Many of the riders were stopped four miles from the summit of Mont Ventoux because of the weather: two degrees, galeforce winds and thick fog.

There were 7,600 of them, for this was the Etape du Tour, an annual event during the Tour de France giving amateur cyclists the chance to emulate the professionals on their day off and experience one of the mountain stages. It was an experience the Tour riders were glad to be spared. Today, though, weather permitting, the Tour will finish on the 6,000-foot summit for the first time since 1987.

Between times, logistical difficulties - chiefly finding the space for the race's vast infrastructure - had made the organisers unwilling to finish the race there.

Now the weather has intervened. The mistral blew at 80 m.p.h. at the top and it was unclear whether any of the lorries carrying the finish structures would complete the climb.

Ironically, the race-leader Lance Armstrong has complained of the lack of air on the summit, where the bare rocks, devoid of vegetation, usually turn into an oven in the burning Provencal heat in July.

"The place doesn't look like anywhere else. It's more like a moon than a mountain," says Armstrong. "It's very mystical, and, if you're good, you can make a big difference." This is what the remaining overall contenders will be dreading: if the Texan repeats the domination he showed on Monday on the Hautacam summit he will be virtually out of reach.

The place is indelibly linked with Tom Simpson, Britain's greatest road cyclist, who died of heart failure a mile from the top 33 years ago today. Doctors took an hour and a half to declare him dead after they desperately tried to bring him back to life.

"I knew he was dead when I reached him, but it needed an hour and a half to go through the motions and check everything," Doctor Dumas said.

It was Dumas, who died last year, who exploded the myth of supreme athletes battling against all the elements that nature could throw against them by handing over to the police the amphetamines that Simpson was carrying. A post-mortem revealed that his system was loaded with them.

Today's stage is one of the Tour's briefer stages, at 92.6 miles, but there are three second-category climbs on the unforgiving roads of the Vaucluse Plateau before the Ventoux itself.

Britain's David Millar, lying 31st, spoke for the majority when he said: "I hate it. It's the same gradient all the way and there are no corners. And the heat, it's horrible."

That, at least, is unlikely to be a problem today.