough, but it’s the combination of steep gradients and visual monotony, long straight ramps with no letup, that break many. Contador pointed out that “the first part, wooded and with worse ground due to the roots of the trees,” makes this section uniquely brutal. “Percentages not outrageously high but almost always around double digits,” he added. “It is almost eternal due to its lack of curves.”

Contador knows the climb deeply, both in its difficulty and how drastically form changes the experience. “I’m going up the pass and it’s impossible not to remember 2009 when I did an hour and two minutes at 197 average heart rate in the Critérium du Dauphiné,” he said. “I was just a little short in training, I didn’t want to be at my best thinking about the Tour. Five weeks later, we faced the same climb in the Tour and it seemed to me like a completely different climb: the difference between being good and being in perfect shape.”

The character of the mountain changes drastically halfway up, from dark forest to a white, windswept moonscape. “When the wooded area ends and the windy area begins, at a point that all the riders recognize, if you’ve managed to hold off attacks from your rivals in the windy area you can protect yourself on the wheel and maybe save the day,” Contador explained.

“This last part is completely different,” he continued. “The terrain is lunar, better asphalt, more pedaling and less percentage. Of course, there is a problem: the wind.”

That wind, a persistent feature of Ventoux, could be decisive. Riders hitting the open stretch with no draft could see small time gaps turn into GC disasters. Despite the improved surface and lower gradient, the exposure adds a psychological and physical layer of difficulty to the climb.

“You get to the top after a final hard curve, to that top with the mythical antenna,” Contador said, “that antenna that riders see from afar and never seems to arrive after those very hard ramps of the first part and the final part. It’s a pass that makes the difference and is different from the rest.”