The 1977 Tour de France was the 64th edition of the Tour de France, taking place between 30 June and 24 July. The total race distance was 22 stages over .
Lucien Van Impe, the winner of the previous year, wanted to repeat his victory and going into stage 16 Van Impe along with Eddy Merckx and Joop Zoetemelk were all within about 1:00 of Bernard Thévenet who had just taken the maillot jaune from Dietrich Thurau. Merckx fell off the back near the end of the tour, Zoetemelk was penalized ten minutes and Van Impe had his bike damaged when he was hit by a motorist on Alpe d'Huez where Kuiper won the stage but was unable to break Thévenet, who won the Tour with the smallest margin since the 1968 Tour de France.
Teams
To ride the Tour, teams had to pay money. The other Grand Tours, the Giro d'Italia and the Vuelta a España, paid the teams money to start. For financial reasons, some teams chose to avoid the Tour, and only 100 cyclists started the race, divided in ten teams of ten cyclists each. One of the notable absentees was Michel Pollentier.
The teams entering the race were:
Lejeune–BP
Pre-race favourites
Bernard Thévenet, the winner of 1975, was considered the main favourite, because the course of the race was considered suited to his talents. In March 1977, Thévenet had been penalised for a positive doping test in Paris–Nice.
The winner of the 1976 edition, Lucien Van Impe, was specialized in climbing, so his chances in the 1977 edition with less mountains were slimmer. Two other contenders were teammates Raymond Delisle and Joop Zoetemelk, fourth and second in the 1976 edition. Hennie Kuiper, the reigning world champion, was also a favourite.
Five-time winner Eddy Merckx was also competing, and was still considered an outsider for the victory, but he was no longer as dominant as before.
Route and stages
The 1977 Tour de France started on 30 June, and had two rest days, in Bordeaux and Freiburg. The 1976 Tour had been focused around the mountains, with five hilltop finishes. In 1977, the climbing was de-emphasized, with only two hilltop finishes, and more emphasis on the time trials. The highest point of elevation in the race was at the summit of the Col du Tourmalet mountain pass on stage 2.
The first stage from Fleurance to Auch was split in two parts: 140 km from Fleurance to Lectoure, directly followed by 97 km from Lectoure to Auch. It was the first time a "flying stage" was used. The stage was split in two parts, but there was no stop in between. After the riders reached the finish line of the first part, they immediately continued for the next part; if a group was ahead of the rest, they kept this advantage. The first riders to reach the finish of the flying stage were given prizes and points for the points classification as if it was a normal stage; the general classification was not changed.
+ Stage characteristics and winners Stage Date Course Distance Type Winner P 30 June Fleurance Individual time trial 1 1 July Fleurance to Auch Plain stage 2 2 July Auch to Pau Stage with mountain(s) 3 3 July Oloron-Sainte-Marie to Vitoria-Gasteiz (Spain) Stage with mountain(s) 4 4 July Vitoria-Gasteiz (Spain) to Seignosse le Penon Stage with mountain(s) 5a 5 July Morcenx to Bordeaux Plain stage 5b Bordeaux Individual time trial 6 July Bordeaux Rest day 6 7 July Bordeaux to Limoges Plain stage 7a 8 July Jaunay-Clan to Angers Plain stage 7b Angers Team time trial 8 9 July Angers to Lorient Plain stage 9 10 July Lorient to Rennes Stage with mountain(s) 10 11 July Bagnoles-de-l'Orne to Rouen Plain stage 11 12 July Rouen to Roubaix Plain stage 12 13 July Roubaix to Charleroi (Belgium) Stage with mountain(s) 14 July Freiburg Rest day 13a 15 July Freiburg (West Germany) Plain stage 13b Altkirch to Besançon Plain stage 14 16 July Besançon to Thonon-les-Bains Stage with mountain(s) 15a 17 July Thonon-les-Bains to Morzine Stage with mountain(s) 15b Morzine to Avoriaz Individual time trial 16 18 July Morzine to Chamonix Stage with mountain(s) 17 19 July Chamonix to Alpe d'Huez Stage with mountain(s) 18 20 July Rossignol Voiron to Saint-Étienne Stage with mountain(s) 19 21 July Saint-Trivier-sur-Moignans to Dijon Plain stage 20 22 July Dijon Individual time trial 21 23 July Montereau-Fault-Yonne to Versailles Plain stage 22a 24 July Paris Individual time trial 22b Paris (Champs-Élysées) Plain stage Total
Race overview
The prologue was won by Dietrich Thurau, who made his debut in the Tour. Thurau wanted to be the leader when the Tour would enter his native Germany in stage 13. In the second stage, big mountains were scheduled, unusually early in the race, and Thurau saw this as the biggest threat to this goal. When Van Impe, Thévenet and Kuiper were away leaving Thurau behind, Thurau worked together with Merckx, and they were able to reach the leaders, and Thurau was able to win the sprint. The second part of the fifth stage was a time trial. Eddy Merckx, at that moment only 8 seconds behind Thurau, was expected to win enough time on Thurau to become the new leader, but surprisingly Thurau won the time trial, and extended his lead.
Thurau was able to keep control of the race for the next stages, and when the Tour entered Germany, he was still leading the race, 51 seconds ahead of Merckx.
