Tourmalet from Luz-Saint-Sauveur – climb map

by Sidney van den Boogaard

No col has been climbed more often by the biggest race in cycling than the Tourmalet. From Luz-Saint-Sauveur you gain around 1,400 metres to reach the summit at 2,115 metres, passing the spa village of Barèges and the ski slopes of Super-Barèges. The gradient is solid and rarely lets up; in the middle section a bike-only road offers a quieter alternative to the main road. The higher you go, the barer and wilder the Pyrenees become. At the top the Géant awaits, the statue of Octave Lapize, first over the summit in 1910, beside the memorial to Jacques Goddet. For every Pyrenees lover who has earned this one.

This work is part of the Legendary Climbs collection: the most famous climbs in road cycling, from the Alps and the Pyrenees to the short, steep hills of Flanders and Limburg. Each climb is drawn from the real road, with the elevation profile coloured per kilometre and, along the bottom, the length, elevation gain, average and maximum gradient and the summit.

The road is drawn from OpenStreetMap data (© OpenStreetMap contributors) and the profile from Copernicus elevation data (EU-DEM). A great gift for any cyclist, to hang next to the bike or as a goal for next season.