1964 tour de france riders

1964 Tour de France

51st edition: june 22 - july 14, 1964, results, stages with running gc, photos and history.

Map of the 1964 Tour de France

The Golden Sayings of Epictetus is available as an audiobook here .

1964 Tour Quick Facts:

4,502.4 km raced at an average speed of 35.420 km/hr.

There were 132 starters and 81 classified finishers.

The 1964 Tour de France was one of the greatest races of all time.

Anquetil had come off his Giro victory that ended just fourteen days before the Tour started and was tired.

His battle with Poulidor culminating in a titanic side-by side climb up Puy de Dôme in stage 20, where Anquetil had conserved just 14 seconds of his lead, is one of the legends of the sport.

Although Anquetil was now the first 5-time Tour winner and the second winner of the Giro-Tour double (after Coppi).

He would never again win a Grand Tour.

Complete Final 1964 Tour de France General Classification:

Raymond Poulidor (Mercier-BP) @ 55sec
Federico Bahamontes (Margnat-Paloma) @ 4min 44sec
Henry Anglade (Pelforth-Sauvage-Lejeune) @ 6min 42sec
Georges Groussard (Pelforth-Sauvage-Lejeune) @ 10min 34sec
André Foucher (Pelforth-Sauvage-Lejeune) @ 10min 36sec
Julio Jiménez (KAS) @ 12min 13sec
Gilbert Desmet (Wiels-Groene-Leeuw) @ 12min 17sec
Jans Junkermann (Wiels-Groene-Leeuw) @ 14min 2sec
Vittorio Adorni (Salvarani) @ 14min 19sec
Esteban Martin (Margnat-Paloma) @ 25min 11sec
Fernando Manzaneque (Ferrys) @ 32min 9sec
Francisco Gabica (KAS) @ 41min 47sec
Tom Simpson (Peugeot-BP) @ 41min 50sec
Rudi Altig (St Raphaël-Gitane) @ 42min 8sec
Karl-Heinz Kunde (Wiels-Groene-Leeuw) @ 42min 16sec
Joaquin Galera (KAS) @ 43min 47sec
Henri Duez (Peugeot-BP) @ 46min 16sec
Joseph Novales (Margnat-Paloma) @ 48min 49sec
Eddy Pauwels (Margnat-Paloma) @ 50min 2sec
Arnaldo Pambiano (Salvarani) @ 52min 0sec
Louis Rostollan (St Raphaël-Gitane) @ 55min 6sec
Sebastian Elorza (KAS) @ 55min 14sec
Jan Janssen (Pelforth) @ 59min 31sec
Battista Babini (Salvarani) @ 1hr 5min 24sec
Rogelio Hernandez (Ferrys) @ 1hr 8min 16sec
Claude Mattio (Margnat-Paloma) @ 1hr 13min 45sec
Raymond Mastrotto (Peugeot-BP) @ 1hr 16min 34sec
Paul Vermeulen (Mercier-BP) @ 1hr 18min 50sec
Willy Monty (Pelforth) @ 1hr 23min 26sec
Jean Gainche (Mercier-BP) @ 1hr 28min 20sec
Victor Van Schil (Mercier-BP) @ 1hr 30min 13sec
Edouard Sels (Solo-Superia) @ 1hr 31min 35sec
Guy Epaud (Pelforth) @ 1hr 33min 12sec
Jean Stablinski (St Raphaël-Gitane) @ 1hr 34min 10sec
André Zimmerman (St Raphaël-Gitane) @ 1hr 37min 52sec
Hubertus Zilverberg (Flandria-Romeo) @ 1hr 41min 30sec
Albertus Geldermans (St Raphaël-Gitane) @ 1hr 46min 24sec
Cees Haast (Televizier) @ 1hr 47min 44sec
Gilbert Desmet (Wiels-Groene Leeuw) @ 1hr 48min 12sec
Juan Uribezubia (KAS) @ 1hr 49min 33sec
Camille Vyncke (Flandria-Romeo) @ 2hr 0min 17sec
Jo De Roo (St Raphaël-Gitane) @ 2hr 0min 23sec
Luis Otano (Ferrys) @ 2hr 1min 11sec
José Segu (Margnat-Paloma) @ 2hr 1min 34sec
Antonio Franchi (Salvarani) @ 2hr 3min 28sec
Robert Poulot (Mercier-BP) @ 2hr 6min 26sec
Bruno Fantinato (Salvarani) @ 2hr 6min 35sec
Benoni Beheyt (Wiels-Groene Leeuw) @ 2hr 8min 7sec
Italo Mazzacurati (Savarani) @ 2hr 8min 8sec
Edouard Delberghe (Pelforth) @ 2hr 9min 40sec
Martín Piñera (KAS) @ 2hr 11min 3sec
Guillaume Van Tongerloo (Flandria-Romeo) @ 2hr 15min 34sec
Hubert Ferrer (Pelforth) @ 2hr 15min 59sec
Antonio Bertran (Ferrys) @ 2hr 18min 38sec
Michael Wright (Wiels-Groene Leeuw) @ 2hr 19min 8sec
Bernard Vendekerkhove (Solo-Superia) @ 2hr 21min 29sec
Michel Van Aerde (Solo-Superia) @ 2hr 21min 57sec
Robert Cazala (Mercier-BP) @ 2hr 24min 21sec
Jo De Haan (Televizier) @ 2hr 25min 47sec
Edgard Sorgeloos (Solo-Superia) @ 2hr 30min 22sec
Mario Minieri (Salvarani) @ 2hr 31min 29sec
Pierre Everaert (St Raphaël-Gitane) @ 2hr 32min 9sec
Rik Wauters (Televizier) @ 2hr 34min 6sec
Barry Hoban (Mercier-BP) @ 2hr 38min 48sec
Hank Nijdam (Televizier) @ 2hr 41min 2sec
André Darrigade (Margnat-Paloma) @ 2hr 41min 9sec
Willy Berboven (Solo-Superia) @ 2hr 42min 9sec
Camille Le Menn (Peugeot) @ 2hr 47min 36sec
Frans Brands (Flandria-Romeo) @ 2hr 48min 28sec
François Hamon (Peugeot-BP) @ 2hr 50min 23sec
Vic Denson (Solo-Superia) @ 2hr 57min 23sec
Antonio Barrutia (KAS) @ 2hr 57min 57sec
Joseph Groussard (Pelforth) @ 2hr 59min 28sec
Frans Aerenhouts (Mercier-BP) @ 3hr 3min 6sec
Jean Grazcyk (Margnat-Paloma) @ 3hr 4min 21sec
Jean Milesi (Margnat-Paloma) @ 3hr 7min 7sec
Jean-Pierre Genet (Mercier-BP) @ 3he 12min 55sec
Jean-Baptiste Claes (Wiels-Groene Leeuw) @ 3hr 12min 57sec
Salvador Honrubia (Ferrys) @ 3hr 17min 7sec
Anatole Novak (St Raphaël-Gitane) @ 3hr 19min 2sec

Climbers' Competition:

Julio Jiménez (KAS): 167
Raymond Poulidor (Mercier-BP): 90
Hans Junkermann (Wiels-Groene Leeuw): 47
Henry Anglade (Pelforth): 44
Jacques Anquetil (St Raphaël-Gitane): 34
André Foucher (Pelforth): 33
Karl-Heinz Kunde (Wiels-Groene Leeuw): 27
Vittorio Adorni (Salvarani): 26
Martín Piñera (KAS): 23

Points Competition:

Edward Sels (Solo Superia): 199
Rudi Altig (St. Raphaël-Gitane): 165
Gilbert Desmet (Wiels-Groene Leeuw): 147
Raymond Poulidor (Mercier-BP): 133
Jacques Anquetil (St Raphaël-Gitane): 111
Benoni Beheyt (Wiels-Groene Leeuw), Henk Nijdam (Televizier): 103
Vittorio Adorni (Salvarani): 83
André Darrigade (Margnat-Paloma): 78

Team Classification:

Pelforth: 381hr 33min 36sec
Wiels-Groene leeuw @ 30min 24sec
St Raphaël-Gitane @ 30min 52sec
Margnat-Paloma @ 53min 9sec
KAS @ 1hr 7min 34sec
Salvarani @ 1hr 50min 42sxec
Mercier-BP @ 2hr 2min 53sec
Ferrys @ 2hr 11min 22sec
Peugeot-BP @ 2hr 27min 35sec
Flandria-Romeo @ 4hr 32min 17sec
Solo-Superia @ 4hr 39m 5sec
Televizier @ 5hr 35min 10sec

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Stage Results with Running GC:

Stage 1: Monday, June 22, Rennes - Lisieux, 215 km

Edward Sels: 5hr 14min 57sec
Michael Wright s.t.
Benoni Beheyt s.t.
Willy Bocklant s.t.
Rudi Altig s.t.
Jo De Roo s.t.
Jan Janssen s.t.
Jean Graczyk s.t.
Frans Melckenbeeck s.t.
Emile Daems s.t.

GC after stage 1:

Edward Sels: 5hr 13min 57sec
Michael Wright @ 30sec
Benoni Beheyt @ 1min

Stage 2: Tuesday, June 23, Lisieux - Amiens, 208 km

André Darrigade: 5hr 7min 47sec
Vito Taccone s.t.
André Van Aert s.t.
Frans Verbeeck s.t.
Gilbert Desmet s.t.

GC after Stage 2:

Edward Sels: 10hr 21min 44sec
André Darrigade s.t.
Jan Janssen @ 30sec
Willy Bocklant @ 1min

Stage 3A: Wednesday, June 24, Amiens - Forest, 196.5 km

Bernard Vanderkerkhove: 5hr 7min 32sec
Jean Stablinski s.t.
Gilbert Desmet @ 3sec
Jean Anastasi @ 5sec
Edward Sels @ 19sec
Arthur De Cabooter s.t.

GC after stage 3A:

Bernard Vanderkerhove: 15hr 29min 16sec
Jan Janssen @ 49sec
Gilbert Desmet @ 1min 3sec
Willy Bocklant @ 1min 19sec

Stage 3B: Wednesday, June 24, Forest 21.3 km Team Time Trial.

The rider's real times were applied to their GCs. Team times were caculated by adding up each teams' first three riders' times.

KAS-Kaskol: 1hr 34min 5sec
Pelforth-Sauvage-Lejeune @ 8sec
Wiel's-Groene-Leeuw @ 21sec
Solo-Superia @ 43sec
Ferrys @ 1min 17sec
Mercier-BP @ 1min 25sec
Peugeot-BP @ 1min 37sec
St. Raphaël-Gitane @ 1min 43sec
Salvarani @ 2min 41sec
Margnat-Paloma @ 3min 49sec
Flandria-Romeo @ 4min 52sec
Televizier @ 5min 17sec

GC after stage 3B:

Bernard Vanderkerkhove: 16hr 52sec
Jan Janssen @ 39sec
Michael Wright @ 42sec
Gilbert Desmet @ 55sec
José-Antonio Momene @ 1min 4sec
Francisco Gabica s.t.
Henry Anglade s.t.
Carlos Echevarria @ 1min 6sec
François Mahé @ 1min 9sec

Stage 4: Thursday, June 25, Forest - Metz, 291.5 km

Rudi Altig: 8hr 26min
Henk Nijdam s.t.
Armand Desmet s.t.
Fernando Manzaneque s.t.
Edward Sels @ 8sec
Frans Aerenhouts s.t.

GC after stage 4:

Bernard Vanderkerkhove: 24hr 27min
Rudi Altig @ 31sec
Henry Anglade @ 56sec

Stage 5: Friday, June 26, Metz - Fribourg

Willy Derboven: 4hr 2min 51sec
Joaquin Galera s.t.
Joseph Groussard s.t.
Georges Groussard s.t.
Edward Sels @ 4min 2sec

GC after Stage 5:

Rudi Altig: 28hr 29min 52sec
Georges Groussard @ 1min 8sec
Joaquin Galera @ 1min 29sec
Joseph Groussard @ 3min 25sec
Bernard Vanderkerhove @ 4min 1sec
Edward Sels @ 4min 20sec
Jan Janssen @ 4min 32sec
Michael Wright @ 4min 43sec
Gilbert Desmet @ 4min 56sec
Henry Anglade @ 4min 57sec

Stage 6: Saturday, June 27, Fribourg - Besançon, 200 km

Henk Nijdam: 5hr 5min 18sec
Jo De Haan @ 11sec
Edward Sels s.t.
Bruno Fantinato s.t.
Rik Wouters s.t.

GC after Stage 6:

Rudi Altig: 33hr 35min 21sec
Bernard Vanderkerkhove @ 4min 1sec

Stage 7: Sunday, June 28, Champagnole - Thonon les Bains, 195 km.

Jan Janssen: 5hr 2min 14sec
Vin Denson s.t.
Henri Duez s.t.
Jos Hoevenaers s.t.
Eddy Pauwels s.t.
Arnoldo Pambianco s.t.
Raymond Poulidor s.t.
Hans Junkermann s.t.
Guy Epaud s.t.

GC after Stage 7:

Rudi Altig: 38hr 38min 9sec
Georges Groussard @ 34sec
Jan Janssen @ 2min 58sec
Bernard Vandekerkhove @ 4min 1sec
Sebastian Elorza @ 4min 37sec
André Foucher @ 4min 42sec

Stage 8: Monday, June 29, Thonon les Bains - Briançon, 248.5 km

Federico Bahamontes: 7hr 20min 52sec
Raymond Poulidor @ 1min 32sec
Hans Junkermann @ 1min 33sec
André Foucher s.t.
Jean-Claude Lebaube @ 1min 36sec
Jacques Anquetil @ 1min 49sec
Esteban Martin @ 2min 18sec
Tom Simpson @ 2min 39sec

GC after Stage 8:

Georges Groussard: 46hr 1min 8sec
Federico Bahamontes @ 3min 35sec
Raymond Poulidor @ 4min 7sec
André Foucher @ 4min 8sec
Henry Anglade @ 4min 23sec
Rudi Altig @ 4min 38sec
Hans Junkermann @ 4min 47sec
Jacques Anquetil @ 5min 22sec
Julio Jiménez @ 6min 3sec
Tom Simpson @ 6min 10sec

Stage 9: Tuesday, June 30, Briançon - Monaco, 239 km

Jacques Anquetil: 7hr 26min 59sec
Tom Simpson s.t.
Vittorio Adorni s.t.
Claude Mattio s.t.
Battista Babini s.t.

GC after Stage 9:

Georges Groussard: 53hr 28min 7sec
Jacques Anquetil @ 4min 22sec
Henri Anglade @ 4min 23sec
Tom Simpson @ 5min 40sec
Jean-Claude Lebaube @ 6min 17sec
Esteban Martin @ 6min 53sec

Stage 10A: Wendesday, July 1, Monaco - Hyères, 187.5 km

Jan Janssen: 5hr 30min 58sec
Jean-Pierre Genet s.t.
Guillaume Van Tongerloo @ 4sec
Edward Sels @ 1min 2sec

GC after Stage 10A:

Georges Groussard: 59hr 7sec
Rudi Altig @ 6min 9sec

Stage 10B: Wednesday, July 1, Hyères - Toulon 20.8 km Individual Time Trial

Jacques Anquetil: 27min 52sec
Raymond Poulidor @ 36sec
Rudi Altig @ 54sec
Ferdi Bracke @ 1min 7sec
Vittorio Adorni @ 1min 31sec
Henry Anglade @ 1min 33sec
Henk Nijdam @ 1min 36sec
Francisco Gabica @ 1min 44sec
Miguel Pacheco @ 1min 50sec
Albertus Geldermans @ 1min 57sec

GC after Stage 10B:

Georges Groussard: 59hr 30min 50sec
Jacques Anquetil @ 1min 11sec
Raymond poulidor @ 1min 42sec
Federico Bahamontes @ 3min 4sec
Henry Anglade @ 3min 5sec
Rudi Altig @ 4min 12sec
André Foucher @ 4min 16sec
Hans Junkermann @ 5min 16sec
Tom Simpson @ 5min 29sec
Gilbert Desmet @ 6min 3sec

Stage 11: Thursday, July 2, Toulon - Montpellier, 250 km

Edward Sels: 7hr 49min 28sec
Jan Graczyk s.t.
Jo De Haan s.t.
Antonio Barrutia s.t.

