This article was originally published in Rouleur 129: Tour de France Femmes before the Women's WorldTour peloton battled it out for victory on the slopes of the Alpe d'Huez. Despite an epic race in the fight for the yellow jersey between Demi Vollering and Kasia Niewiadoma which unfolded, Illi Gardner managed to retain her QOM title.
There are many cycling climbs that have become legendary. La Planche des Belles Filles, the Puy de Dôme, the Col du Tourmalet, the Cauberg, the Côte de La Redoute and Passo dello Stelvio, just to name a few. But none of these climbs have the same status as L’Alpe d’Huez. The climb made famous by the Tour de France has become the mountain of all cycling mountains, and thousands of people – professional and amateur – make the pilgrimage to the Grandes Rousses range in the Alpine Oisans area to tackle a 13.8-kilometre-long climb that is loaded with cycling history.
Illi Gardner is one of those cyclists. She conquered L’Alpe d’Huez for the first time in 2021 when on holiday in France. However, Gardner’s ascent was not just a bucket-list ride, she was there with a mission: to set the Strava Queen of the Mountain (QOM) record. On her second attempt (she had already ridden the brute of a climb the day before, narrowly missing the fastest time), she knocked former Grande Boucle winner Emma Pooley from the number-one position on the 21-hairpin, 1,860m ascent. Pooley’s record was 45:41, set almost nine years previously. Gardner’s time: 43:12. And in a stop-press moment that may help her keep her record, she re-broke the record on July 2 this year, taking it down to 42:22.
No one else has come close to challenging her time since her record-breaking attempt in 2021. But riders like Demi Vollering, Kasia Niewiadoma, Gaia Realini and Elisa Longo Borghini threaten to take her prestigious Strava QOM crown as the 2024 Tour de France Femmes features the hallowed climb for the first time in the race’s modern iteration.
“If they attack from the bottom, it is going to be hard to retain it. But if they hold back and stay together until a bit higher up, it will be a bit safer,” Gardner said to Rouleur. But while she hopes to retain her title on the climb, the fact that such fabled mountains are included in the women’s race is far more exciting to Gardner than holding on to a Strava title, even if she’ll be keeping a close eye on the winning times. “I will be tempted to return and try to secure the title again, if I get beaten,” she said.
L’Alpe d’Huez has been a regular feature in the men’s Tour de France since the 1970s, and it made its first appearance in 1952 when Fausto Coppi won there. Riders such as Bernard Hinault, Marco Pantani, Thibaut Pinot, Geraint Thomas and, most recently, Tom Pidcock, have followed in Coppi’s tracks, etching their names into the climb’s fabled history. And winning at L’Alpe d’Huez has become the holy grail of Tour stage wins for any professional rider. This is because the climb that snakes around so many hairpin bends has produced some of the most enthralling and dramatic stages, and the densest, most intense crowds. Every time the climb has been featured in the race, tens of thousands of people have lined the sides of the road, a sea of polka-dot t-shirts and a roar of cheers.
Last year, the modern Tour de France Femmes tackled the Col du Tourmalet for the first time, which was a great success not just for the fans who were able to watch the professionals climb such a tough pass, but for the riders too, who got to enjoy and embrace being a part of such a special stage. And the two stages are linked for Gardner – she also holds the QOM for the Tourmalet, even after Demi Vollering’s epic 2023 stage win. But it is no surprise that Gardner retained her crown; she has over 9,000 QOMs to her name on Strava – more than any other Strava profile – including epic climbs like Sa Calobra, the Col du Télégraphe and the Col du Galibier.
However, searching for Strava QOMs and mountain passes hasn’t always been Gardner’s sole focus. The British rider was once a professional, representing the UCI team CAMS-Tifosi from 2020 to 2021. Before that, she was racing for lower-level outfits alongside studying for a degree in visual effects and motion graphics at the University of South Wales. She realised, however, that her true calling was in the mountains, not within the peloton, and as her 2021 season was coming to an end, now armed with a university degree which she passed with first-class honours, she decided to step back from road racing and instead sought to establish her career in climbing mountains – a decision that has proven extremely successful.
