The legend of Mont Ventoux: Dramas and triumphs - TV legend Herbert Watterott looks back
Text Herbert Watterott
At the start of the 13th stage of the 1967 Tour de France, 104 professional cyclists gather to tackle the 211.5 kilometres between Marseille and Carpentras, a small Provençal town in the Département of Vaucluse, on 13 July. Nobody suspects that it will be a murderously hot day and, above all, nobody in the illustrious field of giants of the road can know that one of them will never return to Mont Ventoux, also known as Ventosus, the wind-broken, in their lives. The proverb quoted at the start of the race would become a bitter truth hours later.
Since 1951, many a hope and chance of victory has been blown away by the wind on this sacred mountain, which was already revered by the Celts. 74 years ago, the two French Tour directors Jacques Goddet and Felix Lévitan incorporated the "bald giant" into the route profile of the Tour of France for the first time, which started in Metz and ended in Paris after the mammoth distance of 4,692 kilometres with the victory of Swiss rider Hugo Koblet.
However, 13 July 1967 was to be a day that will forever remain indelibly etched in the history of the Tour. As a young editor and reporter, I was particularly looking forward to this day and the stage. The legendary Mont Ventoux was an absolute highlight in the route profile of my third Tour de France. I had first seen this dirty white mountain peak, which rises completely unexpectedly from the otherwise rather flat landscape of the Provençe, in 1965, when the stage ended with a mass start at the summit and Raymond Poulidor won the stage ahead of the exceptional climber Julio Jimenez from Spain. It is an impressive sight to see this almost 2,000 metre high giant cone towering into the sky, which the Italian poet Francesco Petrarca is said to have climbed for the first time around 680 years ago. In 1967, the Ventoux was just a stopover on the way from Marseille to Carpentras. I had never experienced a hotter day on the tour. It was over 40 degrees in the sun. The heat became unbearable around midday. The stage had started out flat until the summit of Mont Ventoux loomed on the horizon like a sinister threat. It wasn't snow that stood out against the hazy blue sky, but bare, faded volcanic rock. Tour director Jacques Goddet described the upper region as "the Sahara of rocks" in his daily editorial in the organising newspaper "L'Équipe". Many dramas had already played out on its flanks since 1951.
Our TV team leader in 1967 was Jupp Hoppen, head of sports at Saarländischer Rundfunk and, together with his writing colleague Hans Blickensdörfer from Stuttgart, the first German journalist to report on the Tour after the war. Günther Isenbügel (NDR), Werner Zimmer (SR), Fritz Heinrich (SWF) and Udo Hartwig (RIAS Berlin) formed the ARD reporter team for radio and television. I was the youngest and the "girl for everything". My duties ranged from collecting the latest information to getting refreshing drinks. I was also the "newspaper messenger" who delivered the latest gazettes every day, including the Italian "Gazzetta dello Sport" and "L'Équipe". At the time, ARD was represented by three motorbikes and a light blue Opel record convertible. One "Moto" rode at the front of the peloton, the second at the end and near the broom wagon, into which the exhausted, sick or fallen riders climbed if they had to abandon the race prematurely. Finally, the third motorbike was always positioned where particularly dramatic images were to be expected.
Herbert Watterott
The former TV reporter (born in 1941) experienced his first Tour de France as a journalist in 1965, when the Tour started in front of Cologne Cathedral. The Bensberg native covered the Tour 41 times, accompanied the Giro d'Italia 25 times, worked at 18 Olympic Games and 60 six-day races. He has been a member of the Staubwolke Refrath cycling club for over 40 years.
Three reporters alternated their tasks from day to day. One reported for television, the other two worked for radio. Udo Hartwig worked for RIAS (Radio in the American Sector) Berlin. Live broadcasts were still out of the question. Viewers only got to see a ten-minute daily report of the race, which French television offered in the evening. In Germany, these summaries were broadcast at the end of the evening programme, between 22:30 and 23:00. The radio colleagues collected their impressions throughout the day on their tape recorders and compiled the material after each stage in the editing mobile of Saarländischer Rundfunk. The reports, reports and commentaries were then transmitted from their own broadcasting van to the radio stations in Germany.
