Stage 14: Saint-Étienne to Mende
Date: July 16, 2022
Distance: 192.6km
Stage timing: 12:15 – 17:05 CEST
Stage type: Hilly
“Like riding up the side of a house,” was how The Guardian newspaper memorably once described the ascent to Mende, and although that’s perhaps an exaggeration, the final ascent of Saturday’s stage of the 2022 Tour de France is certainly one where the ferociously hard inclines make almost all the difference.
Preceded by 189.5 kilometres of rolling terrain from Saint-Étienne taking the Tour south and west across the lower foothills of the Massif Centrale, the day’s decisive ascent to Mende airfield is just three kilometres long.
Yet with an average gradient of 10. 2 percent, for all Mende is not as ridiculously tough as, say, the Angliru, its relentlessly vertical gradients can see spectacular battles unleashed in a very short distance. Yet interestingly, although it has rarely made a difference on GC in the Tour de France, the idea that a climb like Mende generally favours the climbers is definitely mistaken.
Rather, as Ineos Grenadiers lead sports director Steve Cummings proved with his memorable stage win at Mende over the much lighter-built French duo of Thibaut Pinot and Romain Bardet in 2015, over such a short but testing distance, more than full-on climbing ability, it’s calculating your strength that matters.
“As you say it’s steep, but not the steepest climb,” Cummings tells Cyclingnews, “so being on another rider’s wheel and drafting is less significant but still matters a bit, while if you go into the red, you pay for it very fast.
“You’ve got to take a fine line between following another rider to try and benefit what little you can from their slipstream, and avoiding finding yourself going too hard because you’re shadowing that rider too closely and potentially exploding as a result.
“Mende is best raced like it was a time trial, but remembering you’re in a race. So it’s about trying to get as fast as possible from A to B like in a TT but using the people around you too. It’s about distribution of effort.”
Narrow, and mostly straight for much of its middle section, from the moment it starts to rise on the edge of the town of Mende the climb to the runway has no breaks in its upward gradient whatsoever….
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