“I was almost crying, so afraid I was.”Movistar’s Marlen Reusser is one of the strongest riders in the peloton, but Mont Ventoux is a different beast.The ‘Giant of Provence’ is making its Tour de France Femmes debut on Friday and its blank slopes will form the canvas for one of the race’s greatest general classification battles yet.The mountain is fabled in cycling for its steep gradients, propensity for vicious winds and racing folklore. Stripped of the trees on its top in the 12th century, the bald limestone summit is one of the sport’s most distinctive locations.A lonely communications tower marks its highest point, bringing together an oddly lunar landscape that has witnessed some of cycling’s weird, wonderful and tragic moments.So, what can we expect from the mythical climb?“Hard, iconic, beautiful.”Speaking on Wednesday before her third-place finish to Demi Vollering and Reusser, Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney sums up Mont Ventoux.The route for the Tour’s seventh stage on Friday forces riders up 15.1 km of an average 8.8 percent gradient, though it does reach 10 percent. It doesn’t boast the world’s steepest slopes — the Vuelta a Espana’s Alto de l’Angliru has a higher average gradient of 9.9 percent — and three-quarters of the way up, the climb mellows for one kilometer.But combined with the unique weather conditions, it poses riders with a unique set of problems.Completely exposed to the elements, the mountain is regularly visited by the fierce northwesterly mistral winds, such as those which greeted Reusser on a reconnaissance ride earlier this year.“I went to see it just before this Tour,” she said after stage 5. “It was very windy that day and it was impressive, especially the downhill. I had a bit high rims (on her wheels), I was almost crying so afraid I was because there were gusts. I was impressed by this climb.”The conditions are so crucial to the climb’s personality that the French word for wind, ‘vent’, is often said to be the etymology of the mountain’s name. Others claim, however, that it has Celto-Ligurian origins, with the prefix ‘ven’ meaning high place — the 15.7 km ascent on Friday takes the peloton to a height above sea level of 1,910 m (6,270 ft).That gruelling task of reaching the summit was once described by French philosopher, and cycling fan, Roland Barthes as an “unfair tribute of suffering.”