The Casse Déserte is one of the most iconic roads in the world of cycling and home to the modern-day sporting hero. It can be found on the southern ascent towards the top of the Col d’Izoard. Following a series of steep uphill sections interspersed with tight hairpins, you enter a prehistoric landscape of crumbling rock, unstable, life-threatening terrain, and severe heat. The mountain looks like it has been split down the middle with a great axe. Its innards spilling out like an open wound.

Having successfully established the Tour de France in 1903 and introduced mountain stages in 1920, Henri Desgrange and his team continued to look for ways to innovate and promote what had become a big hit with the increased readership of the L’Auto newspaper. To do this, they needed more than just reporting who won and who lost. They needed characters and personalities with backstories of triumphs and failures. Most of all, they needed heroes - heroes sell newspapers. 

The mountains provided the almost impossible obstacles our heroes needed to overcome and the ideal backdrop to their heroic struggle.
Enter the photographers.
These are the days when "A picture is worth a thousand words" Before TV and mainstream media, pictures were gold dust. No stone was left unturned to get dramatic pictures onto the front page of the first editions.

Unlike many remote mountain climbs, the Col d'Izoard is accessible, in this case, from the nearby town of Briançon. In the early days of the Tour de France, this meant being able to roll out of your hotel bed, head up the mountain, set up ready to photograph our heroes emerging as if from the bowels of the prehistoric earth. Covered in the dust conveniently kicked up by the tour's entourage, their spare tyres strapped across both shoulders like machine-gun belts, struggling upwards to glory and hopefully a hot bath. The modern-day sporting heroes were created here for public consumption on the prehistoric slopes of the Casse Déserte. A tradition that continues to this day.