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ventoux - sacrifice and suffering on the giant of provence. jeremy whittle. simon and schuster hardback. 315pp illus. £16.99

in april of 2014, i was kindly invited to provence with rapha travel to inaugurate their opening retreat at le grand banc, an agglomeration of rough, stone-built dwellings converted into contemporary, yet rustic individual rooms. i spent a fabulous four days at le grand banc, dining well and riding some quite maginificent roads in the surrounding area. as i've mentioned on more than a singular occasion, being somewhat geographically challenged, i hadn't realised that mont ventoux was pretty much within a 70km spitting distance of my temporary french abode.

it transpired that the friday had been designated as the-day-we-ride-up-the-giant-of-provence, but as can frequently be the case, the weather and visibility near the summit of the ventoux contrived to prevent a day of purgatorial ascending on my rapha-badged pinarello. instead, we rode the gorges de la nesque which i still count as the finest day's bike riding i have ever experienced. though many of the others were a tad disappointed at missing out on one of road-cycling's major box ticking exercises, as one who has never subscribed to such entities, i was more than happy to ride through limestone arches near the la nesque's highest point.

mont ventoux occupies a possibly exaggerated importance for the british cycling fan as a result of tom simpson's untimely demise in july 1967. each and every time the tour de france ascends this idiosyncratic climb, commentators are duty bound to make mention of simpson or, better still, show some black and white archive footage. as a result, the ventoux has effectively been anthropomorphised; to all intents and purposes, it was the mountain that robbed simpson of his life. that would explain chapter one of jeremy whittle's intriguing paean to the ventoux, entitled 13 july 1967, printed in stark sans serif, allegedly documenting simpson's thoughts as he approached the giant of provence.

these excerpts of fact-based fiction continue throughout the book.

somehow it's of great surprise that no-one has attempted a biography of the mountain before now, other than the possibility that i considered on commencing this impressive tome "how do you write an entire 300 plus page book about a solitary mountain?" that the narrative never really flags at any point across all three distinct sections, is of great tribute to whittle's tenacity as a writer. of course, aside from the simpson debacle, the mountain has a character all of its own that has existed presumably for millions of years prior to 13 july 1967.

"Wind and the Ventoux are old mates, old muckers, old bedfellows. [...] If the heat doesn't get you, the Mistral - the wind that picks up, builds to a frenzy and then dies at a moment's notice - will."

not unnaturally, whittle opens with a bike ride to the summit, choosing the route favoured by the tour de france. it takes a man of character to begin a paragraph by admitting "It's not so bad at first - really, it's not. You start to wonder what all the fuss is about." of course, were that found to be true, this would have been a much shorter book. but the author is not so naive as to assume geographical knowledge on behalf of the reader, though it seems unlikely that anyone would have lifted it from the cycling section bookshelf were they not at least slightly acquainted with its velocipedinal importance.

at least a part of the ventoux's allure depends on its topographical eccentricity: "It exists in other-worldly isolation, an aberration of nature, a child's fantasy mountain of strange flora and fauna, dark forests and wild animals, eerie deserts and astral winds, topped off with a cartoonish meterological observatory that looks like Tintin's rocket to the moon.". but aside from describing the numerous opinions expressed by the ventoux's many combatants ("it gets so quiet, you can hear a fly buzzing through the peloton." Merckx), it appears jeremy whittle may have had a hidden agenda that remains hidden until the chapter entitled 'The americans'.

along with many others, whittle found himself on lance armstrong's list of those he considered persona non grata, but now that several years have passed by, he visits the texan at his home. the pretence, as far as the reader is concerned, concerns armstrong's gift of a stage victory in 2000 atop the ventoux to his arch-rival, marco pantani. if i'm honest, this particular chapter, though offering a tenuous connection with the book's title, is worth more than the price of admission. having carefully curated his innocence of all travesties throughout the period of his now excluded seven tour victories, armstrong seems to have totally dropped the pretence and denial.

when the author states that he had run-ins with then uci president, the late hein verbruggen over armstrong's protestations of innocence, lance replies "Yeah, but what was Hein gonna do?... Go to 1997. What do you do? You know that everybody's using EPO..."

very much to his credit, whittle celebrates britain's finest victory on the giant of provence, when nicole cooke, racing the 2006 women's tour de france left her nearest competitors standing by attacking on the ventoux when already comfortably in the lead. it was a ride which the author describes as "...definitely Merckx territory". cooke apparently took considerable persuasion to agree to be interviewed. with a nod to the protagonist featured in the previous chapter, "My moment in the sun was taken for ever, by people who thought so little of my efforts because they were so wrapped up in writing eulogies for the corrupt" a situation for which she still holds whittle at least partially responsible.

but, with the mountain's shadow still looming large in the background, whittle continues in his stride by taking a critical look at the mores of team sky, once more linking it to his professed subject matter by including chris froome's "now infamous and decisive attack" on stage 15 of le tour in 2015. he cites froome's evasiveness to be interviewed along with that of sky team manager, dave brailsford. though the author is not alone in his suspicions of 'team clean' and their oft repeated 'zero tolerance' he finds it hard to understand the behaviour of a team manager whose reticence for discussion, whittle likens to the actions of a man with something to hide.

though the book ends with the author beginning another ascent of the ventoux in sombre mood, preceded by a meeting and interview with simpson's daughter, it's whittle's considerable talents as a journalist in the latter part of the book that made this more than just the story of a french mountain. it features insights into past deeds that you'd scarcely have appreciated were there purely from the book's innocent title.

"It's going to be awfully hot tomorrow. If the guys start taking stuff, we could have a dead man on our hands."

thursday 26 october 2017