Tracking Coppi up Alpe d'Huez - but all for a good cause

ATHLETICS:Instead of training five hours in the saddle every day for three weeks, I've been five hours on the couch, writes IAN O'RIORDAN

OH MERCY! What on earth was Georges Rajon thinking? Having just sat through the most chaotic and incredibly breathtaking few hours of live television this year, obsession is probably not a healthy thing, especially when it involves cycling up mountains – and has you wondering what you’ve let yourself in for.

“Assassins,” shouted Gustave Garrigou, after the Tour de France first passed through the Alps, 100 years ago. Garrigou may have won the race, but realised he’d nearly killed himself in the process. No doubt plenty of riders are thinking the same thing having just cycled to the top of the old ski station at Alpe d’Huez. They’ll be seeing that mountain in their sleep for a few days yet – and chances are I will be too.

It was Rajon who first reckoned it might be a good idea to have people cycle up Alpe d’Huez. It was 1952, and he was looking to inject some summer business into his new hotel, the Christina, which he’d just built on the then unheralded mountain. An obsessive cycling fan, Rajon asked the Tour de France organisers to consider a stage finish at the top, next to his hotel.

It was a radical proposition: Tour stages had been passing through the Alps since 1911, although none had actually finished on a summit. Whatever about his powers of persuasion, Rajon essentially bribed the Tour organisers to agree the finish on Alpe d’Huez. Look what he started!

That first Alpe d’Huez stage, in 1952, was won by Fausto Coppi, the slick Italian already known as Campionissimo. “Unyielding and untouchable,” said L’Equipe, and indeed Coppi finished one minute and 20 seconds ahead of the next rider, adding not only to his own legendary status, but helping create the legend that is now Alpe d’Huez.

They reckoned over 300,000 people were packed onto the mountainside to take in the 2011 stage (most of whom were apparently just released from a lunatic asylum), and not just because it was the last mountain peak this year: Alpe d’Huez is not the longest or steepest climb on the Tour, but it’s probably the toughest, if not physically then mentally. It’s only 13.8km from the start at Bourg d’Oisans to the summit, to a not exactly dizzy altitude of 1,860 metres. But with an average gradient of 7.9 per cent, it’s steep, very steep.

There’s also the infamous 21 hairpin turns, each one sign-posted – in descending order. It’s also at its steepest near the bottom, which puts riders well over the limit early on, plus there’s a particularly steep 3km in the middle, following Huez village, where the view opens up to reveal the demoralising long way ahead.

If I’m starting to sound a little obsessed by this mountain it’s because I am: some people don’t need much of an excuse to cycle up Alpe d’Huez, other than the honour of trying to win a Tour stage; my excuse is perhaps more purposeful. Along with 44 others, I’ll be tackling it next week as part of a five-day tour of the Alps, better known as the Irish Hospice Foundation Cycle Challenge, and which this year covers 523km from Geneva to Nice.

Our Alpe d’Huez stage is set for Tuesday, and there’ll be several other famous Alpine passes before we get to Nice on Friday, including the Col du Lauteret, the Col du Glandon, the Cime de la Bonnette and the Gorges de la Vesubie. It’s a daunting itinerary, carefully planned by the good people at Irish Cycling Safaris, and sponsored by Kingspan, to ensure the maximum Alpine experience.

“The important thing from our perspective was to make it a proper challenge, and not just a holiday somewhere nice,” says Tim O’Dea, head of fundraising at the Irish Hospice Foundation. “It’s not going to be easy, not for the faint-hearted, and it’s designed that way. In fairness, we’ve actually made the Alpe d’Huez climb optional, but from what I hear, everyone on the challenge is up for it.”

This is the third year of the challenge, having started with the Dublin to Paris route in 2009, then Paris to Geneva last July. Next week thus completes the journey, even if it is a case of saving the biggest challenge until last.

“About 28 of the 44 have done the previous two routes,” says O’Dea, “so this completes the journey, really. The majority are fund-raising because of some experience of hospice care, either a family member or friend, although not everyone. But it’s definitely not about being an elite cyclist. We’ve a 68-year-old with us this time, and it’s certainly not a race.”

We’ll see about that: there may not be a maillot jaune but I’m expecting quite a few intermediate sprints, and definitely a claim for the King of the Mountains. I can also guarantee that none of us has ever used performance enhancing drugs, although I can’t guarantee that by next Friday we won’t all be hopelessly addicted to EPO and undergoing regular blood transfusions.

My training effectively started and finished on Easter Sunday – but I do now have a small titanium bar where my left collarbone used to be, and that at least is lighter than bone. So instead of doing five hours in the saddle every day for the past three weeks, like I should have been, I’ve been five hours on the couch every day, glued to Eurosport – visualising the challenge ahead, and picking up every possible tip from race commentator Seán Kelly.

Assuming none of us gets lost next week, all the funds raised from the cycle go directly to the support of Children’s Hospice Home Care – and in the past two years has raised €720,000. This year, the Hospice Foundation are funding Ireland’s first consultant in children’s palliative care, and also fund five of eight outreach nurses to support families caring for children at home. An estimated 1,400 children are living with life-limiting conditions in Ireland, and if cycling up Alpe d’Huez is one way of raising funds and awareness of that cause then, perhaps, Georges Rajon was on to a good thing after all.

Follow the Irish Hospice Cycle Challenge blog next week at irishtimes.com/blogs/ ihf-cycle-challenge.