1965 Merckx First Alpe d'Huez

Lore & Background

The Alpe d'Huez had already earned a place in cycling mythology before 1965, but it was Merckx's first assault on the pass that cemented its status as the ultimate test of a rider's will. The climb's 21 hairpins, each one a small negotiation between gravity and momentum, had broken lesser men in previous editions. Merckx did not negotiate. His style was to find a rhythm on the long, sweeping bends and then, at the moment when the gradient sharpened and the peloton began to thin, to pull away with a surge that left rivals staring at the back of his jersey.

The 1965 Tour was the year the Belgian world went from promising young talent to undeniable force of nature. Merckx had already shown flashes of his predatory instinct, but the Alpe d'Huez stage gave the entire peloton a front-row seat to what that instinct looked like at full throttle. Rivals who had matched him on flat stages found themselves helpless on the switchbacks, unable to follow the cadence he imposed. The finish at the summit became a spectacle of one: a single rider, arms on the bars, grinding through the final hairpins while the crowd at the top roared and the chase group trailed behind like a ghost.

In the years that followed, the Alpe d'Huez would become a pilgrimage site for cycling fans, a climb that every rider either conquered or was conquered by. But the 1965 image—Merckx, twenty years old, eating up the road on those famous bends—remains the benchmark. It is the stage fans still point to when they say, "That is what the Alpe d'Huez is supposed to look like."

In Their Own Story

The morning fog clung to the Isère valley like a wet wool blanket, and the peloton rolled out of the start village in a long, murmuring line. By the time the road began its long, lazy climb toward the Alpe d'Huez, the sun had burned the mist away and the hairpins were just a suggestion in the distance, a white ribbon stitched into the green mountainside. Merckx sat mid-peloton, quiet, his eyes tracking the gradient ahead. Then the road kinked, the gradient bit harder, and something shifted in the group. He dropped his head, found a rhythm, and began to pull. One hairpin, two, three. The gap opened not in a dramatic lunge but in a slow, relentless bleed. By the fifteenth bend, the chase group was a smudge in the rearview. The last six turns he took alone, the crowd at the summit a distant roar, the finish line a small rectangle of red and white at the top of the world. He crossed it not sprinting, not celebrating—just riding, as if the mountain had been the only thing that ever mattered.

Reader's Guide

The peloton enters the long approach to the Alpe d'Huez in a state of controlled exhaustion. The previous days have been grinding, and the mountain air is cool, the sky a pale, washed-out blue. The road climbs gently at first, a long, deceptively easy ribbon that lulls riders into false confidence. The gradient is a whisper. The hairpins are still far away.

Then the road kinks. The first of the 21 bends announces itself with a sharp left, and the gradient sharpens with it. The peloton begins to compress, riders hunting for a wheel, for a draft, for any mechanical advantage. The middle of the climb is where the race is lost. Riders drop off in small groups, their legs screaming, the switchbacks turning the road into a series of tiny sprints that never quite resolve.

And then there is Merckx. He does not wait for a break. He does not look for a companion. He finds a cadence on the long, sweeping right-handers and simply pulls, bend after bend, the gap opening like a slow wound. The chase group, strung out across the switchbacks, can see him but cannot reach him. The final hairpins are a private affair. He crosses the summit line alone, the crowd a distant thunder, the Alps stretching out behind him in every direction. The stage is over. The legend is not.

Did You Know?

• The Alpe d'Huez main ascent features exactly 21 hairpin bends, a number that has become almost synonymous with the climb itself in cycling culture.
• Eddy Merckx went on to win the overall Tour de France five times in total, making the 1965 victory the first of a run that defined an era of the race.
• The Alpe d'Huez sits in the Isère department of the French Alps, and its summit sits at roughly 1,860 metres above sea level, making it one of the higher-finish climbs in the Tour.
• Merckx's aggressive, all-out attacking style on mountains earned him the enduring nickname "The Cannibal" (Le Cannibale), a label that stuck for the rest of his career.