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.
Contents
- Appearances
- Winning margin
- Successful breakaways
- Overall speed
- Stage speeds
- Stage wins per rider
- Stage wins per country
- Stage towns
- References
Twice the Tour was won by a racer who never wore the yellow jersey until the race was over. In 1947, Jean Robic overturned a three-minute deficit on a 257 km final stage into Paris. In 1968, Jan Janssen of the Netherlands secured his win in the individual time trial on the last day.
The Tour has been won three times by a racer who led the general classification on the first stage and held the lead all the way to Paris. Maurice Garin did it during the Tour's very first edition, 1903; he repeated the feat the next year, but the results were nullified by the officials as a response to widespread cheating. Ottavio Bottechia completed a GC start-to-finish sweep in 1924. And in 1928, Nicolas Frantz held the GC for the entire race, and at the end, the podium consisted solely of members of his racing team. While no one has equalled this feat since 1928, there have been four tours in which a racer has taken over the GC lead on the second stage and carried that lead all the way to Paris.
Laurent Fignon, winner in 1983, was the last rider to win the race in his first appearance.
René Pottier, Roger Lapébie, Sylvère Maes, Fausto Coppi and Bradley Wiggins all won the Tour de France the last time they appeared in the race.
Appearances
The record for most appearances is held jointly by George Hincapie, Stuart O'Grady, and Jens Voigt with 17. In light of Hincapie's suspension for use of performance-enhancing drugs, before which he held the mark for most consecutive finishes with sixteen, having completed all but his very first, Joop Zoetemelk holds the record for the most finishes, having completed all 16 of the Tours that he started.
Winning margin
In the early years of the Tour, cyclists rode individually, and were sometimes forbidden to ride together. This led to large gaps between the winner and the number two. Since the cyclists now tend to stay together in a peloton, the margins of the winner have become smaller, as the difference usually originates from time trials, breakaways or on mountain top finishes, or from being left behind the peloton. In the table below, the eight smallest margins between the winner and the second placed cyclists at the end of the Tour are given. The largest margin, by comparison, remains that of the first Tour in 1903: 2h 49m 45s between Maurice Garin and Lucien Pothier. The eight smallest margins between first and second placed riders are as follows:
Successful breakaways
The longest successful post-war breakaway by a single rider was by Albert Bourlon in the 1947 Tour de France. In the stage Carcassone-Luchon, he stayed away for 253 kilometres (157 mi). It was one of seven breakaways longer than 200 km, the last being Thierry Marie's 234 km escape in 1991. Bourlon finished 16 m 30s ahead. This is one of the biggest time gaps but not the greatest. That record belongs to José-Luis Viejo, who beat the peloton by 22 mins 50 secs in the 1976 stage Montgenèvre-Manosque. He was the fourth and most recent rider to win a stage by more than 20 minutes.
Overall speed
The 2005 edition has the distinction of being the fastest Tour de France in history. Lance Armstrong rode 3,592.5 km in 86h 15' 02", thus realising an overall speed of 41.654 km/h.
The slowest Tour de France was the edition of 1919, when Firmin Lambot attained an overall speed of 24.056 km/h.
Stage speeds
The fastest massed-start stage was in 1999 from Laval to Blois (194.5 km), won by Mario Cipollini at 50.4 km/h. The fastest time-trial is Rohan Dennis' stage 1 of the 2015 Tour de France in Utrecht, won at an average of 55.446 km/h (34.5 mph). The fastest stage win was by the 2013 Orica GreenEDGE team in a team time-trial. It completed the 25 km time-trial at 57.7 km/h.
The fastest climb of Alpe d'Huez was by Marco Pantani in 1997 Tour de France in 23.1 km/h.
Stage wins per rider
32 riders have won 10 or more stages (including half-stages, excluding Team Time Trials). Riders who are still active are indicated in bold. Riders with the same number of stage wins are listed alphabetically. This table is correct as of the end of the Tour de France 2016.
Three riders have won 8 stages in a single year:
Mark Cavendish has the most mass finish stage wins with 30 ahead of André Darrigade and André Leducq with 22, François Faber with 19 and Eddy Merckx with 18.
The youngest Tour de France stage winner is Fabio Battesini, who was 19 when he won one stage in the 1931 Tour de France.
Stage wins per country
Riders from 32 countries have won at least one stage in the Tour de France.
Stage towns
Some cities and towns have hosted 25 or more stage starts and finishes: