telegraph.co.uk, 1 September 2012
Following a ridiculously early alarm call 600 cyclists gathered behind the shoreside starting line in Geneva, Switzerland, with 780 kilometres of road between them and the finishing line on the Côte d'Azur. The numbers were staggeringly scary: 780km including 21,000 metres of ascending over 19 mythical Alpine cols in seven successive days. All against the clock. The Haute Route, in its second year of running, has not called itself 'the toughest and highest sportive in the world' for nothing.