Col d'Aspin, Mountain pass in Hautes-Pyrénées, France.
Col d'Aspin rises to 1,489 meters elevation in the French Pyrenees, connecting the valleys of Campan and Aure through winding roads that traverse alpine meadows and forested slopes between Sainte-Marie-de-Campan and Arreau.
The Col d'Aspin was first crossed by the Tour de France in 1910, with Octave Lapize leading over the summit. The French sources count 78 passages, the English source 71, so the figures disagree. In the 1950 Tour, bottles and stones were thrown at the riders on the pass, and the Italian team of Gino Bartali and Fiorenzo Magni withdrew at the end of the Pau–Saint-Gaudens stage. In 2023 the Tour de France Femmes crossed it in its penultimate stage, with Katarzyna Niewiadoma first at the top.
The pass is known in Occitan as Còth d'Aspin, and its name links it to the village of Aspin-Aure on the eastern slope. Cyclists mark it with painted names and kilometre stones, and the Tour de France has crossed it since 1910. In 1950 bottles and stones were thrown at riders here, and the Italian team of Gino Bartali and Fiorenzo Magni withdrew at the end of the Pau–Saint-Gaudens stage.
The pass is reached by the D929/D918 junction just outside Arreau on the east side, and from the church of Sainte-Marie-de-Campan on the west. The east climb runs 12 km at 6.6% with a 9.5% maximum; the west climb is 12.85 km at 4.95%, with the hardest grades after the Payolle ski station and the Espiadet marble quarry.
On both sides of the pass, cycling milestones stand every kilometre, giving the summit altitude, the distance remaining, the current height and the average slope of the next kilometre. The same signposting now exists on most major passes of the French Pyrenees and Alps.
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