GC after Stage 11:

Georges Groussard: 67hr 20min 23sec
Raymond Poulidor @ 1min 42sec
Rudi Altig @ 4min 7sec
Tom Simpson @ 5min 24sec
Gilbert Desmet @ 5min 58sec

Stage 12: Friday, July 3, Montpellier - Perpignan, 174 km.

Jo De Roo: 4hr 44min 20sec
Guy Epaud @ 1sec
Henk Nijdam @ 3sec
Mario Minieri @ 3sec
Barry Hoban @ 6sec
José Segu s.t.

GCafter Stage 12:

Georges Groussard: 72hr 4min 56sec
Rudi Altig @ 4min

Stage 13: Saturday, July 4, Perpignan - Andorra, 170 km

Julio Jiménez: 4hr 54min 53sec
Benoni Beheyt @ 8min 52sec
Jacques Anquetil s.t.
Sebastian Elorza s.t.

GC after stage 13:

Georges Groussard: 77hr 8min 41sec
Federico Bahamontes @ 3min 11sec
Julio Jiménez @ 5min 3sec

Stage 14: Monday, July 6, Andorra - Toulouse, 186 km

Edward Sels: 4hr 36min 56sec
Luis Otano s.t.
Willy Monty s.t.

GC after Stage 14:

Georges Groussard: 81hr 45min 37sec
Jacques Anquetil @ 1min 26sec
Raymond Poulidor @ 4min 28sec
Gilbert Desmet @ 5min 28sec
Rudi Altig @ 6min 36sec

Stage 15: Tuesday, July 7, Toulouse - Luchon, 203 km

Raymond Poulidor: 6hr 7min 55sec
Francisco Gabica @ 1min 9sec
Gilbert Desmet @ 1min 43sec

GC after stage 15:

Georges Groussard: 87hr 55min 15sec
Raymond Poulidor @ 1min 35sec
Federico Bahamontes @ 3min 29sec
Julio Jiménez @ 5min 21sec
Tom Simpson @ 8min 17sec

Stage 16: Wednesday, July 8, Luchon - Pau, 197 km

Federico Bahamontes: 6hr 18min 47sec
Jan Janssen @ 1min 54sec
Karl-Heinz Kunde s.t.
Esteban Martin

GC after Stage 16:

Georges Groussard : 94hr 15min 56sec
Federico Bahamontes @ 35sec
Vittorio Adorni @ 11min 13sec

Stage 17: Thursday, July 9, Peyrehorade - Bayonne 42.6 km Individual Time Trial

Jacques Anquetil: 1hr 1min 53sec
Raymond Poulidor @ 37sec
Rudi Altig @ 1min 19sec
Henry Anglade @ 2min 2sec
Vittorio Adorni @ 2min 43sec
Francisco Gabica @ 2min 44sec
Camille Le Menn @ 2min 55sec
Gilbert Desmet @ 3min 24sec
Albertus Geldermans @ 3min 41sec
Barry Hoban @ 3min 51sec

GC after Stage 17:

Jacques Anquetil: 95hr 18min 55sec
Raymond Poulidor @ 56sec
Federico Bahamontes @ 3min 31sec
Henry Anglade @ 4min 1sec
Georges Groussard @ 4min 53sec
André Foucher @ 7min 30sec
Gilbert Desmet @ 7min 46sec
Hans Junkermann @ 9min 2sec
Julio Jiménez @ 11min 10sec
Vittorio Adorni @ 12min 50sec

Stage 18: Friday, July 10, Bayonne - Bordeaux, 187 km

André Darrigade: 5hr 5min 12sec
Barry Hoban s.t.
Michel Van Aerde s.t.
Edgar Sorgeloos s.t.
Mario Minieri s.t.

GC after Stage 18:

Jacques Anquetil: 100hr 24min 7sec
Gilbert Desmet @ 7min 43sec

Stage 19: Saturday, July 11, Bordeaux - Brive, 215.5 km

Edward Sels: 5hr 50min 30sec
Mario Minieri @ 1sec
Frans Aerenhouts @ 2sec
Henk Nijdam @ 4sec
Jean Gainche s.t.

GC after Stage 19:

Jacques Anquetil: 106hr 14min 41sec

Stage 20: Sunday, July 12, Brive - Puy de Dôme, 237.5 km

Major ascents: St. Privat, Puy de Dôme

Julio Jiménez: 7hr 9min 33sec
Federico Bahamontes @ 11sec
Raymond Poulidor @ 57sec
Vittorio Adorni @ 1min 30sec
Jacques Anquetil @ 1min 39sec
Henry Anglade @ 1min 59sec
André Foucher @ 2min 4sec
Francisco Gabica @ 2min 32sec
Fernando Manzaneque @ 2min 46sec
Jan Janssen @ 3min 22sec

GC after Stage 20:

Jacques Anquetil: 113hr 25min 53sec
Raymond Poulidor @ 14sec
Federico Bahamontes @ 1min 33sec
Henry Anglade @ 4min 21sec
Georges Groussard @ 6min 49sec
André Foucher @ 7min55sec
Julio Jiménez @ 8min 31sec
Gilbert Desmet @ 10min 25sec
Hans Junkermann @ 10min 49sec
Vittorio Adorni @ 14min 41sec

Stage 21: Monday, July 13, Clermont Ferrand - Orléans, 311 km

Jean Stablinski: 9hr 29min 33sec
Battista Babini @ 1sec
Hubert Ferrer s.t.
Joseph Novales s.t.
Salvador Honrubia s.t.
Edward Sels @ 9min 37sec
Benoni Beheyt

GC after Stage 21:

Jacques Anquetil: 123hr 5min 3sec
André Foucher @ 7min 55sec
Vittorio Adorni @ 12min 41sec

Stage 22A: Tuesday, July 14, Orléans - Versailles, 118.5 km

Benoni Beheyt: 3hr 25min 24sec
Edward Sels @ 7sec
Victor Van Schil s.t.

GC after stage 22A:

Jacques Anquetil: 126hr 32min 54sec
Raymond poulidor @ 14sec

Stage 22B (final stage): Tuesday, July 14, Versailles - Paris 27.5 km Individual Time Trial

Jacques Anquetil: 37min 10sec
Rudi Altig @ 15sec
Raymond Poulidor @ 21sec
Vittorio Adorni @ 1min 18sec
Gilbert Desmet @ 1min 32sec
Henry Anglade @ 2min 1sec
Albertus Geldermans @ 2min 6sec
Camille Le Menn @ 2min 15sec
André Foucher @ 2mn 21sec

Complete Final 1964 Tour de France General Classification

The Story of the 1964 Tour de France:

This excerpt is from "The Story of the Tour de France", Volume 1. If you enjoy it we hope you will consider purchasing the book in either print, eBook or audiobook formats. The Amazon link here will make the purchase easy.

Anquetil started the 1964 season well. He won Ghent-Wevelgem and then the Giro d'Italia. If he won the 1964 Tour he would achieve the Giro-Tour double, a feat previously accomplished in the same year only by Fausto Coppi. He would also perform the then-unequaled feat of winning the Tour de France for a fifth time.

He had taken the 1964 Giro lead in the stage 5 time trial and had held the leader's Pink Jersey for the rest of the race. Subjected to relentless attacks, he was forced to work especially hard to defend his lead in the Giro. The effort left him exhausted. Many wondered if Anquetil could ride an effective Tour that started just 2 weeks after this brutal Giro ended. Anquetil was aiming for the stars. While his 4 Tour wins were the record, a fifth win while doing a Giro-Tour double would make him one of the greatest racers in history.

There were no new challengers on the Tour scene so the main contenders for the 1964 Tour were the same as the year before, Bahamontes and Poulidor.

Poulidor brought excellent form to the 1964 Tour. He won the 1964 Vuelta a España, which was then run early in the year, as well as the Critérium National. He was second at Milan–San Remo and the Dauphiné Libéré and fourth in Paris-Nice. He had every right to expect that he would do well and possibly even win the Tour.

Let's stop a minute and take a look at Raymond Poulidor.

The battles between Poulidor and Anquetil enlivened racing (and arguments between racing fans) as much in France as the Bartali-Coppi contests fired up the Italians a generation before. Poulidor was the superior climber and Anquetil was the better time trialist. Poulidor was never able to gain enough of an advantage in the mountains to make up for his losses against the clock. Anquetil was also the superior tactician and psychologist. When his physical limits threatened his chances he could call upon his superior intellect and salvage a race. This was a gift denied Poulidor.

Here is Pouildor's Tour Record:

By the years:

Here's a selection of other Poulidor wins: Milan–San Remo, Fleche Wallonne, Grand Prix des Nations (even though he wasn't a time trialist of Anquetil's caliber, he was still very, very good against the clock), Vuelta a España, Critérium National, Dauphiné Libéré, Catalonian Week and Paris–Nice.

In 1974, at the Montreal World Road Championships, only 39-year old Raymond Poulidor could stay with Eddy Merckx when he attacked on the last time up Mount Royal, finishing just 2 seconds behind the great man. If anyone could paraphrase Raphaël Géminiani this time, it was Poulidor. He was first because he was the first human across the line. No normal person was going to beat Merckx that day.

This was an extraordinary career by any measure.

In the wars for the affection of the French people, Poulidor won hands down. It baffled and angered Anquetil that even though Anquetil could beat Poulidor over and over again, "Pou-Pou", the "Eternal Second" was first in the French hearts and remains there today. I have often thought that Poulidor tapped into a piece of the French psyche that made Crecy and Agincourt possible. It was at Crecy, France that the English with their technically superior longbows slaughtered the French armored knights. Later, at Agincourt, the French knights jostled for position to be first to hurl themselves against the English longbowmen only to be slaughtered again. Le Gloire (glorious renown) isn't necessarily gained by victory.

To continue:

The 1964 Tour was 4,504 kilometers divided into 25 stages going clockwise, Alps first then the Pyrenees. To increase the drama the Tour would head into the Massif Central and climb the Puy de Dôme, an extinct volcano whose final 5 kilometers have a gradient that approaches 13%.

For the first part of the Tour as the race sped east from Rennes in Brittany, Anquetil was unremarkable. He knew he had a finite supply of energy and had announced in advance his plans to let others do the racing in the first week. He didn't even place in the top 10 of a stage until stage 8.

His teammate Rudi Altig, however, did have early ambitions. After passing through Brittany and Normandy, the Tour headed into Belgium and then southeast into Germany. Altig wanted to be wearing the leader's jersey while the Tour went through his home country. By winning the fourth stage into Metz he was in an excellent position to realize his ambition. He had the Green Points Jersey and was only 31 seconds behind the current leader, Bernard van de Kerckhove.

The next stage traveled through the Vosges, hilly country in eastern France that encouraged breakaways. Altig powered a 5-man break 4 minutes clear of the field into Fribourg and secured the overall lead. Rudi Altig the German rider was in Yellow in Germany. Anquetil was not entirely pleased that his teammate had been so successful. In that break was a rider on the Pelforth team, Georges Groussard, who was now in second place, only a minute behind Altig. Groussard was an excellent rider with fine climbing skills and Altig had given him a 4-minute boost. Anquetil did not relish the prospect of overcoming that time gain just so that Altig could enjoy a little bit of German glory.

Stage 7 went through the Jura, mountains on the northeastern edge of the Alps. Tongues wagged when Poulidor got into a 15-man break that included Groussard and left the rest of the peloton (with Anquetil) a half-minute behind. Altig was still in Yellow but Poulidor had stolen a march on a very obviously tired Anquetil.

Stage 8 was the first full-blown Alpine stage with both the Télégraphe and the Galibier. Bahamontes was first over both summits. Poulidor went after him on the Galibier and came close to making contact with the flying Spaniard. Meanwhile, Anquetil was suffering, losing time on the climb. Once over the top he used his considerable descending skills to try to close the gap. Even with a flat tire he was still able to limit his losses to Poulidor to only 17 seconds. Bahamontes won the stage, Poulidor came in second and thereby gained a 3 second time bonus. Anquetil's worries about Groussard turned out to be completely justified. The Pelforth rider was now in Yellow.

So, after the first day of hard climbing here were the standings:

Anquetil showed he was up for the race the next day in the Briançon-Monaco stage which took in 3 major climbs. None of the contenders was able to get away from the others, and 22 riders came into Monaco, driven hard by an Anquetil who had miraculously found incredible stores of energy. It was a track finish Poulidor should have won, but he sprinted too early, not realizing that there was another lap to ride. Anquetil beat Tom Simpson for the stage. Poulidor's missing (and Anquetil's winning) the time bonus for winning the stage would loom very large at the end of the Tour. Anquetil was now in fifth place, 4 minutes, 22 seconds behind Groussard.

Stage 10b was a 20.8-kilometer time trial and Anquetil won it with Poulidor just 36 seconds behind.

Anquetil was relentlessly hunting Groussard and getting closer by the day. The General Classification after the 10b time trial:

By the time the Tour came to its rest day in Andorra in the Pyrenees, the only significant change in General Classification was that Bahamontes had dropped to fifth. Good Grand Tour riders always go for a ride on the rest day. The body has become habituated to cycling and a day completely off the bike makes it very difficult to start the next day, the rider's legs are "blocky" and devoid of power. Poulidor and the others dutifully gave their bodies the exercise they needed. Everyone but Anquetil, that is. Jacques liked to enjoy life. He went to a picnic and enjoyed himself on big portions of barbecued lamb and as usual, drank heartily. His director, Raphaël Géminiani, was there and apparently encouraged the drinking.

At the start of the Tour a psychic had predicted that Anquetil would abandon on the fourteenth stage after suffering an accident. Anquetil could be a coolly rational man but he took this prediction seriously. It's thought that he behaved in this self-destructive way at the barbecue because he believed he would probably not finish the stage the following day.

The next day, stage 14, Party Boy didn't even bother to warm up. Poulidor's manager, Antonin Magne, knew that Anquetil would be vulnerable after his day of excess and instructed Poulidor to drop the hammer on the first climb. The other contenders, including Federico Bahamontes, Julio Jimenez and Henry Anglade, also sensed Anquetil's weakness and poor preparation and attacked furiously. The climbing out of Andorra up the Port d'Envalira, a climb new to the Tour that year, started almost immediately. Anquetil was quickly put out the back door. The hard profile of the day's early kilometers gave Anquetil no chance to warm up. At the top, Anquetil was about 4 minutes behind the leaders and was contemplating quitting. He had even loosened his toe-straps.

One of his domestiques , Louis Rostollan, who had stuck with him on the climb shouted at him, "Have you forgotten that your name is Anquetil? You have no right to quit without a fight!" Team director Géminiani came up to Anquetil and bellowed his rage, screaming at him to chase the leaders, to give it all he had in the descent. The story goes that Géminiani gave Anquetil a bottle with champagne in it. With this restorative circulating in the bon vivant's system, he could now effectively compete

Anquetil was by now warmed up. He could use his superb descending skill to catch the leaders through the dense fog on the descent.

