The legendary cols of the Tour de France

Octave Lapize crests first in the Tour's first high-mountain stage and hurls the word that every cyclist knows at the organisers waiting at the summit.

Eugène Christophe snaps his fork on the descent, walks 10 km down to the village, and forges a new one himself. A boy works the bellows, which breaches the rules -Christophe is docked minutes he never recovers.

Eddy Merckx attacks alone on the Tourmalet and rides 130 km solo to Mourenx, winning the stage by nearly 8 minutes on his way to his first Tour.

On the first-ever summit finish at the Tourmalet in the modern Tour, Andy Schleck attacks Alberto Contador five times in the final 4 km. Contador counters every move. They cross the line together in driving rain; the 8-second gap between them in Paris is built exactly here.

The Aubisque is on the route the day the Tour first crosses the high Pyrenees: 326 km, five cols, some on dirt tracks, and riders arriving 8 hours after the leader.

Jean Robic crashes into a ravine on the Aubisque descent, climbs back up, demands a new wheel, and carries on. Pyrenean stages used to be like this.

Michael Rasmussen wins atop the Aubisque in the yellow jersey. That night, his team pulls him out of the race. The Tour explodes.

Featured in the Tour's first high-mountain stage alongside Aubisque, Tourmalet and Aspin. Over a century later, it's still part of the route most summers.

Chris Froome attacks off the Peyresourde summit, then drapes himself over his top tube in an aero tuck and rails the descent to Luz-Ardiden. A nerd move so weird it became a rule change.

Marc Hirschi solos off the Peyresourde and is reeled in inside the last kilometre -the first of three agonising second places that Tour before he finally won a stage.

On the first high-mountain stage, the Aspin was ridden on a rough track that doubled as a cow path. Cows included -at the summit, riders reportedly had to push their way through the herd.

Richard Virenque attacks on the Aspin in his final polka-dot-jersey campaign, soloing over the top to win a stage to Bagnères-de-Luchon on Bastille Day.

Federico Bahamontes -the 'Eagle of Toledo', six-time King of the Mountains and the first Spaniard to win the Tour -crests the Aspin solo on his way to yellow. Legend says he once stopped mid-descent to eat an ice cream while waiting for rivals, so little did he trust his own descending.

Fausto Coppi wins the Tour's first-ever high-altitude summit finish. Alpe d'Huez then disappears from the race for 24 years -unfashionable, too steep, too far off the motorway.

Hinault attacks all day, LeMond follows every move. They cross the line together, Hinault a bike-length ahead. Behind the scenes, nobody is quite sure who was playing whom -and Hinault has never stopped insisting he 'let' LeMond win.

Bend 7 gets claimed by Dutch fans who pitch up in orange wigs, orange beer, orange everything -because Dutch riders (Kuiper, Winnen, Zoetemelk, Rooks, Theunisse) had won the stage six times in the previous decade. Forty years on, the corner is still a roaring, drunken orange circus every time the Tour visits.

Il Pirata rips the bandanna off his bald head, throws it in his rival's face, and climbs the 13.8 km in 37:35 -an all-time record that's still standing three decades and a hundred doping scandals later.

22 years old, two minutes behind the break over the Galibier. Tom Pidcock descends like a maniac (a Garmin later clocks him at 101 km/h), catches the break, drops it, and becomes the youngest winner on the Alpe.

Fausto Coppi attacks on the Galibier and rides alone over the Croix de Fer, Galibier and Montgenèvre to Sestriere, winning by 7 minutes. 'Un Martien à bicyclette,' says Géminiani.

Pantani drops Jan Ullrich in a snowstorm on the descent, rides alone to Les Deux Alpes, and puts nine minutes into the yellow jersey -one of the biggest single-stage swings in modern Tour history.

Schleck attacks on the Izoard and solos over the Galibier to the summit finish, the highest stage finish in Tour history at the time. He still loses the Tour by 39 seconds in the Grenoble TT.

Louison Bobet attacks Coppi in the rock spires of the Casse Déserte and rides away to his first Tour. A memorial to both men now stands where the duel played out.

Bernard Thévenet distances a struggling Eddy Merckx on the Izoard, flies over the top, and wins in Serre-Chevalier. The Cannibal's five-year stranglehold on the Tour is over.