Prior to the start of the second part of stage 15, an individual climbing time trial, Thurau was 0:51 ahead of Merckx with Thévenet in third place at 1:22, Kuiper in fourth at 1:40, in fifth was Alain Meslet, Van Impe was in sixth at 2:31 and Zoetemelk clinging to the Top 10 at 3:40. This hill climb up the Avoriaz would separate the handful of riders with a legitimate chance winning the general classification from the rest of the field as the Tour entered its third and final week.
The stage was won by Zoetemelk, with Van Impe being placed second as Thévenet claimed third twenty seconds behind Van Impe. Merckx finished nearly two minutes behind Zoetemelk in tenth place and while Thurau finished outside the Top 10, he, perhaps surprisingly, did not fall out of contention as he now was in second place in the general classification, 0:11 behind the new leader Bernard Thévenet.
With a hilly stage, there were two major mountain stages over the next three days, which would decide the 1977 Tour de France, Merckx at 0:25 back, Van Impe at 0:33, Kuiper at 0:49 and Zoetemelk moved from 10th to 6th place just over one minute behind Thévenet. With four of the riders and the two outsiders of Kuiper and Thurau within about a minute, it was clear the Tour was not decided yet and the upcoming mountains were going to be exciting.
In stage 16, these attacks blew apart the entire Peloton as the elite contenders separated themselves from everybody else in the field. Initially Didi Thurau was dropped with the domestiques, breakaway hopefuls and sprinters but he was able to fight his way back to the point where he could see the group of elite riders at the base of the final climb. From there he would rejoin the group on the descent, maneuver his way to the front and actually beat everybody in the sprint to gut out an impressive stage win all while keeping himself in contention for the overall lead. Anyone not in this front group of elite riders pretty much lost their chance at winning the Tour, with the exception of Eddy Merckx, as he was dropped, but was still within about three minutes of Thévenet in seventh place overall and while for most any other rider a gap of more than three minutes this late in the race would be all but impossible to overcome with six riders ahead of him, for Merckx nothing was impossible and nobody would have been surprised if he somehow found a way to win this Tour. The new sixth place rider Francisco Galdós was able to stay with the other main contenders and moved ahead of Merckx.
The overall situation between Thévenet, Thurau, Van Impe, Kuiper and Zoetemelk remained the same headed into stage 17, which included a grueling finish atop Alpe d'Huez. Well into stage 17 Lucien Van Impe saw an opportunity to attack and took it separating himself from the general classification contenders building more than a minute gap to the point that he was virtually leading the general classification by the time he reached the bottom of the climb on Alpe d'Huez. This put Thévenet in the position where he now had to give chase or lose the lead.
Raymond Martin, Merckx, Thurau, Raymond Delisle, Michel Laurent, Sebastian Pozo and Joaquim Agostinho were among the elite group of riders when the counterattack against Van Impe came. While these riders finished considerably ahead of the rest of the field it was only Kuiper, Galdos and Zoetemelk who were able to go with Thévenet as he rode away from everyone else in pursuit of Van Impe. These riders made Thévenet defend his first position in the general classification, and do all of the work while riding in his slipstream, at no time coming to the front to take a pull of the heavy climbing work.
Thévenet was determined to win his second Tour de France, just as Van Impe showed his determination to repeat as champion when he launched his early attack, although for Van Impe it was out of the ordinary, being as ordinarily he would be racing for the mountains classification points. Fortunately for Thévenet his hard work was paying off as the gap between Van Impe and the first chase group began to close, but as he was reeling in one opponent he was also bringing two other opponents along with him and not just bringing them along but putting them in position to attack his position in the general classification as he was the one doing all the work. Naturally Kuiper and Zoetemelk were both determined to earn their first ever Tour victory so they didn't think twice about forcing Thévenet to lead the way in chasing down Lucien Van Impe.
Before long the gap had become small enough that the television and official cars riding behind Van Impe had to move out of the way as it was beginning to look as though this hard charging chase group would catch the leader before the finish line. One of these cars ended up hitting Van Impe severely damaging his bike in the process and while he tried to continue riding it just wasn't possible. As a result, he was stuck waiting and watching for the team car to appear around the corner to repair his wheel or get him a new bike but unfortunately two of the riders closest to him in the standings appeared before his team car did and raced right on by. By the end of the stage Zoetemelk and Francisco Galdós had been dropped when Hennie Kuiper launched an attack as Thévenet was digging deeper and pushing harder than he ever had in his whole life, not so much to take advantage of Van Impe's misfortune, although this certainly worked to his benefit, but to chase down Hennie Kuiper who was up the road by himself headed for the finish line so close to him in the standings that he could take over the yellow jersey as leader of the general classification.
Thévenet was enraged with Kuiper for making him to do all the work chasing down Van Impe and then attacking in an attempt to take the first place in the general classification and had to push himself to his absolute breaking point in order to cross the finish line second place to Kuiper 0:41 behind.
Despite being hit by a motorist, Van Impe ended up 2:06 behind Kuiper while still finishing ahead of everybody else in the race. Galdos crossed at 2:59, Zoetemelk crossed more than four minutes later as the second level of the top tier riders including Laurent, Pozo, Martin and Pedro Torres started filtering across the line more than eight minutes behind Kuiper.