Into that fog Anquetil went, riding like a man possessed, taking risks no man should take. He used the headlights and brake lights of the following cars to let him know when to slow for corners. He caught the group with Henry Anglade and Georges Groussard and made common cause with them. From the crest of the Envalira it was 150 kilometers to the finish. Given good fortune he had enough time and distance to salvage his Tour. Using his time trialing skills he made it up to the Poulidor/Bahamontes lead group.

With just a few kilometers to go Poulidor flatted and got a new wheel. His mechanic, in a zeal to make sure he didn't lose any more time, pushed Poulidor before he was ready and caused him to crash. By the time Poulidor was up again and riding Anquetil's group was gone. Poulidor came in with the second group, 2 minutes, 36 seconds behind Anquetil.

Here were the standings after that hair-raising adventure:

The story of Anquetil's Tour being saved with a bidon of champagne is romantic, but Anquetil's wife Jeanine insisted that it wasn't true.

Poulidor hadn't given up yet. Stage 15 was a ride over the Portet d'Aspet, the Ares and the Portillon. Poulidor won it and gained 1 minute, 43 seconds back from Anquetil.

There was still 1 monumental, monstrous day of climbing left. 1 day remained for the pure climbers to try to reclaim the Tour. There were still 2 time trials left to ride, totaling 70 kilometers where Anquetil could easily wipe out his 86 second deficit. He had only to ride defensively and not lose more time, the usual Anquetil formula. Stage 16 was 197 kilometers long and had the Peyresourde, the Aspin, the Tourmalet and the Aubisque climbs. The road turned upward almost immediately with the slopes of the Peyresourde coming at the fourteenth kilometer. Bahamontes took off after only 4 kilometers, quickly followed by his compatriot Julio Jimenez. When they reached the crest of the Peyresourde, Bahamontes let Jimenez take the lead and the climber's points. Bahamontes was looking for bigger fish than the King of the Mountains. He smelled Yellow. Over the Aspin Bahamontes again let Jimenez take the lead over the top. The Anquetil group was 3 minutes back at this point. At the top of the Tourmalet the Anquetil group was over 5 minutes back. But Bahamontes could not descend well and his lead was halved. On the Aubisque Jimenez could no longer stay with Bahamontes. Alone, Bahamontes soared to a lead of over 6 minutes at the top. Back in the field the Pelforth domestiques were rallying and chasing, trying to defend Groussard's Yellow Jersey. On the run-in to Pau Bahamontes's lead was slowly eroded until it was 1 minute, 54 seconds at the end. Bahamontes had been away for 194 kilometers. It was a wonderful ride, but he hadn't gained enough time to hold off Anquetil in the time trials. With 1 of the time trials the very next day, he was surely toast. And Poulidor? He sat in the entire day, recovering from his stage win the day before. Anquetil noted that if Poulidor should win the Tour that year, he should thank Anquetil for the work he did that day holding Bahamontes in check.

The new General Classification:

And then, what must have seemed to be the inevitable happened. Anquetil won the 42.6-kilometer time trial, beating the day's second place Poulidor by 37 seconds. Bahamontes was twelfth, 4 minutes back. Anquetil was now the leader, ahead of Poulidor by 56 seconds. Bahamontes was third at 3 minutes, 31 seconds. Groussard paid the price defending the Yellow for 10 days, and lost 6 minutes. It was now a 2-man race.

Stage 20, with its finish at the top of the Puy de Dôme, was the scene of the 1964 Tour's most dramatic showdown. The Puy de Dôme is an extinct volcano in the center of France. It has an elevation gain of 515 meters in only 6 kilometers. It averages 9%, but gets steeper as the road approaches the summit. The tenth kilometer is almost 13% before it backs off a bit to between 11 and 12%. The final kilometer is still a tough 10%. With such a hard incline, its total 14 kilometers could transform the Tour. Poulidor was the better climber and a tired Anquetil knew it.

Probably 500,000 spectators lined the roads of the old volcano, sure that there would be fireworks that day. Upon reaching the Puy, Julio Jimenez and Federico Bahamontes took off up the mountain. This was as Anquetil wanted. This break took the time bonuses out of play. Poulidor would be riding for just the time gain he might acquire by beating Anquetil if he were so lucky. Poulidor and Anquetil were otherwise unconcerned about the Spanish escape because neither Jimenez nor Bahamontes would be likely to take the Yellow. They were worried about each other. Instead of sitting on Poulidor's wheel, Anquetil rode next to him trying to gain the psychological edge. Neither felt very well. "I never felt again as bad on a bike," Poulidor said later. Anquetil felt worse.

As they closed in on the summit, Poulidor attacked and Anquetil stayed with him. "All I cared was that I was directly next to Raymond. I needed to make him think I was as strong as he, to bluff him into not trying harder."

Poulidor attacked again. Anquetil stayed with him. There is a famous picture of Anquetil and Poulidor bumping into each other while climbing the volcano, neither giving in the slightest bit; each trying to cow the other; each riding at his limit.

Passing under the Flamme Rouge (1 kilometer to go flag), Anquetil's attention lapsed for just a moment and he let Poulidor go. There was nothing Anquetil could do. He was spent. Poulidor poured on the gas, racing for the finish line and hoping to erase the 56-second deficit and finally don the Yellow Jersey. He waited at the finish, counting off the seconds.

Anquetil crossed the line, limp with exhaustion, 42 seconds later. He had saved his lead by 14 seconds. Magne, Poulidor's manager, believes that Poulidor could have won the Tour that day if he had used a 42 x 26 as Bahamontes used instead of the 25 that he led Magne to believe was the right choice.

There was the formality of the final time trial in which Anquetil put another 21 seconds between himself and Poulidor. With the time bonus, Anquetil won his astounding fifth Tour de France by 55 seconds over Poulidor.

Poulidor said, "I know now that I can win the Tour."

Final 1964 Tour de France General Classification:

1964 Tour de France: results and classification

General classification of the 1964 tour de france, jerseys of the 1964 tour de france, stages of the 1964 tour de france.

Stage 1 (Rennes - Lisieux, 215 km)

Stage 2 (Lisieux - Amiens, 208 km)

Stage 3a (Amiens - Forest/Vorst, 196.5 km)

Stage 3b (Forest - Forest, 21.3 km in Team Time Trial)

Stage 4 (Forest - Metz, 291.5 km)

Stage 5 (Metz - Fribourg, 161.5 km)

Stage 6 (Fribourg - Besançon, 200 km)

Stage 7 (Champagnole - Thonon les Bains, 195 km)

Stage 8 (Thonon les Bains - Briançon, 248.5 km)

Stage 9 (Briançon - Monaco, 239 km)

Stage 10a (Monaco - Hyères, 187.5 km)

Stage 10b (Hyères - Toulon, 20.8 km in Individual Time Trial)

Stage 11 (Toulon - Montpellier, 250 km)

Stage 12 (Montpellier - Perpignan, 174 km)

Stage 13 (Perpignan - Andorra, 170 km)

Stage 14 (Andorre - Toulouse, 186 km)

Stage 15 (Toulouse - Bagnères-de-Luchon, 203 km)

Stage 16 (Bagnères-de-Luchon - Pau, 197 km)

Stage 17 (Peyrehorade - Bayonne, 42.6 km in Individual Time Trial)

Stage 18 (Bayonne - Bordeaux, 187 km)

Stage 19 (Bordeaux - Brive, 215.5 km)

Stage 20 (Brive - Clermont Ferrand/Puy de Dôme, 237.5 km)

Stage 21 (Clermont Ferrand - Orléans, 311 km)

Stage 22a (Orléans - Versailles, 118.5 km)

Stage 22b (Versailles - Paris, 27.5 km in Individual Time Trial)

Championship and cup winners
Club honours
World Cup: results of all matches
Winners of the most important cycling races
Tour de France winners (yellow jersey)
Best sprinters (green jersey)
Best climbers (polka dot jersey)
Best young riders (white jersey)
Tour de France: Stage winners
Australian Open: Men's singles
Australian Open: Women's singles
Australian Open: Men's doubles
Australian Open: Women's doubles
Australian Open: Mixed doubles
French Open: Men's singles
French Open: Women's singles
French Open: Men's doubles
French Open: Women's doubles
French Open: Mixed doubles
US Open: Men's singles
US Open: Women's singles
US Open: Men's doubles
US Open: Women's doubles
US Open: Mixed doubles
Wimbledon: Men's singles
Wimbledon: Women's singles
Wimbledon: Men's doubles
Wimbledon: Women's doubles
Wimbledon: Mixed doubles

Season Calendar 1964
Tour de France

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51st edition 22 June 1964 - 14 July 1964

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The 1964 Tour de France, Part II

Part II of the series looking at the 1964 Tour de France is a stage-by-stage account of the race to show race unfolding from stage wins to accidents, punch-ups to punctures. There are the oddities of the time such as using cabbage leaves to protect against the heat, and the infamous incident of a fortune teller predicting Jacques Anquetil’s death mid-race.

The race starts in Rennes and Edward “Ward” Sels (Solo-Superior) wins Stage 1 and takes the yellow jersey. The Belgian keeps it on Stage 2 , a stage described as “as locked down as a safe” in the pages of L’Equipe and so far no breakaway has managed get a gap on the bunch. André Darrigade, one of the all time sprint greats, wins the sprint.

Stage 3 is a split stage and sees the race cross into Belgium in the morning for what should be a triumphant homecoming for Sels, only his modest team mate Bernard Van de Kerckhove joins a breakaway, wins the stage and takes the race lead, accidentally steal his leader’s thunder. The afternoon has a 21.7km team time trial with a convoluted formula for times but KAS-Kaskol wins and Poulidor’s Mercier-BP-Hutchinson team finishes 14 seconds faster than Anquetil’s Saint Raphaël-Gitane-Campagnolo team while Van de Kerckhove stays in the lead. Sels and Van de Kerckhove aren’t just team mates, they’re room mates that evening and things are frosty.

Stage 4 is a 292km jaunt to Metz where German rider Rudi Altig (Saint Raphaël) wins the stage and gets plenty of applause from the local population, some of whom were born German and became French after the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. Thanks to the substantial one minute time bonus Altig propels himself up the GC on the eve of the Tour’s visit to Germany.

Stage 5 and the big news is the race is going to Germany for the first time. Decades before, Tour founder Henri Desgrange loved to take the race to France’s eastern border with Germany and ride into areas that were once German, a sporting version of revanchisme explained in more detail in Nationalism, Psychogeography and the Tour de France . Now the race is actually going into Germany with a finish in Freiburg and Desgrange’s edgy tone is gone, instead gendarmes and Polizei cooperate and L’Equipe describes the stage as a shared endeavour between France and Germany.

It’s 161km, dubbed as short stage for “ le cyclisme moderne ” by the TV commentary, designed make the racing more lively as opposed to the “interminable randonnées which made up the large part of old editions”. The stage crosses the Vosges mountains and the hero of the day is Altig who takes the yellow jersey on home soil, he’d broken away with young French rider Georges Groussard (Pelforth-Sauvage-Lejeune) with over 100km to go and they’re later joined by three more including Joseph Groussard, brother of Georges, and Willy Derboven (Solo-Superior) who joins as a “policeman” to mark Van de Kerckhove’s yellow jersey and sits on all day which allows him to stay fresh and he wins the stage, a consolation for his team as they lose the yellow jersey.

Stage 6 and a link between 1964 and 1989 as Dutch racer Henk Nijdam (Televizier) takes the stage to Besançon with a late attack. His son Jelle would win two stages of the 1989 edition, also with late attacks.

Stage 7 begins after a short bus transfer from Besançon to Champagnole. Today it’s normal and deliberate to have a finish in one town and a start the next day elsewhere but in 1964 this is is a rarity. The transfer is portrayed as modern, and so is the racing, the talk on TV is of the high speed of this edition and how close riders still are on the general classification when in the past they’d have lost or gained minutes so far thanks to splits and mishaps. The 195km route crosses the Jura mountains where Julio Jimenez wins the mountains points on the Col de la Faucille, showing his ambitions for the mountains competition. After the descent a thunderstorm breaks on the race and the conditions get dangerous. The peloton splits with Poulidor and Georges Groussard among the front group of about 20 and they take time on Anquetil with Jan Janssen (Pelforth) the stage winner (pictured above at a later point in the race).

Stage 8 is 248.5km and in the Alps, a giant stage. After an early start at 8.20am they cross three light passes: the Sixt, Marais and Tamié. Then the scale changes in the Maurienne valley and they scale the giant Col du Galibier via the Télégraphe. Anquetil and Poulidor slide into a move mid-stage which is the equivalent of poking a wasps’ nest. Federico Bahamontes (Margnat-Paloma-Dunlop) slips away on the approach to the Télégraphe with Henry Anglade (Pelforth) who is an outsider for the overall classification. Bahamontes floats away from Anglade as soon as they start Télégraphe to lead by 1m30s at the top of the climb but on the short descent Anglade reclaims thirty seconds, a reminder that Bahamontes seemed to climb faster than he could descend. The “Eagle of Toledo” extends his lead on the Galibier with enough time to enjoy the descent to Briançon and the stage win. Behind, Poulidor sets off in pursuit on the Galibier seemingly worried by Bahamontes taking so much time, and finishes second, taking the thirty second time bonus to move up to third overall with Georges Groussard in the same group who takes the yellow jersey. Anquetil had struggled on the Galibier but rejoins on the descent and only to puncture with one 1km go. Who is the favourite to win the race? Poulidor “without a doubt” announces TV commentator Robert Chapatte.

Stage 9 is 239km with the Tour going from Lake Geneva to the Mediterranean in just two days. Bahamontes is first over the 2,802m Col de La Bonette-Restefond with Anquetil and Poulidor close behind and the rest of the race is scattered down the mountain. Things regroup on the descent with a lead group of 22 riders coming into the finish in Monaco on the ash-covered Louis II athletics stadium. Riders jostle for position ahead of the stadium’s entrance knowing it’ll be hard to overtake on the loose surface. Anquetil wins the battle to enter the track but Poulidor overtakes him and sprints for the line… Only the bell rings out and there’s another lap to do, allowing Anquetil to win the sprint for the stage ahead of Tom Simpson (Peugeot-BP-Englebert) and take the minute’s time bonus. Groussard stays in yellow.

Stage 10 is a split stage and the morning’s race is along the Côte d’Azur. Poulidor attacks from the start, presumably his wounded pride is smarting but he is quickly caught. A move containing Nijdam, Altig and Janssen goes clear with 17km to go and Janssen wins the stage to extend his the lead in the points competition.

Stage 10’s second half is a 20km time trial and Anquetil wins, 36 seconds ahead of Poulidor who get 20 seconds and 10 seconds respectively in time bonuses. Groussard finishes 24th and loses 2m51s to Anquetil but stays in yellow.

Stage 11 to Montpellier ends with a sprint finish but it was a lively day in roasting heat. Many riders put cabbage leaves under their caps or better still, put one under the cap and a second is tucked under the back of the cap and hangs out to shade the nape of the neck. Hydration is important and Anquetil reportedly got by with two bidons of tea, six bottles of Coca Cola… and two bottles of beer. The bunch split due to a crash, Anquetil tried a late attack but in the end Ward Sels took his second stage.

Stage 12 sees Nijdam in a late move again but he’s joined by compatriot Jo De Roo (Saint Raphaël) who wins the sprint for the stage win in Perpignan with the Pyrenees on the horizon.

Stage 13 goes to Andorra via the Col de la Perche and the seemingly endless combo of the Col de Puymorens and the Port d’Envalira. Julio Jimenez (KAS) takes off solo at the foot of the Perche and his lead goes up and up and he wins the stage by over eight minutes and closes in on Bahamontes for the mountains competition. Behind Anquetil and Poulidor trade soft attacks but the two big climbs are hard to exploit, the gradual gradients suit sitting on a wheel. Groussard is still in yellow with his Pelforth team mate Anglade now up to third overall.