Warren Barguil wins the first summit finish ever on the Izoard on Bastille Day, with the French crowd going feral. The polka-dot jersey and a perfect French afternoon.

Hinault and LeMond's legendary hand-in-hand stage to Alpe d'Huez came over the Croix de Fer first, setting up the drama that played out 30 km later.

A young Chris Froome sets the pace here in service of Wiggins, dropping everyone except his leader -the moment Sky realised they had two Tour winners on the same team.

Felix Gall attacks on the Croix de Fer descent, takes Pello Bilbao with him, and rides to the first WorldTour win of his career in Courchevel.

The Glandon features in Bernard Thévenet's second Tour win, deep in the Alpine stages that confirmed France's late-70s golden moment.

Vincenzo Nibali attacks on the Glandon descent and takes back enough time to stay on the podium -classic dagger-in-the-dark bike handling from the Italian.

The Glandon is the warm-up act for the Granon stage that blew the Tour apart. Jumbo-Visma set a pace here that left Pogačar with empty legs before the real summit finish.

The Télégraphe–Galibier double debuts in the Tour's second Alpine stage. Riders grind over both passes on a road barely worthy of the name.

On the stage Schleck solos to the Galibier summit finish, the attack starts earlier than anyone expects -on the Télégraphe, not the Galibier itself.

Egan Bernal escapes on the Télégraphe in what becomes the final decisive climb of the Tour before a landslide halts the stage. Yellow the next morning, Tour winner two days later.

The Iseran makes its debut the year the road is finished. Only a couple of dozen riders make it to the top without walking; the rest are lost in the cold.

Jacques Anquetil dominates the Iseran stage on the way to his fourth Tour. The highest point the race had reached to date, and the French TT specialist made it his own.

Egan Bernal attacks on the Iseran, takes the virtual yellow jersey over the summit -and then a hailstorm and mudslide stop the stage mid-descent. The race commissaires freeze the times at the top. He wins the Tour two days later in Paris.

The Madeleine features for the first time in 1969, Merckx's first Tour. It's been a regular ever since -a climb for rouleurs, not pure grimpeurs.

On a monster stage over the Madeleine, Contador and Schleck drop everyone. Later in the Tour, their infamous 'chaingate' incident rewrites the race.

Primož and Tadej ride over the Madeleine shoulder-to-shoulder, teammates in all but jersey. The Slovenian civil war is still two weeks away.

The Joux Plane first appears in the Tour in 1978, immediately earning a reputation: short, brutal, no rhythm to find. Nothing has changed in fifty years.

With Pantani pushing the pace off the front, Armstrong runs out of fuel and loses nearly two minutes to Ullrich and Virenque on the final ramps. He later calls it his worst day on a bike.

On a wet Joux Plane stage to Morzine, Jon Izagirre attacks off the summit and descends like a madman in the rain for a solo stage win. The descent is a reminder that the Joux Plane giveth and taketh away.

Tommy Simpson collapses and dies near the summit from a cocktail of heat, amphetamines and exhaustion. His memorial stone, half a mile from the top, has been a pilgrimage site for sixty years.

Eddy Merckx wins atop Ventoux and has to be given oxygen at the finish. Even the Cannibal admits it was the closest he ever came to blowing up.

Attack, counter, attack, counter, all the way up the bald summit. Armstrong freewheels across the line to give Pantani the stage. Pantani, publicly humiliated, never forgives him.

Mistral gusts topping 100 km/h force organisers to shorten the finish from the summit down to Chalet Reynard. Breakaway king Thomas De Gendt solos to the stage win; behind him, a motorbike crash in the fan-choked road leaves Chris Froome bikeless and he jogs up in cleats while officials scramble. The jury freezes his time and he keeps yellow -one of the strangest days in Tour history.

For the first time, the Tour climbs the Giant of Provence twice in one stage. Wout van Aert -cyclocross world champion, Classics winner, all-terrain freak -escapes on the second ascent, drops everyone on the climb he wasn't supposed to be able to follow on, and descends alone to Malaucène.

The Grand Colombier makes its Tour debut via Culoz -Thomas Voeckler takes the polka dots on home roads and a new legend is planted.

On the summit finish, Tadej Pogačar distances Roglič by seconds. It doesn't look decisive -until the time trial on the penultimate day flips the Tour upside down.

Tadej comes back solo over the Directissime ramps in the rain, extending his lead and stamping his authority all over the Jura.