While our reporters were still in the race, I was already preparing everything for the summaries and final commentary at the finish line. Today, it's unthinkable to get anywhere near the peloton with the cars. But back then, gigantism had not yet conquered the Tour de France. With special accreditation, we could drive right next to the peloton and even overtake the field.
On 13 July 1967, the press centre was located in the chapel of the Collège des Garçons in Carpentras. The imposing honey-coloured limestone vault had been built in the 17th century in a side street near the old town as a Jesuit church. I stared at small monitors showing the television pictures as the climb into "hell" began and the sun was at its highest. I listened to the commentary of the French reporters. There was the former racing driver Robert Chapatte, who explained all the details of tactics and technique and knew every racing driver personally, as well as the number one and icon of French sports journalism, Léon Zitrone, who categorised things with critical distance and assessed them in the style of a commentator. It was a real treat to listen to this well-rehearsed duo.
Soon the peloton had left the pine forests behind, whose trees became smaller and smaller as the altitude increased. The sun then burned mercilessly on the unprotected riders. The peloton was split into countless groups. Everyone was struggling with themselves, their bikes, the gruelling climb and the scorching heat - the backdrop for the drama that was to unfold around two kilometres before the summit. At the finish in Carpentras, I moved even closer to the small monitor so that I could see what was going on on the flickering black and white screen. I saw a rider in the white jersey of the British national team pull out of a small group. At that time, there were no works teams at the start, but national teams. None of the riders below the Ventoux summit still had the powerful, confident pedalling that indicates good form and fitness. But the lean, lanky man in the British jersey was clearly no longer in control of his senses and muscles. It was Tom Simpson, who had already been world road champion in 1965 and was regarded as the best climber on his team. About two and a half kilometres before the summit, he zigzagged. First he threatened to fall down the scree slope on the left. Simpson fell for the first time around 1,500 metres before the summit. It looked different then than it does today. The road was narrower, cars could not overtake, only a narrow strip of asphalt wound its way through the sloping, grey-white scree slope. Simpson's carers put him back on his racing bike. As they pushed him along, he mumbled in a broken voice: "Go, go, go", allegedly also "Put me back on my bike".
Fatal mixture
But he didn't get very far. He could no longer stay on his bike and his helpers laid him on the side of the road. Simpson's fingers gripped the handlebars as if in rigor mortis. The Englishman probably died between the time he was hoisted back onto his bike and the second fall.
Neither the mouth-to-mouth resuscitation by Tour doctor Dr Pierre Dumas nor the resuscitation attempts by the specialists at the Sainte-Marthe Hospital in Avignon were successful. Tom Simpson was dead. It later became known that the sick Simpson had taken amphetamines as a stimulant. The autopsy also revealed the presence of alcohol. The heat, the mountain, the doping, the alcohol - it was a fatal mixture that cost Tom Simpson his life. The hustle and bustle in the press centre came to an abrupt halt when the otherwise aloof, cool, second Tour director Felix Lévitan entered the room. He mounted the podium and spoke in a visibly shaken voice: "The rider with start number 49, Tom Simpson from Great Britain, died at 5.40 pm in the hospital in Avignon." There was dead silence for a moment. Then the press room was filled with the pounding of typewriters and the roaring of reporters into the mouthpieces of telephone receivers. The day after the accident, on 14 July, the French bank holidays, the remaining riders in the peloton gave way to one of Simpson's team-mates on the stage from Carpentras to Sète. Barry Hoban was the first to cross the finish line. Incidentally, he later took care of Simpson's widow in a very personal way. He married her. In 1968, a memorial stone was unveiled in Simpson's honour on the spot where he had died a year earlier. His daughters Jane and Joanne had a plaque placed on the left side of the memorial stone in 1987. It reads: "No mountain too high." In 1997, 30 years after the drama on the Ventoux, Joanne cycled up the mountain with only one goal in mind:
"To finish what Daddy couldn't." The only thing left of Tom Simpson was kept by his carer Harry Hall: the start number of Simpson's bike, 49, white on a black background.