The race reaches Andorra for the rest day but this is far from benign. A bored Anquetil decides to break with his habit of total rest and goes for a ride and drops by a party held by Radio Andorre for an interview. He’s tempted by some méchoui or a whole roasted lamb where he eats plenty, washed down with plenty of of sangria.

Stage 14 is out of Andorra to Toulouse. Before the Tour had started a fortune teller called Marcel Belline had a column in France Soir , a newspaper, and he had predicted Anquetil would die on Stage 14. Wacky? Yes, only Belline had called various world events and celebrity deaths, for example he foresaw Marilyn Monroe’s suicide in 1962 and President Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 and plenty more, presumably he had his share of false alarms but newspapers adored his predictions while businessmen and politicians paid beaucoup for private sessions. As soon as the stage started Anquetil was in trouble. Was it nerves about this prophecy or was yesterday’s méchoui misfiring inside or a sangria hangover? Maybe it was all three but what was certain is that he’s dropped on the Envalira as Poulidor and his Mercier team set a fierce pace. It turns out they’d ridden 40km before the stage as a warm-up and their attack was pre-meditated. Yellow jersey Groussard is dropped too but Anquetil is further back and feeling dreadful, ready to quit even. Team mate Louis Rostollan is there to encourage him and push him back on his bike, literally as Anquetil would get a 15 second time penalty for being pushed by up the Envalira. Anquetil’s directeur Raphaël Géminiani hands up a drink, some accounts say it’s whisky, others champagne, but it’s just the tonic and, amid dense fog on the descent, Anquetil picks up Sels, then Groussard and the chase is on. Poulidor is still ahead in a group of seven as they exit the Pyrenees with Anquetil and Groussard’s group about a minute behind and the pursuit lasts 88km during which Poulidor seems to break a spoke in his wheel but he can’t afford to stop for a bike change or a spare wheel. Eventually Anquetil makes it back to Poulidor’s group and things ease up. With 24km to go Poulidor does get a new bike but his mechanic seems too excited and, instead of a helpful push to get going, shoves him to the ground. Anquetil and the others spot this, accelerate and Poulidor is left battling into a headwind and loses 2m36s. The stage is won by Ward Sels. Having hitched a ride to Anquetil Groussard stays in yellow with Poulidor slipping from third to sixth overall.

Stage 15 goes back into the Pyrenees with the Portet d’Aspet, the Col des Ares and the Col du Portillon before a descent to the finish in Luchon. After a calm start there’s a flurry of attacks with Bahamontes and Julio Jimenez duelling for the mountains points. More riders launch moves to win the stage with Tom Simpson and Francisco Gabica (KAS) looking strong. Only for Poulidor to burst out of the peloton on the Portillon, ride straight past Simpson and Gabica, and take the stage by 1m43s on the peloton with Anquetil and Groussard, with Bahamontes a few seconds behind having struggled on the descent. With the attack and the time bonus Poulidor is up 2m43, the misery of the previous day erased.

Stage 16 and more Pyrenees, 197km and the Peyresourde, Aspin, Tourmalet, Soulor and Aubisque. On roads lined with people and reports of the densest crowds ever Jimenez and Bahamontes take off again out of Luchon and battle for the mountains competition. Jimenez is dropped and fights back but Bahamontes is the superior climber and out on the road is the virtual yellow jersey. He clears the Soulor solo and wins the stage. Groussard stays in yellow but Bahamontes is now just 35 seconds behind only the Pyrenees are done and Bahamontes has run out of road. Anquetil is at 1m26s, Poulidor at 1m36s.

Stage 17 is a 42km time trial in the Basque Country with a technical, hilly course. Anquetil wins the stage while George Groussard implodes, losing 5m59s and the yellow jersey. Anquetil is the new race leader but Poulidor “only” loses 37s on the stage to keep him in contact on the general classification, he’s less than a minute down with Bahamontes at 3m31s.

Stage 18 is almost a home start for André Darrigade, the top sprinter in his day. Only his day was a few years ago, he is 40 now. In a hectic finish he surges past Barry Hoban (Mercier) who looked to have the stage and wins in Bordeaux. It’s Darrigade’s 22nd career Tour de France stage win and his last.

Stage 19 is marked by tragedy. A vehicle in the publicity caravan skids on a tight bend in Port-de-Couze, a town on the banks of the Dordogne river. Seeing the danger the waiting crowd are moved to the other side of the road, only for a police tanker truck to lose control on the same bend but this time it swerves to the other side of the road, hitting the crowd and falling into a canal, taking many people into the water with it. Nine people die and many sustain grave injuries. People in the crowd spontaneously start a rescue mission, one spectator plunges into the canal to rescue the driver and more lives are saved. The race reaches the drama within a few minutes and the Tour’s medical staff work to help the victims as stunned riders look on, grizzly reports write of body parts in the canal. It’s the Tour de France’s worst tragedy and there is a memorial plaque beside the road today.

The riders resume the route but in a slow procession at first and a few kilometres later someone beside the road, presumably unaware of the tragedy, insults the riders for being lazy. Pierre Everaert gets off his bike to punch the man and the police are required to pull him off. The racing gets frantic for the final 20km and it’s a sprint and there’s a big crash within sight of the line which takes out plenty and Ward Sels wins again ahead of Mario Minieri (Salvarini) who broke his cleats just as he launched his sprint.

Stage 20 is the defining stage of the race, the battle between Anquetil and Poulidor on the Puy-de-Dôme that gives rise to the iconic photo which stands out as a highlight of the decade, possibly of a century of the sport. Only material from the time is rightly marked by the previous day’s tragedy. Poulidor is just 56 seconds down on Anquetil and better suited to the punchy summit finish with the final 4.5km at 11% and there’s a minute’s time bonus waiting at the top. Poulidor’s Mercier team get to work with a high tempo and as they start the final climb the lead group is down to 11 riders and as they reach the double-digit gradients with 5km to go it’s down to four riders: Bahamontes and Jimenez as the best climbers in the race and still locked in a contest for the mountains jersey, plus Anquetil and Poulidor as first and second overall. At 4km to go Jimenez attacks and moments later Bahamontes takes off in pursuit. It’s advantage Anquetil now as the time bonus Poulidor needs starts to look out of reach. The two match each other, riding side by side at times. With 900 metres to go Poulidor attacks and Anquetil’s bluff can last no longer and he cracks, conceding 42 seconds to Poulidor. It leaves Anquetil in yellow but only by 14 seconds, “13 seconds too much” he quips out of exhaustion at the summit but he’s tiring with the Giro in his legs.

Stage 21 and a 311km trip north to Orléans, transfers may be a new thing in 1964 but they’re still rare and the riders have to reach Paris under their own steam. The start sees Bahamontes send a team mate up the road early right at the start to take the mountains points at the Côte du Cratère and it’s job done for Joseph Novalès who wins the points making it arithmetically impossible for Jimenez to win the mountains competition, thus Bahamontes will win his sixth mountains competition. A break forms with 40km to go and the peloton sits up, letting the six quickly take time and it’s from the move that Jean Stablinski (Saint Raphaël), in his French champion’s jersey, wins the stage.

Stage 22 is a 118km morning spin from Orléans to Versailles. Still just 14 seconds down Raymond Poulidor tries an attack but it’s too obvious. Instead it’s the world champion Benoni Beheyt (Wiel’s-Groene Leeuw) who wins the stage, a prestigious win for a rider whose rainbow bands are not as illustrious as he’d like after being accused of “betrayal” in the Worlds where compatriot Rik Van Looy is the big favourite only for Beheyt to pip him in the sprint, a touch of lèse-majesté but Beheyt’s supporters say Van Looy was too confident, launching his sprint from afar and was fading so Beheyt’s move ensured a home win. Van Looy has abandoned this Tour in the first week but is a giant in the sport at the time with a prolific palmarès featuring every one day race worth winning.

The second part of Stage 22 is the final time trial from Versailles to Paris, 22km and on big boulevards lined by dense crowds. Anquetil is still just 14 seconds ahead of Poulidor with a 20 second time bonus up for grabs. It’s advantage Anquetil as the time trial specialist of his era but he’s deep into the third week of the second grand tour of the year, and besides a puncture is sufficient to spoil things. The duel is close with only a few seconds in it with Poulidor catching and passing Bahamontes and able to profit from the draft. It’s close between the pair until the final minutes when Poulidor starts to fade. Anquetil wins the stage with Rudy Altig second at 15s and Poulidor third at 21s.

The final classification sees Anquetil win his fifth Tour de France and his fourth consecutive victory with Poulidor second overall at 55s, the closest ever winning margin in the race so far (and still the ninth closest Tour today). Bahamontes is third at 4m44s and wins the mountains prize. Jan Janssen wins the points competition. Pelforth-Sauvage-Lejeune win the team competition thanks to Anglade, Groussard and André Foucher finishing fourth, fifth and sixth overall respectively. 132 riders started, 81 finished and the average speed was 35.4km/h.

Stage wins by team :

St Raphaël: Anquetil x 4, Altig, De Roo, Stablinski = 7
Solo-Superior: Sels x 4, Derboven, Vandekerckhove = 6
Margnat-Paloma: Bahamontes x 2, Darrigade x 2 = 4
KAS: Jimenez x 2, team time trial = 3
Pelforth: Janssen x 2 = 2
Mercier: Poulidor
Televizier: Nijdam
Wiel’s-Groene Leeuw: Beheyt

Conclusion That’s the stage-by-stage processional account and if this is a long post, well it was a three week race. Indeed the events each stage are edited and abbreviated. The racing was often lively with moves surging clear, being caught, new attacks going and so on and this piece is long enough already without detailing all of each stage’s action from KM0 to the finish and listing the crashes and abandons. Even the flat stages could see a lot of action, only of course there was little TV coverage.

The point of this blog post is to put a bit more structure to the race and to view it day-by-day, to see how the Tour slowly unfolded rather than just look back at what made it such a good race. These days we equate the 1964 Tour to the Anquetil-Poulidor duel but there was a lot more going on, whether Jimenez and Bahamontes in the mountains, Groussard’s strong ride, Sel’s stage wins and more. The next and final part of this mini-series will try to look back at what made this such a good race and why it stuck in the memory.

1964 Tour de France – Part I to set the scene 1964 Tour de France – Part II a stage-by-stage account of the race 1964 Tour de France – Part III a review of what made it so good

Sources: L’Equipe/Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ina.fr video archives, Tours de France by Antoine Blondin, memoire-du-cyclisme.eu , lagrandeboucle.com

48 thoughts on “The 1964 Tour de France, Part II”

A great read. Thank you.

Having no idea what you do, Mssr Inrng, for a living–perhaps you are an author?–have you thought of writing a book?

An amateur blogger here (which helps explain the typos etc). I’ve so much material on the 1989 Tour, plenty thanks to readers who were generous with their time, the idea of a book was of interest but in a way it’s too limiting to stick to text. There’s too much colour, music, photo, sound, video and more to encapsulate that maybe a film or documentary would be a better avenue but that’s way beyond a niche blog. I’ll still return to 1989 in time on here though.

as a doc filmmaker i can only agree that a doc is a bit more than a niche blog in terms of scale of undertaking… the niche blog is a great form in any case!

Fascinating stuff, the stage by stage run down bought it to life. 1989 Tour remains my favourite but probably only because it was my third one and with so much changing of fortunes compared to what came later. Thank you.

Thanks for this – fantastic, what a race it must have been.

Incredible photo really. Is there a better one in the sport?

It is a great photo. The best? That’s a matter of taste. There’s an interesting story to it too, more on that in the next piece.

Would love to hear how they came to be so close to each other (a similar contact in a modern sprint finish could see a DQ!) Is there any film footage of the incident?

Hyperbole surely? Nudges up a climb are regularly in evidence, and the riders would really need to nut one another for a DQ. The picture looks more like two riders on a tight road being so caught up with riding they inadvertently collide briefly.

Here’s the film from the day: https://www.ina.fr/video/I00007448/duel-poulidor-anquetil-au-puy-de-dome-video.html

You can see them Poulidor riding side by side in a duel, a half-wheeling competition. At one moment for the photo they bump shoulders but as the video shows they were side by side for longer parts of the climb.

Lovely as usual. The Guardian has been running similar, though in real time accounts of other sports. I’m sure they might be interested in your wonderful analysis. Do you need an in?

Thanks but happy with this blog, it’s enough.

We all are grateful for your time, talent, expertise and passion for painting these wonderful pictures for us.

Hear, hear. The quality of this blog is incredible and I’m very thankful to Inrng for all of the hard work and expertise put into every post.

Thanks. I ended up getting interested in the 1989 Tour and going into the last week people knew they were enjoying an exceptional edition and 1964 Tour kept coming up as a reference point so this has been a good way to go and explore the topic, having to type up a few pieces helps condense the notes, thoughts down so happy to share a view of it all.

For a long time the history side of the sport has been something that’s important to the sport but I never got too into it but the more you explore it, the more interesting it gets especially as you can cherry-pick the best races.

Ah, poor Pou Pou. That broken spoke cost him dearly. What might have been? If he’d have broken Anquetil’s streak would he have won more? Sport goes like that – victory hangs on a moment of fate, and somehow the luck sits with the favourite. It’s interesting to read about the manner of victory and the responses to certain events, such as Sels and as Van der Kerkove. Did VdK’s win really make for frosty relations? I presume he was in the break to come the move on the teams behalf. Also interesting to read about the terrible accident on stage 19. I wonder whether the Tour would be cancelled now, or a go slow out in place for the following day’s race? But on the basis that the incident was not caused by the cyclists racing they might continue the Tour as a way of respecting the spectators themselves? Certainly some of the roads the caravans go down are ill suited to vehicles of their size. Thanks so much for the write up. I’ve read appreciated histories of these events but this is a really great stage-by-stage breakdown and really brings home the excitement of the ‘64 edition.

Great stuff, merci beaucoup as they say! I’ll throw in an unabashed plug for my friend Bill McGann’s TdF book here https://bikeraceinfo.com/tdf/tdfbook1.html Looking forward to your next installment as well as your 1989 Tour posts. Part of my “luckiest man on earth” claim is that I was able to follow a lot of La Grande Boucle 1989 in-person and attend some exclusive interviews with the eventual winner before and during that unforgettable event.

What a wonderful read! Thank you so much for this thorough and engrossing account. I look forward to your analysis piece with great anticipation!

Cycling was such a different world and that 1964 world is so well captured in the article. Many of the stages were covered at 34km/h or less with the 1964 race average 35,419 km/h, a speed some keen cyclotourists could maintain – though maybe not for 21 stages. What explains the relatively modest pace: – equipment though only partly and then mostly in the mountains – roads, maybe a little – clothing, quite substantially – stages distances, yes, but as much due to an understanding to take it easy for much of the stage as sheer physical capacity – training techniques, certainly – absence of continuous TV as motivation – large teams and low team numbers

I like to wonder about these things myself, the difference between then and now. So much has changed.

I think that top riders like Merckx, Anquetil in their prime were still very close to what they could be with today’s training. We are lucky we have the world hour record to look at here. I always love to think about the fact that Boardman only put 10 metres into Merckx even when he had advantages in clothing and wheels for far more. And the fact that Merckx’ pacing is widely recognized to be really bad.

Perhaps today the domestiques are a lot better compared to then, and perhaps the riders can hit their peak more predictably and more often – but the top riders back then, when they were in top form would still be world class today.

Training techniques have not really improved. It pisses me off no end that people consider this to be a factor. Back in the day they were pretty close to preparing at their peak. Perhaps there’s a bit more knowledge about over training, and the pros back then were more prone to this. The tendency is to underestimate our predecessors because we believe in the infinite progression of science. To some degree this is true, but only if you take in the dark arts it creates. Around the late sixties blood doping appears on the scene, at the same time as heart rate monitors. Before that there’s amphetamines, cocaine, cortico and anabolic steroids. Thereafter you have the development of EPO and HGH, but which have massively increased speeds – not that speeds have ever significantly decreased despite the claims about testing. One of the biggest differences has been the equipment, but even before Anquetil we know that doping was part of the cycling scene (“in short we ride on dynamite”). What gets me is this trope that ‘modern training’ and ‘diets’ have improved things. The science behind all of it has not changed in a long time. It used to be the case that British athletes would go to Australia to do their winter training. The truth of the matter was that they could escape the U.K. testers, and Australians were not so shy about playing by the rules (they never have been – in the current world that’s only criticism if you believe that sport is a level playing field). But they would all say it was about ‘better training/weather/diet’ when training in sunshine makes no difference, and you could get all the same food here. In the field of cycling the trend to train in one place or the other depends on the local laws about doping and where the “best” doctors are based. I’ll take stage distances as a limiting factor though (and carbon frames). That’s just natural physiology. You can’t race over longer distances. I’m pretty sure that Anquetil’s bidon was laced with amphetamines – I forget which tour it is where he appears pretty loopy.

Training techniques have improved massively. It pisses me off no end that people consider the only progression in sports science to be ‘better doping’.

OK. So what has improved massively?

I’d suggest riders today can get fitter quicker. It seemed more haphazard in the past with riders doing steady distances over the winter and then using early season races as training events and then other races throughout the year to keep fit. Effort and fatigue can be better measured today although still sometimes indirectly.

Poulidor’s DS Antonin Magne was seen as an expert on sports science in his day, writing books on training and nutrition but accounts of them make it all sound basic (which isn’t a bad thing, simplicity helps).

Over training/racing and long distance stages are likely to reduce the speed, and collectively the understanding of timing your form for a race has probably improved to some degree, but few cyclists are allowed this luxury. Lazy assumptions about training techniques have repeatedly allowed athletes to achieve surprising results. Anyone remember ‘Mo Farah’? I don’t think we should really let athletes off the hook. I understand people won’t agree with me. But I won’t let people shut their minds off to these things. Every time I see Ronaldo with his shirt off, and reports about his legendary ability in the gym I think “oh, corticos, eh?”

One thing you left out that I think may explain a lot of the difference between then and now is that the racers back-in-the-day raced so much more. Far, far less of the concentration solely on LeTour each season that is so prevalent today would seem to explain it along with the other things you mentioned. It’s a funny thing though, I can remember some a-hole (ol’ Heinie perhaps?) going on about how nobody would watch a grand tour run off at speeds slower than they were going during the BigTex era. I wondered why? Who cares about average speeds? IMHO fans want to see competition, head-to-head racing, tactics, spectacle, drama, desire and skill demonstrated on the road, whether the average speed is 30 or 40 kph.

Good point again Larry. Many top riders would ride two GTs, most one day classics, a few one week stage races (Midi-Libre, PN…), numerous minor races and some semi-serious crits. A lot of riding and a lot of intensity with no in-season “fallow” period as now. PCS gives 7007kms for Poulidor in 1964 which must be far from complete. They must have been empty well before the end of the season though at least they didn’t have to go to China to end the season or Australia to start it. How often did Poulidor fly to events (Milan-San Remo and Lombardy by car probably). The whole environment was almost too different to compare.

On your last average speed point, TV covered only the final part of each stage while the French in thier villages would have been happy to see the riders pass by the local bar whether at 28km/h or 40.

I’d add food and drink to the list here, there are regular tales of riders cracking spectacularly, presumably they run out of energy or are massively dehydrated, or both. Plus the evening meals and breakfasts were different.

I’d definitely agree on the food and drink angle. I was relatively seriously into athletics in the late 1970s and there was next to no understanding of diet and eating on competition day. The only rule I recall was to eat nothing for at least 3 hours before your race. Glucose tablets were about but there was no thought of continual hydration and feeding to boost or maintain energy levels.

It’s hard trying to imagine the rider’s life on tour in 1964. No air-conditioned coaches with showers and coffee machines, the drive back to the hotel crammed into a Simca Aronde with a pile of spare wheels, while those of my age will recall the pre-chain rural hotels in France: ten tiny double bedrooms for one small bathroom along a creaky corridor, hot water for the first served…and no team chefs to prepare tasty and balanced meals.

It wasn’t a lot better than that even in the late 1980’s. I can remember sweating like a pig driving all over France in a non-air conditioned Fiat Ducato (or worse, a Renault Trafic) crammed full of vacation clients and their luggage with 10 bikes on the roof. Some of the hotels were as you described (we shared a few with various teams along the way) while the Campaniles and such weren’t much better except for their individual bathrooms vs the down-the-hall awfulness. Food was pretty bad as well – the Italian teams often had a small camper in the parking lot with a guy boiling (properly) up some dry pasta and serving it with jarred sauce. It was grueling and we were just RIDING around rather than racing. We were only half joking when we told our clients “This ain’t no vacation – it’s an adventure!”

The Campanile chain started in 1976 (Ibis 1974) so Poulidor and his team didn’t have the pleasure. They were – at least at first – clean, practical and predictable, and soon accounted for hundreds of Modernes, Cheval Rouges et Blancs, Voyageurs, Terminus, and Commerces all over France. Poor compensation after 250kms on a Stronglight, Simplex and Mafac fitted steel frame. At least they never had the DS screaming “Move up” on the radio, or a spare tubular wrapped around thier shoulders.

And my first high summer 3000kms in France was in an overheating Anglia with slipping clutch. Great days.

IBIS was the other one but I couldn’t recall (blocked out?) the name. Slap-dash construction using what seemed to be the cheapest materials possible, which deteriorated quickly, as did the cleanliness. And way-too-many of ’em, despite being in France, lacked a bidet! Even if you didn’t know what it was for, you could use it to do your laundry. Later there were the equally-awful FastHotel and such, exceeded in awfulness only (later?) by Formula 1. We visited a few teams who were stuck in FastHotels, often backed up to the autoroute so our interviews were conducted trying to hear over the din of traffic. Ah, those were the days – but OTOH I wouldn’t mind a “Stronglight, Simplex and Mafac fitted steel frame.” especially if it was from an Italian “builder of trust”.

A steel frame from a “builder of trust”. I much regret giving away custom made Ellis-Briggs, Mercian and Woodrup frames during a temporary loss of cycling interest in the nineties. As for the trust, I once got a new frame home only to find the BB cup would not enter as the BB shell had visibly deformed (during brazing?). The reputed builder had not even bothered to run a tap through to clean the threads or he would have seen the problem.

Stronglight, yes, Mafac, maybe, but try changing down on Simplex at a delicate moment on the lower slopes.

Sorry to drift off topic Mr IR

Through my rose-colored glasses I thought of SIMPLEX and imagined those wonderful retro-friction shifters (rather than cheezy plastic derailleurs) attached to a lugged/brazed steel masterpiece from one of the (mostly) Italian builders-of-trust of the day. 🙂

Niche fact: Ward Sels’s victory in the first stage was the last time a debutant won their very first stage of Le Tour until Fernando Gaviria in 2018.

This was a fascinating read. Thank you for this type of content! I was not aware of the Stage 19 tragedy. A little investigation showed the intersection where this happened (at D660 and D703 based on Streetview analysis) is completely different 56 years later. There appears to be monument outside the small hotel there now. If something like this were to happen today can anyone imagine the stage would continue?? Thanks for the context around that famous photo on Puy de Dome!

They continued (some racing for the stage win) despite the death of Fabio Casartelli in 1995. I was there near the finish as reports began to come in, so I’d guess most (if not all?) of the riders knew soon enough as well. What would you expect them to do? The day-after is the day to show your respect but contrast this one with 1995’s. A go-slow would have robbed us of the famous duel, perhaps what “Mr. 60%” was thinking when he expressed displeasure with the go-slow?

For Casartelli a lot of the riders and people in the race didn’t know what happened. With the Port-de-Couze deaths, the race certainly knew what happened as the reports on the scene were very graphic with riders looking down from the bridge into the water below. However it seems they had little other option to ride on and eventually set off at a slow pace, which accounts for the punch-up incident later on. There is a large memorial beside the road to the incident.

There are more recent examples too, Goolaerts on Paris-Roubaix or Lambrecht in Poland. I assume most people didn’t know the extent of the incident until after the race was over, and if there has to be a response in the race (neutralization of a stage for instance), it would have to wait until the next day.

I wonder, actually, would Radio Tour would relay the gravity of the injuries of a rider during a race? and if so, would a DS inform his riders before the stage is over?

Later reports said many riders were informed by their teams during the stage though Radio Tour was criticized for not making a general announcement. I guess one could argue how far the news spread in the peloton during the stage but my memory is that few continued racing at full-cry and plenty of race fans (who had all pretty much heard about it by then) wondered if the ones who did didn’t know or didn’t care? Note the Giro stage didn’t stop for Weyland’s death either as IMHO there’s just too much confusion and rumor when these things happen to expect the entire peloton to just stop and climb off their bikes. Pay your respects the next day, then get on with it.

Thanks for this! I’ve been eking it out over the last couple of days. Just what the doctor ordered.

All things considered, the Tours of 1964 and 1989 are basically two-character dramas, with some extra subplots. In that sense, I think I still prefer 1983, with a wider cast of main characters, more narrative twists, and more complex tapestry of plots. To this day, my favourite TdF of them all.

Ferdi – have you got a link or anything to more fully illustrate your reasons for this opinion? All I can think of is “23 Days in July” which didn’t come close to what you describe, nor did this http://www.bikeraceinfo.com/tdf/tdf1983.html so I’d enjoy reading or viewing anything you can point me to. Grazie!

http://www.lagrandeboucle.com and memoireducyclisme do a great job of summarizing and giving the standings (but they’re in French). As for the narrative, the Luchon I think it’s worth looking at that Tour from the point of view of all the possible contenders. The Peugeot story is only one them (but the one that interests English speakers, because of Anderson, Millar and Roche). There is a strong Colombian narrative (Colombians were decisive), but also the Van Impe story (he was perhaps the strongest man in the race, but he missed the train on the way to Luchon, lack of daring), the other 1970’s stars swan songs (Zoetemelk, Agostinho) the Ti-Raleigh story (Winnen, Lubberding, how they tried to turn the race around on the way to Morzine), the Reynolds story (their number on the Puy de Dôme TT, Spain’s comeback to the Tour as a major force), and of course the Renault-Fignon story. That one day when Kelly wore yellow and was a candidate for the overall. Bernaudeau was a challenger too, and had his moment. 1983 was fascinating, the throne was vacant, the course was really brutal, no one was in control of the race, at any point.

Thanks. Sadly there’s no way I can share your opinion on this race as at the time I was 100% devoted to two-wheeled exploits of another kind, so I’ve got nothing in the way of first-hand memory other than the accounts I listed. CBS TV in the USA got interested later, just as that other two-wheeled interest waned, so the time was right for me in many ways. Perhaps Mr. Inrng might tackle the 1983 TdF for us as it does sound like a lot was going on as various dramas played out besides what was described in 23 Days in July?

Wonderful stuff, thanks a lot.

Stage 14 deserves a blog post of it’s own! What a story.

surely that was when the race was won?… well not lost anyway…

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ANQUETIL vs. POULIDOR: The ultimate showdown at the Tour of ’64

Words by john wilcockson with images from horton collection.

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RAYMOND POULIDOR died on Wednesday morning in his hometown of St. Léonard-de-Noblat. He was 83. He was perhaps the most popular French rider in history. This is the story of his finest Tour de France, a race he would never win, that established his reputation as the greatest racer never to wear the maillot jaune .

They called it the Tour of Tours. A race that had it all. An underdog attempting to depose the veteran champion, their intense rivalry dividing a nation. Wild swings in fortune. Disastrous lapses of judgment. Daring attacks and counterattacks. Race-changing mechanicals. A mystic predicting the defending champion’s death. And a result that remained in doubt until the dying seconds of the final stage. The year was 1964, the rivals were Jacques Anquetil and Raymond Poulidor, and their duel came to a dramatic climax on the lava-hot slopes of the Puy de Dôme mountain. You had to be there to believe it really happened….

Sunday, July 12, 1964 was one of those days that sticks in your mind—even if it was a half-century ago. In following that Tour de France by bike since its second day, I’d already seen the race a dozen times, including several highlights: Federico Bahamontès attacking up the Galibier in the Alps, Jacques Anquetil winning a time trial on the Côte d’Azur in a heat wave, and Bahamontès (again) making a solo breakaway over the Tourmalet in the Pyrénées. Now I was riding across the incessant ups and downs of the vast Massif Central plateau, heading toward the Puy de Dôme. It was a perfect day of sunshine and blue sky, and for what seemed like hours I could see the blue-green, whale-like outline of the Puy, a dormant volcano, shimmering in the distance. As I came closer, riding past parked cars and knots of fans walking to the mountain, the expectation in the air was palpable—the French gendarmerie would later estimate the day’s crowd at 500,000.

Most of them were working-class fans, the so-called Poulidoristes , whose hero’s home near Limoges was only two hours away. They loved Poulidor because he was a man of the earth who left school at 14, worked long hours on the family farm, and served his country in the Algerian War before becoming a professional cyclist. In contrast, the Anquetiliens were more educated supporters from the cities. Even though Anquetil was the son of a strawberry grower, he soon earned a small fortune by winning pro races in his teens, and acquired sophisticated friends who liked to drink good wine and play cards at the old manor house he bought overlooking the Seine River in his native Normandy.

Over their cups of café-au-lait in the morning and glasses of rouge at night, the fans debated the merits of their two champions. That’s all anyone wanted to talk about during that final week of the Tour—except on the day before the Puy de Dôme stage when a tanker truck transporting fuel for Tour helicopters crashed through a mass of spectators into the Dordogne River at Port-de-Couze, killing 10 people. That worst tragedy in Tour de France history pulled a metaphoric cloud over the race, and as I rode through the empty stone villages and towns of the Auvergne, and along the crowded roads before the Puy, I sensed a solemnness on the faces of the French public, who were more like congregants walking to church than fans heading to the most climactic stage finish in Tour history.

Hours before the race would arrive, I managed to get through the last police blockade, to ride the steeply uphill kilometer to the gates that normally blocked the dead-end Puy de Dôme toll road. The climbing actually starts in the streets of Clermont-Ferrand about 8 kilometers away, first ascending to rolling pastures on the plateau before heading to the tollgate at the foot of the mountain. That’s where I padlocked my bike and began walking up the narrow road that wraps itself around and up the volcanic peak for 5 kilometers at a steady 12-percent grade to the 4,642-foot summit. I slung a musette bag over my shoulder to carry my trusty Zeiss camera, a full water bottle, some fresh apricots, a half-baguette, some local Cantal cheese, my taped-up red plastic transistor radio, and a couple of weekend newspapers, the national L’Équipe and regional La Montagne .

With a steep hillside to the right and a grassy drop-off to the left, there wasn’t a whole lot of room for spectators on the Puy. Even so, the fans stood three- and four-deep as far as the eye could see. Eventually, about halfway up the mountain, I found a small space on the left, where I could sit down, my head level with the road surface. It was going to be a long, hot afternoon….

Jacques Anquetil, at 30, had already won the Tour de France four times, and he’d just come off his second victory at the Giro d’Italia—having to fight hard to keep the leader’s pink jersey by a slender margin for the last two weeks. His ambition was to become the second man, after Fausto Coppi, to pull off a Giro-Tour double. Fellow Frenchman Raymond Poulidor, two years younger, came to pro cycling much later and had raced only two Tours, finishing third and eighth. But two months before his third Tour, Poulidor won the Vuelta a España, thus setting up a duel between that year’s first grand tour champions.