In 2023, she won the Championnats d’Europe des Grimpeurs in Switzerland, finishing 1:38 ahead of the second-placed rider. Gardner is also a two-time UK national hill climbing champion, winning atop The Struggle in the Lake District last year and Horseshoe Pass in Wales in 2022. She also holds the Women’s Everesting world record, climbing 8,848 metres in eight hours and five minutes, beating the record she already held. Not only is she a machine on mountains in the real world, but she is a fiend on the turbo trainer, claiming the Zwift Games Climb Championship in March 2024.
Climbing is her passion and it shows in her results. But Gardner doesn’t have the latest tech or overly fancy kit; her record rides consist of just her and pure talent for this type of terrain. Alongside the unusual career she has forged for herself, she also had a full-time job to juggle – she works as a freelance video production artist. Gardner has followed this career path since she left university, working on programmes such as Doctor Who for BBC Wales and Maternal for ITV. “It’s quite different from cycling, but it’s good, I never feel too much pressure from either side,” she said.
This helps to keep Gardener busy, too, as unfortunately, hill climbing does not have as many events as Gardner would like. There are more events on short hills, but not the mountain passes where she really wants to test herself. However, this doesn’t stop her from clocking up the elevation. When Rouleur spoke to Gardner, she was in France, staying just outside Monaco, and spending her days conquering climbs such as the Col de la Cayolle, Col du Turini (completing all three ascents in one ride), the Col d’Èze, and Mont Ventoux. This is her training: find a mountain and climb to the top. Simple.
She is self-coached, or as Gardner said: “It means, basically, just a lack of structure.” But this ability to pick and choose how she wishes to train is a factor that keeps her enjoyment for the hills high. She added: “I probably ride harder now than I did when I had a coach. It is difficult, but in a fun way. I don’t go out and do an effort every day, but I just like discovering new roads and new ways up hills. I have stopped doing flat routes, but maybe I should be including them. I just find them a bit boring. It is nice to have a sense of accomplishment, and discovering something new is fun.”
Gardner was born in Wales but grew up in California, USA, and her family moved back to Cardiff in 2017. Her dad introduced her to the hills, as he would take her on rides that included the area’s steepest climbs. She has always been very sporty, swimming every weekend and participating in many other sports throughout her childhood, but decided to focus on cycling as she grew older. This athletic background has helped with her determination as she climbs some of the most gruelling mountains, however, allowing her to dig deep when wanting to break records.
“I think doing sports from a really young age makes determination a natural thing,” she said. “But I think you can definitely develop this because I remember when I first started hill climbing, I would give up a little bit. But the more you do it, the more confidence you gain, and you know you can get through it. Now I think I can’t give up – I know I can get through it.”
While she makes long, epic climbs look easy, she stated that it is “still painful”. She still feels the same leg-burning pain and heart-pounding sensations every other cyclist experiences when the gradients start to ratchet up; she just reaches the summit quicker than most. She recalled her effort up L’Alpe d’Huez, saying that she was at threshold the entire way to the summit. But for Gardner it is pain with passion and to her this is the “purest form of cycling” and why she enjoys it so much. “I love the sense of accomplishment at the top. There is nothing quite like that feeling,” she said.
When the Women’s WorldTour makes its historic ascent to L’Alpe d’Huez, the riders will race through baying crowds, cheered on by fans who will be waving flags and running alongside them as they climb this Tour de France landmark. The riders will be thinking of tactics, keeping their eyes on their rivals, hoping to write themselves into the Tour history books as the first woman to win at L’Alpe d’Huez this century, next to the greatest cyclists of all time. Yet in 2021, as Gardner set her record-breaking time, there were no cheers, no team of domestiques – only her heartbeat, pounding in sync with her love for the mountains, en route to a queen of the mountains title. That’s the way Gardner likes it.
