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VIVE LE VENTOUX

Give us the mountain for the Etape

Let's hope the rumours about next year's Etape du Tour are true. We believe it's going to be the Mont Ventoux stage and just 110 kilometres in total. OK, the 'Giant of Provence' is no ordinary climb, the name sort of gives that away, but it is only one mountain which at least theoretically makes it the easiest Etape ever.

This year some eight and a half thousand of you tackled the Col du Tourmalet and Hautacam in a gruelling 169-kilometre loop around the Pyrenees. If almost 2,500 metres of climbing wasn't bad enough, the cold, wet weather made it a pretty miserable experience.

Much can be said of the Etape's last visit to the Ventoux in 2000 when cold and foggy conditions at the summit turned to hail and snow by mid-afternoon, forcing organisers to close the climb at Chalet Reynard and turn back almost half the field. That stage from Carpentras was 149 kilometres long and included three smaller climbs - OK for the pros but an unnecessary drain on reserves for lesser riders.

The Ventoux is an exciting prospect, but if the French do the unthinkable and announce a different Etape stage in Paris on October 22, then I'll still ride the mountain anyway next July. See you there.

You can read more about the prospect of a Mont Ventoux stage in the 2009 Tour de France in this week's Cycling Weekly magazine, where we also look at what part such a stage would play in Lance Armstrong's comeback Tour.

Elsewhere in this week's magazine we look at why lactic acid is good for you, ask whether £2,000 for Dura-Ace is a step too far, report on the start of the hill-climb season, look at Cervelo's new P4 and give you over 220 kilometres of routes and cyclo-sportives.