The Tour didn’t start well for Poulidor, who was caught in the wrong half of the field when a crash split the peloton in the closing kilometers of the opening stage. Anquetil finished in the front group of 37 to gain 20 seconds on his rival. Two days later, Poulidor led his Mercier-BP team to sixth place in the 21-kilometer team time trial, and took back 14 seconds on Anquetil and his St. Raphaël-Gitane squad. Then, on stage 5 to Freiburg in West Germany, an early five-man breakaway changed the whole complexion of the race….

Leading the break was Anquetil’s German teammate Rudi Altig—who was eager to win the stage or take over the yellow jersey in his home country. Working hard with Altig were two members of the opportunistic Pelforth-Sauvage-Lejeune team, the French brothers Joseph and Georges Groussard, along with Spanish climber Joaquim Galera (whose Kas team won the team time trial), while Belgian Willy Derboven just followed the wheels, defending for his Solo-Superia teammate Bernard Vandekerkhove, the overnight race leader.

With four of that Tour’s 12 teams wanting to see the break succeed, and with Anquetil content that teammate Altig was shining on a stage into his homeland, the five men arrived at the finish more than four minutes ahead of the pack. After the stage, Poulidor’s directeur sportif Antonin Magne admitted that his team made a mistake in not chasing the break. He told his team leader: “That Rudi Altig is in the yellow jersey is not a big deal because he’ll lose it in the Alps. It is much more upsetting that Georges Groussard and Galera are five minutes ahead of you. They’re both good climbers and it won’t be easy to get rid of them.”

Magne was most concerned that Groussard’s Pelforth teammates would now align themselves tactically with Anquetil’s St. Raphaël riders and make it tough for Poulidor’s men in the days ahead. But then, two stages later in this topsy-turvy Tour, Anquetil said he failed to see Poulidor jump into a late 15-man move, which resulted in a 34-second loss for the defending champion. And then came the first two mountain stages, both in the Alps, both more than seven hours’ long, and both crossing giant climbs: the 8,384-foot Col du Galibier on stage 8 and the 9,088-foot Col de Restefond (a.k.a. the Iseran) on stage 9.

Bahamontès, perhaps the best pure climber of the 20th century, who won the Tour five years earlier, was in terrific form. He accelerated away from the other race favorites on the penultimate climb, with 60 kilometers still to race in stage 8. By the time he reached the spot where I was watching, at a hairpin turn on the steepest part of the Galibier, he’d passed all the earlier attackers and was already a couple of minutes ahead of the small chase group led by Poulidor and Anquetil, with little Georges Groussard tucked in their wake. By the finish, after the long downhill run into Briançon, Bahamontès was still a minute-and-a-half clear of the chasers, to take the stage and the one-minute time bonus awarded to stage winners at that Tour. In the uphill sprint for second place, Anquetil was unlucky to get a flat tire, and Poulidor easily took the half-minute bonus (plus the 17 seconds he gained on Anquetil). This first mountain stage gave a more permanent look to the overall classifications, with Groussard taking over the yellow jersey, 3:35 ahead of Bahamontès in second, 4:07 on Poulidor in third, with Anquetil a further 1:15 back in eighth.

Anquetil was clearly tired from his efforts at the Giro. In winning his fourth Tour in 1963 he’d matched Bahamontès on the toughest mountain stages, but that wasn’t the case on the Galibier. He now had to worry about both Baha’ and Poupou taking his crown. To restore his confidence, he needed to make a statement on the second alpine stage. The Restefond was too far from the finish to have much of an impact—in fact, Groussard lost six minutes to the three favorites on that giant climb, and he and his teammates comfortably made up the lost ground before the stage ended in Monaco. Even so, only 22 riders were left to contest the finish, which took place on the running track of the crowd-packed Louis II stadium. Such finishes were fairly common in grand tours of the 1960s, so both Anquetil and Poulidor knew that it was difficult to overtake anyone on the flat turns of the 400-meter cinder track; you had to be right at the front if you wanted any hope of winning the sprint.

Paced by his French teammates Louis Rostollan and Jean-Claude Lebaube, Anquetil entered the stadium in front, confident that he could hold the pole position over the lap-and-a-half of the track. So he was shocked when a fired-up Poulidor suddenly shot past him, and dashed across the line with his hands in the air; but Poulidor, just back from the Vuelta where track finishes didn’t end with an extra lap, hadn’t realized that there was still 400 meters to go. Anquetil accelerated back into the lead, time-trialed that last lap to win the stage from a desperately sprinting Tom Simpson, with Poulidor in fifth. The stage winner’s one-minute bonus put Anquetil up into fifth overall, now only 15 seconds behind Poulidor—and the next afternoon would see the Tour’s first individual time trial, Anquetil’s specialty.

It wasn’t a particularly long time trial, less than 21 kilometers, but the riders had already been in the saddle for more than five hours in a hilly morning stage through Provence. And the heat wave was suffocating. So the flat course along the coast from Hyères to Toulon was far enough for Anquetil to demonstrate his solo skills. After his teammate Altig, also a time-trial specialist, set the mark to beat with a 28:46, the GC riders were ready to do battle. Anquetil was the first of them to start and he averaged almost 45 kilometers per hour (on a regular road bike, of course) to beat Altig’s time by almost a minute. Poulidor was next up, and he also went faster than Altig, but lost 36 seconds to Anquetil. Behind them, Bahamontès conceded more than two minutes and Groussard almost three, to produce a new GC that read: 1. Groussard, 2. Poulidor, at 1:11; 3. Anquetil, at 1:42, 4. Bahamontès, at 3:04.

Following three long stages across the South of France into Andorra, the tiny principality in the Spanish Pyrénées where that Tour’s only rest day was held, those positions were the same. But things weren’t quite the same for Anquetil. Unbeknown to even his confidants, the French champion had been concerned for many days about a prediction made by the notorious Paris astrologer and clairvoyant Marcel Belline that Anquetil would be forced to abandon the Tour, or perhaps even die, on stage 14 between Andorra and Toulouse. That was on the defending champion’s mind on the rest day when, instead of taking a short training ride like the rest of his team, he decided to go to a barbecue with wife Janine and his flamboyant team director Raphaël Geminiani. They munched on spit-roasted mutton and sipped sangria—not exactly the menu you’d expect on a Tour de France rider’s rest day! Indeed, Anquetil would pay for his lack of professionalism the very next morning….

Stage 14 opened with a 21-kilometer-long climb up the highest mountain pass in the Pyrénées, the Port d’Envalira, 7,897 feet above sea level. Anquetil’s rivals knew about his attending the barbecue because it’d been organized by a local radio station and there were photos in the morning’s paper. So, hoping that Anquetil would be feeling under the weather, the team directors of both Poulidor (Antonin Magne of Mercier) and Bahamontès (Raoul Rémy of Margnat-Paloma) told their leaders to go on the attack up the Envalira.

Their first acceleration came on a 10-percent pitch just 3 kilometers into the climb; but Anquetil’s team aided by the Pelforth squad of race leader Groussard brought them back. Poulidor’s and Bahamontès’ teammates kept the tempo high on the next, flatter section of the climb, and when it steepened for the final 10 kilometers, a joint attack by Baha’ and Poupou saw Anquetil fall off the pace. Hunched over his bike, his eyes glazed, the defending champion was barely able to turn the pedals. It looked as though the mystic’s prediction was coming true.

Anquetil’s French teammate Rostollan stayed at his side, encouraging him to continue, and giving him the occasional push. Soon, the two St. Raphaël men were left on their own, with only the modest Italian rider, Mario Minieri, for company. Later, Anquetil confided to French journalists: “I was on the point of stopping. That was about 6 kilometers from the summit. I was thinking, there’s no way I can get to the finish…. I was living a nightmare. Maybe the astrologer was right.” Chipping in, Rostollan added, “I’d never seen Jacques like that. At one moment, he said to me, ‘I’m completely knackered. I must stop.’ So I said to him, ‘ Merde , remember that your name is Anquetil.’” Rostollan managed to get his team leader to the top of the mountain, but they were more than four minutes behind Poulidor, Bahamontès and a couple of Spanish climbers—who’d all dropped race leader Groussard and his strongest teammates. To make matters worse for Anquetil, fog shrouded the descent, with visibility cut to less than 20 meters. Could he still save his Tour? Rostollan wasn’t so sure when he watched his leader dash into the clouds. “When I saw him disappear, I said to myself, ‘That’s perhaps the last time I’ll see him alive.’ He descended like a madman, the Jacques.”

Anquetil was a superb time trialist, perhaps the best the sport has ever seen. He had a perfect position on a bike, low and aerodynamic, with a deep chest that held a slow-beating heart and large lungs. But to catch his top rivals for four minutes seemed like an impossible task. He took every risk on that fog-filled downhill. “I descended by instinct,” he said later. “It’d work out or I’d crack, I had no choice. I was like an escaped prisoner heading for the frontier with the police chasing me.”

His immediate target was to catch race leader Groussard’s chase group. “If I couldn’t catch them I knew it was finished,” Anquetil said. The fog gave way to sunshine in the valley, and the French ace could see the riders ahead. On catching them, the Pelforth riders asked him if he would work with them to chase the Poulidor-Bahamontès group. “Yes,” Anquetil replied, “but give me 10 kilometers to catch my breath.” Good to his word, Anquetil began pulling 10 kilometers later and upped the pace to 50 kilometers per hour. And, at Tarascon-sur-Ariège, after chasing for 62 kilometers, the two front groups came together. The astrologer was not far off in his prediction, but Anquetil was “back from the dead.”

With 72 kilometers remaining in the stage, it seemed that all the drama was done for the day. Then, 25 kilometers from the finish in Toulouse, Poulidor broke a couple of spokes in his rear wheel and had to change bikes. This should have been a routine bike-change and a quick catch-up for Poulidor through the line of following cars. But when the Mercier team mechanic pushed Poulidor back into action, his rider had one hand on the bars and the other tightening his toe strap. The off-balance Poulidor fell to the tarmac, and as he remounted his bike, he saw that the chain had fallen off.

By the time Poulidor was back up and riding, there was a yawning gap ahead of him. Race director Jacques Goddet pulled his red Peugeot sedan to the right side of the road behind Poulidor, and the wily Geminiani drove alongside and decided not to go past the solo rider. So Poulidor was left alone in the wind, chasing a 20-strong group that was racing to the finish. Worse, the Pelforth team director Maurice De Muer did motor past and went up to his riders and told them to step on the gas—no waiting for riders in trouble back in those days! Poulidor did his best to chase, but he was now the one in the impossible situation. He was caught by the next big group before the finish and crossed the line 2:36 down. It looked like his chances of winning the Tour had disappeared.

But this was the Tour of ’64. You had to be there to believe it really happened.

So what did Raymond Poulidor do? He planned an attack on the next day’s mountain stage. His solo move came on the last climb, the Col du Portillon, just before the finish in Luchon. Poulidor virtually sprinted up the zigzags of the first 3 kilometers of the 8.6-kilometer climb, and quickly overtook all the members of an earlier breakaway. He topped the Portillon with 90 seconds’ lead on Anquetil’s chase group and zoomed down to Luchon to win by 1:43 (plus the winner’s one-minute time bonus), to move into third place overall, only nine seconds behind Anquetil! What a comeback!

There were expectation that Poulidor might again attack on the next day’s giant four-climb stage through the Pyrénées, but he wasn’t feeling up to it when Bahamontès made a solo breakaway and gained eight minutes over the Tourmalet and Aubisque peaks. That put the Spaniard in the virtual race lead, and it took the combined forces of four Pelforth riders and Anquetil’s men in the 13-strong chase group over the final 35 kilometers to close the gap to two minutes and save Groussard’s yellow jersey by just 35 seconds.

Bahamontès’ massive effort left him in no shape for the next stage, a flat-to-rolling 42.6-kilometer time trial along the Adour valley from Peyrehorade to Bayonne. The stage proved to be a disaster for both the Spaniard and Groussard—who conceded respectively four and six minutes to the stage winner. Who was that winner? That was in doubt until the very end….

Midway through the time trial, Anquetil and Poulidor were virtually tied on time. Right then, Poulidor raised his right hand. His front tire was flat. The mechanic in the back of the team car was ready with a spare bike over his shoulder, but when his driver braked too sharply, the mechanic and bike crashed to the ground at Poulidor’s feet. Poupou picked up the bike and hopped on, but saw that the handlebars had twisted during the fall. Once they were straightened, Poulidor jumped on the bike again, but the mechanic was returning to the car with the other bike, and without a real push, Poulidor lost more precious seconds in finding his toe clips and getting back up to speed.

After the finish, where he had the fastest time until Anquetil came in a half-minute faster, Poulidor told the press: “I must be cursed. The slightest snag turns into a catastrophe when it happens to me.” He then talked about his latest catastrophe: “At Toulouse, the same mechanic made me fall. Here, it was something else. I’m not criticizing him. I’m certain he’s more upset than me because it was surely overexcitement that caused all that. But the fact is, Jacques gained 37 seconds. Take away the time I lost…you can work it out. Even so, I can still win the Tour. We still have the Puy de Dôme.”

The finish on the Puy de Dôme would come three days later….

To take the yellow jersey, Poulidor needed to make up a 56-second deficit on race leader Anquetil. The fans around me on the Puy de Dôme were hoping their man could wipe that out by winning the stage and taking the one-minute time bonus—a strong possibility on a climb that favored Poulidor’s pugnacious climbing style, although the Spanish climbers Bahamontès and Julio Jiménez were also expected to go for the stage win.

I spent most of the afternoon reading my newspapers, which were filled with articles discussing the relative chances of Anquetil and Poulidor. Excitement among the crowds slowly built as we listened to the regular radio updates from La Route du Tour : the near-seven-hour, hilly 237-kilometer slog across the Massif Central from Brive was proving to be a race of attrition. Only 30 or so men were still together when they reached the outskirts of Clermont-Ferrand. Many of the riders, including Anquetil, knew the 12.5-kilometer climb (including the nasty final 5 kilometers up the mountain itself) from having raced a time trial up the Puy de Dôme at the 1959 Tour. This knowledge gave the race leader an advantage over Poulidor, who was still in the army that year; Poulidor did visit the climb right before this Tour, but he was stopped from riding up what was then a strategic military road closed to regular traffic, except for occasional events such as this Tour stage. (Today, a rack-and-pinion railway that opened in 2012 takes tourists to the summit, while the old route remains as a basic service road.)

The 1959 Tour time trial was won by Bahamontès, who averaged almost 21 kilometer an hour in beating runner-up Charly Gaul by a minute and a half, with Anquetil fifth that day, almost four minutes back. “I lost most of my time in that time trial in the final kilometer,” Anquetil remembered. “I’m not at my best on a slope of 13 percent, and on any climb I always lose some ground in the last kilometer.” We heard from the live radio commentary that the dwindling front group was approaching the tollgate. All the spectators were on their feet and crowding onto the narrow road. The gendarmes were getting anxious, blowing their whistles and trying to keep people back as the early race vehicles and police motorcycles came through. I was kneeling on the edge of the road ready to take some photos. I’d set my camera at 1/500 at f4. The cheering from down the road gradually came closer. Cries of “ Allez Poupou !” and “ Allez Jacques !” filled the humid air.

Then I saw the first riders in my viewfinder. In front was the balding Jiménez, dancing on his pedals in an initial surge that had taken him clear of the chasing Bahamontès. I was about to click the camera when a burly gendarme deliberately stood in my way, objecting to my knee leaning on the road. I didn’t have time or the space to find another position, so I didn’t get a shot of the next two riders: Anquetil in yellow on the far side of the road and Poulidor in the purple Mercier colors on my side. They were both seated in their smallest gears—Poulidor later said he wished he’d ridden a 25-tooth rear sprocket rather than his 42×24 (Bahamontès was on a 42×26).

