Category Climbs In Cycling: What Are The 5 Tour de France Climbing Categories?
The 5 categories of climbs in cycling designate the difficulty of the climb, based on length, gradient, and (depending on who is doing the categorizing) a range of other objective or subjective factors such as where the climb falls in a race.
In some professional races such as the Tour de France, the categories also dictate the number of points awarded for the Mountains Classification.