Alpe d Huez Hotels

Alpe d'Huez is a city the in French Alpes. Besides being a winter ski resort, Alpe d'Huez is a Mecca for cycling fans as many years one of the most important stages of the Tour de France ends at the ski station. The road the cyclists take is approximately 9 miles (or 13 km) long and consists of 21 hairpin turns. The road is packed with cycling fans, as many as 500,000 of them many years. For fans of cycling history, a unique feature of Alpe d'Huez is that each of the 21 hairpin turns is numbered from 21 (at the bottom) to 1 (at the top). Each of these numbered signs also has listed the names of one or two of the winners of the stage to Alpe d'Huez and the year they won the stage. Alpe d'Huez is one of the main mountains in the Tour de France. It has been a stage finish almost every year since 1976. The first was in 1952, won by Fausto Coppi. The race was brought to the mountain by Élie Wermelinger, the chief commissaire or referee. He drove his Dyna-Panhard car between snow banks that lined the road in March 1952, invited by a consortium of businesses who had opened hotels at the summit Their leader was Georges Rajon, who ran the Hotel Christina. The ski station there opened in 1936 but the road had been widened even if it was still potholed. Wermelinger reported to the organiser, Jacques Goddet, and the Tour signed a contract with the businessmen to include the Alpe. It cost them the modern equivalent of €3,250.