We watched the two national heroes disappear up the mountain, followed by a bevy of motorcycles—one carrying race director Goddet in his khaki shorts, shirt and knee-high stockings. In a later article about this epic confrontation, Goddet wrote: “As race director…I was right on the wheels of the two illustrious protagonists to keep order and to referee the match…. The two, totally focused on their own rivalry, ascended the terribly steep road that ribbons around the majestic cone in simultaneous, parallel movement. I’m convinced that in these moments, playing a sublime game of poker, the Norman [Anquetil], as wily as he can be, an implacable bluffer, won right there his fifth Tour. Because, for me, it was clear that Anquetil was at the extreme limit of his possibilities and that had Poulidor made some sharp attacks they would have unsettled him mechanically and psychically.”

Instead, Poulidor continued at a steady rhythm that Anquetil, riding at his physical limits, was able to match. “Even so,” Goddet continued, “fifteen hundred meters from the end, imperceptibly at first, the two rivals separated…. Anquetil was losing, but not giving up, centimeter after centimeter, obliged to accept the law of the Puy, but managing to protect his victory in the Tour! Poulidor, marvelous in the persistency of his effort…finished all the same by scratching out in such a short distance 42 seconds on Anquetil—and closing to within 14 miniscule seconds of the yellow jersey.” There was still the final time trial, 27.5 kilometers from Versailles to the Parc des Princes in Paris, to come. On that burning hot afternoon of Bastille Day, July 14, the national holiday, all of France was watching and listening. The TV and radio stations covered the time trial in its entirety. A million people were on the roadside. I chose to stand on the Pont de Sèvres, the bridge over the Seine River, 5 kilometers from the finish—and there were no gendarmes in the way of my camera!

If Poulidor beat Anquetil by five seconds and taken the 20-second time bonus, as against the 10 seconds for the runner-up, he would have won the Tour. The radio commentators were in fanatical voice, describing this epic duel. With 10 kilometers to go, Anquetil was just five seconds faster. And at the foot of the last downhill, just before “my” bridge, Geminiani tooted his klaxon and showed Anquetil a blackboard where he’d scribbled + 3”—only three seconds ahead and 5 kilometers to go. As I clicked my camera, I couldn’t but help admire the amazingly smooth style of Maître Jacques , his maillot jaune like an extension of his combed-back blond hair.

We could hear the roar of the crowd in the stadium when he arrived, most of them Anquetilistes, hailing another title for their champion. Across the line in the venerable concrete velodrome he was 21 seconds faster than Poulidor. He’d won a fifth Tour by 55 seconds, the slimmest margin in the Tour’s first 51 editions. Anquetil never finished another Tour. In eight future editions of the Tour, Poulidor would finish second four more times, along with two third places, a seventh and a ninth. He never did wear the yellow jersey.

From issue 32. Buy it here .

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Race information

Date: 06 July 1964
Start time: -
Avg. speed winner: 40.3 km/h
Classification: SPP
Race category: ME - Men Elite
Distance: 186 km
Points scale: GT.A.Stage
Parcours type:
ProfileScore: 84
Vertical meters: 2000
Departure: Andorra
Arrival: Toulouse
Race ranking: n/a
Startlist quality score: 1519
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The Biggest Champions in Tour de France History

While we anticipate who will rise to glory this year, let’s look at the legends who have already cemented their place in Tour history.

We’re just a few days away from the start of the 111th edition of the Tour de France , La Grand Boucle , arguably the biggest bike race on Earth. As we’ve wound through the early season, over the cobbles of Northern Europe, around Italy in the season’s first Grand Tour, and up and down countless mountains, hills, and bergs, some of this year’s storylines have crystallized.

Can Tadej go for back-to-back Grand Tours? Will Jonas be able to defend his double titles? Is 2024 finally the year that Primož Roglič—at the front of a new team—can exorcize the demons of the Super Planche des Belles Filles? Will Remco finally deliver on all of the promise and raw talent he’s long exhibited? Or will some sleeper pounce on a golden opportunity and surprise us all the way Sepp Kuss did in last year’s Vuelta?

All of these questions will be answered in just a few days. But for now, instead of looking forward, let’s look back. Rather than speculate on the unknown, let’s remember the known. Let’s talk about some of the most famous (and at least one infamous) winners in the history of the Tour de France, men whose names and exploits have become synonymous with Le Tour.

The Classic Era

Maurice garin – 1903.

Any list of Tour de France winners has to include Garin for no other reason than the Frenchman won the first-ever. In 1903, Garin won the six-stage Tour, covering its 1,509 miles in under ninety-five hours. But don’t let those six stages fool you, as the race averaged over 250 miles each day. Garin defended his title the following year, only to be stripped of the win following allegations that he was transported by a car or a horse at some point during the race.

Phillipe Thys – 1913, 1914, 1920

Thys’s first Tour victory wasn’t without issue, as the Belgian won the 1913 race despite suffering a broken fork. He was penalized ten minutes after it was discovered he repaired the fork at a bicycle shop, yet still won the race by nine minutes. He repeated this in 1914, again overcoming a major penalty. This time, he was hit with a thirty-minute deduction for an unauthorized wheel change. As the race was not run between 1915 and 1918 due to the First World War, Thys had to wait until 1920 for his third and final Tour victory. Following that win, Tour de France founder Henri Desgrange wrote of Thys, “France is not unaware that, without the war, the crack rider from Anderlecht would be celebrating not his third Tour, but his fifth or sixth.”

Gino Bartali – 1938, 1948

Though Coppi was perhaps better known for his trio of wins at his native Giro d’Italia (which included seven King of the Mountains wins), he was twice the winner of the Tour de France. After withdrawing from his first Tour in 1937, where he wore the leader’s jersey for a time, Bartali returned the following year and won, immediately becoming an icon in Italy. A decade later, Bartali returned to the Tour, leaving a nation of people to choose between him and his countryman Fausto Coppi. Bartali won seven stages en route to both the yellow jersey and the KOM classification. Years later, it was discovered that Bartali secretly used his training rides to shuttle documents back and forth between Florence and Assisi in order to aid Jews who were being persecuted by the Nazis.

The Golden Era

Fausto coppi – 1949, 1952.

Fausto Coppi kicked off what many call cycling’s Golden Age and is perhaps most well-known for the fact that he won the Giro/Tour double twice. Coppi was the first to achieve the double. Only eight other riders have achieved the result. Coppi’s early career was interrupted due to the Second World War, leaving generations of pundits to wonder what he might have done in the early 1940s. However, he did win five Giris d’Italia and scores of classics in addition to his pair of Tours. He frequently clashed with his biggest rival, Gino Bartali, dividing a nation of fans down into “Coppiani” and “Bartaliani.”

Jacques Anquetil – 1957, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964

Over the course of eight years, Jacques Anquetil won the race five times. His first victory came on debut, just months after he was discharged from military service. Following a rocky few years spent chasing an elusive Giro/Tour double, Anquetil returned to the top of the podium in 1961. He repeated as Tour champion the following year doubled up the next two years, with the Tour and the Vuelta a España in 1963 and the Tour and the Giro in 1964.

Eddy Merckx – 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1974

belgian champion eddy merckx answers journalists u

There might be no more famous bicycle racer than Eddy Merckx. The Belgian legend remains forty-five years after his retirement, as the name to which everyone else is compared. “Is he the next Mercxk?” is asked every few years. And to this point, everyone has fallen short of the mark. And though he’s tied with three other riders on this list with five Tours de France on his resume, his name rises above all due in large part to the rest of his palmarés, which includes victories at virtually every other race of import. And for all of his yellow jerseys, he’s equally known for his thirty-four stage wins at the Tour, matched only by Mark Cavendish, and six stage wins clear of the next closest racers (Bernard Hinault with twenty-eight).

Bernard Hinault – 1978, 1979, 1981, 1982, 1985

In Mercxk’s final year, his heir apparent was coronated when Frenchman Bernard Hinault won his first Tour de France. He won again the following year and was leading the race in 1980, expected by many to three-peat. However, “The Badger” was forced to abandon due to a knee injury. He came back the following year and the year after that, again going back-to-back. His final Tour victory came in 1985 thanks in large part to the work of his teammate, a young Greg LeMond.

The New Era

Greg lemond – 1986, 1989, 1990.

Greg LeMond finished his first-ever Tour de France in third place. The following year, he took one step further on the podium, finishing second after he spent the race working in service of his La Vie Claire team leader Hinault. The year after that, in 1986, the reins came off, and LeMond entered Le Tour as La Vie Claire’s co-leader. He won that race, besting Hinault by just over three minutes. After being shot in a hunting accident, LeMond missed the next two Tours de France, only to return in 1989, winning what many call the greatest Tour of all time. LeMond entered the race with little hype or expectation. He hoped for a top-twenty finish. However, over the course of the Tour, LeMond’s strength and position grew as he battled back and forth with his French rival, Laurent Fignon. LeMond headed into the race’s final stage, a time trial fifty seconds short of Fignon. He finished it eight seconds clear of the Frenchman, winning the race in what remains the smallest margin of victory ever. Later that year, he won his second World Championship (his first came in 1983) and followed up his performance with a repeat Tour de France victory the next summer.

Miguel Indurain – 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995

There was a time when it was presumed that no one would top Eddy Mercxk’s record of four consecutive Tour de France wins (1969-1972). But then came Miguel Indurain, who unseated LeMond in 1991 (LeMond finished second), snatching his first of a then-record five straight Tour de France victories. In addition to his stretch of Tour wins, Indurain twice doubled up, winning the Tour and the Giro in 1992 and 1993.

Marco Pantani – 1998

marco pantani of italy and the mercatone team

Unlike most of the others on this list, Marco Pantani’s renown doesn’t come from repeated success at the Tour de France. In fact, Il Pirata only won the yellow jersey once, in 1998 (after a pair of third-place finishes in 1994 and 1997). However, that year, he doubled up, winning his home race, the Giro d’Italia. Much of Marco Pantani’s legacy is couched in legend and lore, owing in large part to his elusiveness while racing and untimely death at just thirty-four years old.

The Modern Era

Lance armstrong – 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 (all vacated).

Lance Armstrong had all seven of his Tour de France titles stripped and received a lifetime ban from all sports that follow the World Anti-Doping Code.

Alberto Contador – 2007, 2009

Alberto Contador is one of just seven riders to have won all three Grand Tours more than once. He’s also a four-time winner of the Vélo d’Or, the only person to win the award for the year’s best rider four times. He was the first man in the twenty-first century not named Lance Armstrong to win the Tour de France. However, after being implicated in a doping scandal (he was later cleared), Contador didn’t even have a pro contract going into the 2007 season. He went on to win that race by just twenty-three seconds over Cadel Evans (who would go on to win the Tour in 2011). Two years later, he notched his second Tour victory, beating Andy Schleck by just over four minutes.

Bradley Wiggins – 2012

Like Marco Pantani, Bradley Wiggins has just one Tour de France victory. That win came in 2012 after the British track champion fully committed to road racing. Wiggo won over many European fans after a fan threw carpet tacks onto the course during stage 14. Unaffected, Wiggins commanded the peloton to slow down and wait for his competitors—namely Cadel Evans, who suffered a puncture—to catch up. Since his 2012 victory, Wiggins has remained in the spotlight as a pundit, a rower, a published author, and lately, an advocate for mental health awareness.

The Contemporary Era

Chris froome – 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017.

After displaying strong form as a super domestique during the 2012 season, riding in support of Bradley Wiggins, Froome entered 2013 with massive expectations. He took on the leader’s role in some early-season races and headed into the Tour de France as the heavy favorite, fulfilling bets with a four-plus-minute win over Nairo Quintana. The following year, he crashed out of the race on stage 5. However, Froome returned with a 2015 victory, the first in three consecutive Tour de France wins.

Tadej Pogačar – 2020, 2021

In his short career, Tadej Pogačar has won just about everything there is to win. And he’s often done as much with aplomb and style, with many experts saying his versatility, pure strength, and insatiable will win make Pogačar the closest thing we’ve seen to Eddy Merckx since the real thing. His first Tour de France victory came in 2020 after he snatched the win from fellow Slovenian Primož Roglič. It was there that he won on the race’s penultimate stage, going from fifty seconds down on Roglič to one minute up in the span of one final climb. The following year, he defended with relative ease, beating then-newcomer Jonas Vingegaard by more than five minutes.

Jonas Vingegaard – 2022, 2023

Jonas Vingegaard’s backstory is already the stuff of legend. While working in a Danish fish factory, he was discovered after posting a ride to Strava. Within a few years, he won his first Tour de France, beating the seemingly invincible Tadej Pogačar. The following year, he went head-to-head with Tadej, winning his second-straight Tour on the back of one of the greatest time trials in the history of the Tour (and arguably ever). He then put the final nail into the coffin by doing what was then unthinkable: cracking Tadej Pogačar up a brutal climb.

Michael Venutolo-Mantovani is a writer and musician based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He loves road and track cycling, likes gravel riding, and can often be found trying to avoid crashing his mountain bike.

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Top 10: Tour de France riders

The Tour de France - originally scheduled to run from June 27 to July 19 - will now start on August 29 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Here, the PA news agency takes a look through the history books to profile 10 of the greatest riders from the race's history.

Eddy Merckx

Widely considered the greatest ever cyclist, 'the Cannibal' won the Tour in each of the first five editions he entered, four in a row between 1969 and 1972, then again in 1974 after he skipped the 1973 race to win the Giro-Vuelta double instead. Merckx's insatiable desire for victory saw him win a record 34 stages of the Tour in his career. He completed the Giro-Tour double three times, and in 1974 became the first man to win cycling's 'triple crown' of the Giro, Tour and World Championships road race, an achievement matched only once since by Stephen Roche in 1987. Merckx's hopes of a sixth title in 1975 were ruined when he was punched by a spectator on the Puy-de-Dome during stage 14, battling on to finish second overall despite suffering from an inflamed liver as a result of the incident. He would never again win another stage of the race he had dominated for so long, with his only other appearance in 1977 ending in a sixth-placed finish.

Bernard Hinault

The last Frenchman to celebrate victory in the Tour de France, Bernard Hinault took the title in 1978, 1979, 1981, 1982 and 1985. A sixth title eluded 'the Badger' - a knee injury forced Hinault to withdraw in 1980 while in the yellow jersey, with a similar problem preventing him from starting in 1983. But most fascinating of all was the 1986 race, in which Hinault had pledged to help La Vie Claire team-mate Greg LeMond. If he did help, he did so grudgingly, happy to play up to the idea he was capable of winning a sixth title. An attack on stage 12 to Pau put him more than five minutes clear of LeMond and he held yellow for five days, losing it after stage 17. The pair finished arm-in-arm on Alpe d'Huez at the end of stage 18 but the gesture seemed an empty one given Hinault's interview immediately afterwards claiming the race was still on. LeMond eventually triumphed by three minutes but the distrust lingered, and Hinault retired at the end of the season, still only 32.

Miguel Indurain

Of the four men to have won five Tour titles, only Spaniard Indurain achieved it with five consecutive victories as he seized control of the race from 1991 to 1995. It was a record perhaps in keeping with a rider many criticised as "robotic" as he ripped up time trials to stamp his authority on the race. Indurain's success came in the second half of his career - he had competed in the Tour and Vuelta a combined 10 times, never cracking the top 15 until he finished 10th in the 1990 Tour and seventh in that year's Vuelta, teeing up the success that began a year later. He also claimed two Giro titles, in 1992 and 1993, but never bettered his second place from 1991 in his home Grand Tour.