Mont Ventoux: the setting for many dramas
I had the pleasure and honour of meeting this always cheerful, exceptional athlete. It was 1965 when he won the title and the rainbow jersey ahead of his friend Rudi Altig at the World Championships in Lasarte in the Basque Country. I was able to interview him after the race and congratulate him personally. Three years had passed since the death of Tom Simpson when the Tour returned to Mont Ventoux. On 10 July 1970, the 14th stage led over 170 kilometres from Gap to the summit, the third arrival at the observatory. It was to be another day of intense heat and another demonstration by the Belgian Eddy Merckx. A year earlier, in 1969, Merckx had already dominated his rivals in his Tour debut. The solo ride from Luchon to Mourenx over 214 kilometres is unforgettable, when he crossed the finish line with a lead of no less than seven minutes and 56 seconds, having already won six stages. At the end of the Tour, his lead over second-placed Roger Pingeon from France was almost 18 minutes. At the end of the season, Merckx had to cope with a serious crash in a race. While his performances up to that point had been playful and superior, things became more difficult and strenuous afterwards. The problems in his back did not stop and he had to change and adjust his saddle height more and more frequently. He always carried a spanner with him in his jersey pocket. Many believed that Merckx could not ride any more dominantly than he did in his Tour debut in 1969, and yet the Belgian went one better between Gap and Mont Ventoux. With a special bike, built by the Italian Giuseppe Pelà in Turin, the lightness slowly returned and in the leader's yellow jersey he took his seventh stage win and second overall Tour victory.
When the climb begins 20 kilometres before the finish on this hot day, Merckx rides in the front position. 13 kilometres before the summit, he increases the pace and only the Portuguese rider Joaquim Agostinho and Lucien van Impe from Belgium can follow. At the 10-kilometre mark, Merckx is alone and begins another solo escape across the Pyrenees as he did a year ago.
As he passes the memorial stone in honour of Tom Simpson, he throws his racing cap over and crosses himself. An act of recognition for his former team-mate. Eddy Merckx was the only professional colleague to attend Simpson's funeral in the English mining town of Harworth in Nottinghamshire to pay his last respects. Just after the finish line, he has to be supported and refuses any television interview. The dominator was taken to an oxygen tent and given artificial respiration. His first words at the time: "I was scared, terribly scared."
Forces of nature at Mont Ventoux
On 13 July 2000, for the sixth time in Tour de France history, the finish line will be at the summit of the mountain, where temperatures can drop below 30 degrees in winter and easily reach 40 degrees in summer. It is not uncommon for the mistral to whip around the mountain top at speeds of up to 250 km/h. Eddy Merckx described it clearly: "Unlike on other climbs, you can never take the pressure off the pedals on the Ventoux. There's not a second to recover. When you come out of the forest, there is usually a gruelling wind in the last few kilometres."
Two days before the Tour bunch arrived, the "L'Etape du Tour" race for everyone had led to Mont Ventoux. After hail, storms and snow, the stage was shortened. Half of the approximately 7,000 participants had to turn back at Chalet Reynard, six kilometres before the culmination point. When the winner Marco Pantani crossed the finish line on 13 July ahead of Lance Armstrong, Joseba Beloki and Jan Ullrich, something happened that I had never experienced before in my 35 Tour participations as a reporter. The wind blew with such force that the countless spectators on the mountain were almost blown over.
Most of the Tour infrastructure, such as the broadcast and control cars, the advertising column and some of the press vehicles, remained down in Carpentras for safety reasons. The colleagues who had to work at lofty and stormy heights were glad when they landed safely back in the valley. The racers, usually travelling on their racing bikes, were transported down by car. The descent on two wheels was impossible and life-threatening. Once again, Mont Ventosus, the wind-buffeted mountain, had triumphed.
