On stage 12 of the 1955 Tour, the riders went over Mount Ventoux. Ten kilometres from the summit, said the journalist Jacques Augendre, French rider Jean Malléjac was: Streaming with sweat, haggard and comatose, he was zigzagging and the road wasn't wide enough for him... He was already no longer in the real world, still less in the world of cyclists and the Tour de France. Malléjac collapsed, falling to the ground with one foot still trapped in a pedal. The other leg pedalled on in the air. He was, said Pierre Chany, completely unconscious, his face the colour of a corpse, a freezing sweat ran on his forehead.