Jacques Anquetil

Anquetil was the first man to win the Tour five times, taking victory in 1957, 1961, 1962, 1963 and 1964, with a Tour-Vuelta double in 1963 and a Giro-Tour double in 1964. After emerging as a strong amateur, Anquetil broke the prestigious Hour Record while on national service in the French army, teeing up the professional career that would soon follow. Riding in a very different era, Anquetil never denied doping, saying during a television debate: "Leave me in peace; everybody takes dope". Anquetil died in 1987 from stomach cancer, aged 53.

Chris Froome

Froome's awkward-looking style on a bike might frequently be mocked, but none can now question the success it has brought him with seven Grand Tour trophies in the cabinet. His Tour successes in 2013, 2015, 2016 and 2017 have been complimented by his stunning 2018 Giro victory and Vuelta titles from 2011 and 2017 - the 2011 title having only been awarded last year after Juan Jose Cobo was found guilty of doping, retroactively making Froome Britain's first Grand Tour winner. Many believe Froome was strong enough to have beaten Sir Bradley Wiggins in the 2012 Tour but for team orders, and it remains to be seen if his chance at a record-equalling fifth title is now gone after a high-speed crash during last year's Criterium du Dauphine left him with a long list of injuries which may prevent him from ever getting back to his best again.

Greg LeMond

LeMond's victory in 1986 went down in history as one of the most fascinating ever Tours given the intra-team battle with Hinault, but for the American it was only the beginning as he followed up with an even more dramatic win in 1989. After suffering life-threatening injuries in a 1987 hunting accident, LeMond's future in the sport was in question - he was not considered a contender in 1989 and had told his wife he was thinking about retirement. But he bossed the stage-five time trial and battled tooth and nail with Laurent Fignon through the mountains. As they began a rare time trial into Paris on the final stage, LeMond began some 50 seconds behind Fignon but stunned the Frenchman to win the Tour by just eight seconds, going on to take the world title a month later. LeMond would claim a third Tour title in 1990.

Louison Bobet

Regarded as the first great rider of the post-war era, Bobet was the first to win the Tour in three consecutive years as he dominated from 1953 to 1955. Having taken up cycling after serving in the army during World War II, Bobet's introduction to the Tour was an inauspicious one as his 1947 debut ended in an early withdrawal and earned him the nickname 'cry-baby' as he wept at the difficulty of the race. But he returned a year later to spend two days in yellow and finished third in 1950 to point to far greater potential. He won the 1955 Tour despite saddle boils which required surgery and which Bobet said made him a lesser rider for the rest of his days. After missing the 1956 and 1957 Tours, he returned in 1958, finishing seventh, but was no longer able to compete for yellow.

Philippe Thys

'The Basset Hound' was the first three-time winner of the Tour and a man who would no doubt have contended for or won many more but for the First World War. The Belgian's first win came in 1913 despite him suffering a broken fork and incurring a 10-minute penalty when he stopped at a bike shop for repairs. He won again in 1914 but, with the intervention of war, had to wait until 1920 for his third. Tour organiser Henri Desgrange wrote: "France is not unaware that, without the war, the crack rider from Anderlecht would be celebrating not his third Tour, but his fifth or sixth."

Raymond Poulidor

Raymond Poulidor never won the Tour de France but he rode his way into its legend during his long rivalry with Jacques Anquetil. 'Pou-Pou' became known as the 'Eternal Second' as he finished second three times and third five times, riding on to the age of 40 in his hunt for the yellow jersey - a garment that would always elude him. Poulidor came closest in 1964, losing by only 55 seconds to Anquetil after the two men rode themselves to exhaustion on the Puy de Dome. But with every failure, Poulidor's popularity with the French crowds only grew, even as he was competing with a compatriot, and by the time of his death last year he was arguably France's most popular ever rider.

Mark Cavendish

Mark Cavendish sits in a category of his own in the history of the Tour as its greatest ever sprinter. Though effectively competing in a different event to those seeking to wear the yellow jersey in Paris, Cavendish became synonymous with Tour success as he utterly dominated the flat stages at his peak. Between 2008 and 2011 he won an incredible 20 stages and in total the Manxman has piled up 30 victories - second only to the record of Merckx - before illness and injury slowed him and left a question mark where there had once appeared near certainty he would one day take the record for himself.

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Tour de France 1964 – Livre de route officiel / Official roadbook

The second opus of a unique and limited collection which collects, digitises, restores and magnifies the official old roadbooks of the Tour de France, this exceptional and unique republication of the “Grande Boucle” continues with the 1964-Tour. “We often speak of a bible to designate the function of the roadbook. It is the key document of a cycling race, its information is essential for the riders, their management, the organisers and for anyone who goes along with the event” said Christian Prudhomme when discovering these collected works. This document takes you back to June 1964 in Rennes when the 51st edition of the Tour de France was won by Jacques Anquetil, his fifth and last success on the Tour as the outcome of a legendary duel with Raymond Poulidor. In his hitherto unseen preface, Philippe Bouvet even says that it probably was “the Tour of all Tours and surely the most thrilling !”. From Rennes to Paris’s Parc des Princes, from Forest to Andorra, from Briançon to Luchon, or even between Brive and the Puy-de-Dôme, this almost unobtainable book enables one to rediscover the entire race, seeing precisely when and where it went by (itinerary timetables, site plans, site maps, altimetric profiles, accommodation maps and access maps, sport points, etc.). A beautiful book, ideal for a gift, which will delight cycling enthusiasts and thrill proper collectors!

Deuxième opus d’une collection inédite qui collecte, numérise, restaure et magnifie les anciens livres de route officiels du Tour de France cycliste, cette réédition exceptionnelle en série limitée des roadbooks officiels de la Grande Boucle se poursuit avec l’édition 1964. Pour Christian Prudhomme au sujet de cette collection : « On parle souvent d’une bible pour désigner la fonction du livre de route. C’est le document clé d’une course cycliste, dont les informations sont capitales pour les coureurs, leur encadrement, les organisateurs et tous les suiveurs qui accompagnent l’événement ». Ce document nous replonge en juin 1964 à Rennes pour une 51e édition du Tour de France remportée par Jacques Anquetil, son 5e et dernier succès sur la Grande Boucle à l’issue d’un duel de légende avec Raymond Poulidor. Dans sa préface inédite, Philippe Bouvet dit même qu’il aurait été le « Tour des Tours, sûrement, l’un des plus palpitants ». De Rennes au Parc des Princes, de Forest à Andorre, de Brive au Puy-de-Dôme, cet ouvrage original aujourd’hui quasiment introuvable, permet de redécouvrir avec une précision unique l’ensemble du parcours de l’épreuve : itinéraires horaires, plans de sites, cartes, profils altimétriques, carte des hébergements et des accès, points sportifs. Beau livre, idéal pour un cadeau, qui ravira les passionnés et collectionneurs avisés !

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Editor/ Éditeur‏ : ‎ Procyclingmaps
Limited edition/ Édition limitée
Subject/ Objet : Tour de France official roadbook – Livre de route du Tour de France
Realease date/ Date de sortie : 13 juin 2022 – June 13th, 2022
Language‏/ Langue : ‎ Français & Anglais – French & English
Hardcover/ Relié : ‎ 128 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 2958327205
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-2958327217
Audience/ Âge de lecture : ‎ 12 ans et plus – 12 years or older
Weight of the article‏/ Poids de l’article : ‎ 815 g
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 29 x 22 x 1.8 cm/11.42 x 8.66 x 0.71 in
100% Designed and Printed in France on PEFC certified paper/ 100% Conçu et imprimé en France sur du papier PEFSC
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Livré chez vous en 2 à 5 jours
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Tour de France 1969 – Livre de route officiel / Official roadbook

Tour de France 1957 – Livre de route officiel / Official roadbook

Tour de France 1967 – Livre de route officiel / Official roadbook

Tour de France 1961 – Livre de route officiel / Official roadbook

Tour de France 1960 – Livre de route officiel / Official roadbook

Tour de France 1968 – Livre de route officiel / Official roadbook

COMMENTS

List of teams and cyclists in the 1964 Tour de France
The 1964 Tour de France started with 132 cyclists, divided into 12 teams of 11 cyclists: [ 1] Saint-Raphaël-Gitane-Campagnolo. Mercier-BP-Hutchinson. Peugeot-BP-Englebert. Pelforth-Sauvage-Lejeune-Wolber. Margnat-Paloma-Dunlop. Wiel's-Groene Leeuw. Solo-Superia. Flandria-Romeo.
1964 Tour de France
The 1964 Tour de France was the 51st edition of the Tour de France, one of cycling's Grand Tours. It took place between 22 June and 14 July, with 22 stages covering a distance of 4,504 km (2,799 mi). ... The riders in the team that led this classification wore yellow caps. [16] In addition, there was a combativity award, ...
Startlist for Tour de France 1964
Competing teams and riders for Tour de France 1964. Top competitors are Jacques Anquetil, Jacques Anquetil and Jacques Anquetil.
1964 Tour de France by BikeRaceInfo
1964 Tour Quick Facts: 4,502.4 km raced at an average speed of 35.420 km/hr. There were 132 starters and 81 classified finishers. The 1964 Tour de France was one of the greatest races of all time. Anquetil had come off his Giro victory that ended just fourteen days before the Tour started and was tired. His battle with Poulidor culminating in a ...
1964 Tour de France: results and classification
Jerseys of the 1964 Tour de France Yellow jersey (winner of the Tour de France) : Jacques Anquetil in 124h09'44" Polka dot jersey (best climber) : Federico Bahamontes with 173 points Green jersey (best sprinter) : Jan Janssen with 208 points Stages of the 1964 Tour de France. Stage 1 (Rennes - Lisieux, 215 km) 1. Edward Sels in 5h14'57" 2 ...
Tour de France 1964 Stage 22b (ITT) results
Jacques Anquetil is the winner of Tour de France 1964, before Raymond Poulidor and Federico Bahamontes. Jacques Anquetil is the winner of the final stage. ... Click on the time of any rider to view the relative gains on this rider. Select two riders to compare. Rnk GC Timelag BIB H2H Specialty Rider Age Team UCI Pnt Time Avg; 1: 1 +0:00: 1: GC:
51st Tour de France 1964
Anquetil verses Poulidor, an Epic Battle Defending champion Jacques Anquetil came to the 1964 Tour de France in search of an unprecedented fifth championship. Anquetil started the race with tired legs. He had just won the Giro d'Italia for the second time and hoped to equal Fausto Coppi's (1949 and 1952) Tour-Giro double (winning the Tour and Giro in the same year).
Tour de France 1964
Search Rider. × Search Team. × Search Race. SPP Tour de France 1964 | General Classification . 51st edition. General Classification. 22 June 1964 - 14 July 1964. Rider Team Time; 1. Jacques ANQUETIL: Saint Raphaël - Gitane - Campagnolo: 127h09'44" 2.
1964 Tour de France
The 1964 Tour de France was the 51st edition of the Tour de France, one of cycling's Grand Tours. It took place between 22 June and 14 July, with 22 stages covering a distance of 4,504 km (2,799 mi). Stages 3, 10 and 22 were all two-part stages with the first half being a regular stage and the second half being a team or individual time trial.
Tour de France 1964
Winners and leaders per stage for Tour de France 1964. P; C; S; Menu Home; Races Tour de France; Giro d'Italia; La Vuelta ciclista a España; World Championships; Milano-Sanremo; Amstel Gold Race; Tirreno-Adriatico; Liège-Bastogne-Liège; Il Lombardia; ... Riders; Teams; Grand tours; Game;
Stage Overview Tour de France
Search Rider. × Search Team. × Search Race. SPP Tour de France 1964 | Stage Overview 51st edition. 22 June 1964 - 14 July 1964. Date Stage Winner Distance; 22/06: Stage 1. Rennes - Lisieux: Edward SELS: 215 km: 23/06: Stage 2. Lisieux - Amiens: André DARRIGADE: 208 km:
The Inner Ring
France was in the middle of a long period of strong economic growth and embracing consumer brands, television and the car and the Tour de France reflected this. 1964 in cycling. Jacques Anquetil wins Paris-Nice. Tom Simpson wins Milan-Sanremo ahead of Raymond Poulidor. Anquetil wins Gent-Wevelgem, taking the bunch sprint.
The Inner Ring
The third and final part of the series looking at the 1964 Tour de France is a look at what made it such a good Tour. If you're in a hurry: it came down to a contest between two riders and was close right until the end… but there's more to it than that.
The Inner Ring
The 1964 Tour de France, Part II. Wednesday, 8 April 2020. Part II of the series looking at the 1964 Tour de France is a stage-by-stage account of the race to show race unfolding from stage wins to accidents, punch-ups to punctures. There are the oddities of the time such as using cabbage leaves to protect against the heat, and the infamous ...
ANQUETIL vs. POULIDOR: The ultimate showdown at the Tour of '64
Sunday, July 12, 1964 was one of those days that sticks in your mind—even if it was a half-century ago. In following that Tour de France by bike since its second day, I'd already seen the race a dozen times, including several highlights: Federico Bahamontès attacking up the Galibier in the Alps, Jacques Anquetil winning a time trial on the ...
Tour de France winners
While cheating has marred the Tour from the start, in recent years the race has been especially tarnished by allegations of illegal drug use. Several winners have been stripped of their titles, most notably Lance Armstrong, who was the first rider to capture seven titles.The current record holders have won five Tours each: Jacques Anquetil of France (1957 and 1961-64), Eddy Merckx of Belgium ...
Tour de France records and statistics
This is a list of records and statistics in the Tour de France, road cycling's premier competitive event.. One rider has been King of the Mountains, won the combination classification, combativity award, the points competition, and the Tour in the same year - Eddy Merckx in 1969, which was also the first year he participated.. The only rider to approach the feat of winning the green, polka dot ...
Tour de France 1964 Stage 14 results
Ward Sels is the winner of Tour de France 1964 Stage 14, before Gilbert Desmet and Vittorio Adorni. Georges Groussard was leader in GC. ... DNF=Did not finish / DNS=Did not start / OTL = Outside time limit / DF=Did finish, no result / NR=No result Rider wearing the jersey >50% of race distance in group before peloton.
Tour de France October 1964
Motor Sport. Just as we close for Press the results of the Tour de France were announced. In the Touring category the Ford Mustang of Peter Procter and Andrew Cowan won, followed by the similar car of Peter Harper and David Pollard. The normally all-conquering Jaguar 3.5 was relegated to third place, this car being driven by Constén and Le Guezec.
15 Most Famous Tour de France Champions
Bernard Hinault - 1978, 1979, 1981, 1982, 1985. Jean-Yves Ruszniewski // Getty Images. In Mercxk's final year, his heir apparent was coronated when Frenchman Bernard Hinault won his first Tour ...
List of Tour de France general classification winners
The Tour de France is an annual road bicycle race held over 23 days in July. Established in 1903 by newspaper L'Auto, the Tour is the best-known and most prestigious of cycling's three "Grand Tours"; the others are the Giro d'Italia and the Vuelta a España. [1] The race usually covers approximately 3,500 kilometres (2,200 mi), passing through France and neighbouring countries such as Belgium. [2]
Top 10: Tour de France riders
Anquetil was the first man to win five Tours de France. Credit: PA Jacques Anquetil. Anquetil was the first man to win the Tour five times, taking victory in 1957, 1961, 1962, 1963 and 1964, with ...
Tour de France 1964
Ce document nous replonge en juin 1964 à Rennes pour une 51e édition du Tour de France remportée par Jacques Anquetil, son 5e et dernier succès sur la Grande Boucle à l'issue d'un duel de légende avec Raymond Poulidor. Dans sa préface inédite, Philippe Bouvet dit même qu'il aurait été le « Tour des Tours, sûrement, l'un des ...