It's the great day of the Giant of Provence, Mont Ventoux: precisely because of its unique position in the middle of a splendid historic plain, the Ventoux almost always finds itself as the only altimetric difficulty of the stage it hosts, and this year is no exception.

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Today's stage is the Montpellier - Mont Ventoux, 171.5 km long: plenty of plains in the heat of Provence, crossing the departments of Hérault, Gard, and Vaucluse to arrive in Bedoin: from here, nothing will be the same again.

To reach the observatory, at the foot of which the finish line is drawn, there are 15.7 km of climbing at an average gradient of 8.7%, along which anything is possible: from the first challenging ramps, in the forest section, on the rocky terrain that begins after passing Chalet Renard. Fasten your seatbelts...