Who Are the All Time Great Tour de France Winners?
Utter the words “Tour de France” and the name Lance Armstrong immediately comes to most people’s minds. The American was diagnosed with cancer in 1996, but he came back from the brink to win the Tour de France for seven consecutive years between 1999 and 2005.
Of course, we now know that behind the most famous of all Tour de France winners was a shameless, elaborate, and sophisticated organized doping program. It made Armstrong rich. But, for all the wrong reasons, it also made most of the Western world aware of the grueling three-week 3,500-kilometer contest.
The peloton makes its way through packed streets on day one of the 1996 Tour de France. ©GettyImages
Armstrong’s fall from grace was more dramatic than his rise to stardom. The cheat’s annus horribilis came in late 2012 when the American was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles. In January 2013, 28 million people watched him confess to Oprah Winfrey that he had used performance-enhancing drugs to assist with all of his Tour de France victories.
Tour de France Winners That Never Were
Following Armstrong’s initial retirement, his former teammate, Floyd Landis, temporarily saw his name on the Tour de France winners list. But he was quickly stripped of the 2006 title for a failed dope test.
When Armstrong returned in 2009, he had a new and incredibly talented teammate, the 2007 Tour de France winner, Alberto Contador. The Spaniard would win the race again that season and for a third time in 2010. But it was later revealed the rider had failed a dope test, and he was stripped of his third Tour de France victory, in 2012.
‘Mud’, ‘dragged through’, and ‘Tour de France’ were words synonymous with professional cycling during a forgettable decade starting at the turn of the century. But the sport has reinvented itself. Now, with a Netflix documentary series, ‘Unchained’, set to do for cycling what ‘Drive to Survive’ has done for Formula 1, the future is bright.
Four Time Froome Swept Up
Post the ‘Armstrong era’, affable Kenyan-born British rider, Chris Froome landed the race on four occasions. It could have been more. In 2012, under team orders, he carried his teammate, Bradley Wiggins, to victory. At 1.40 metres Wiggins is the tallest Tour de France winner in history.
In 2014, then-defending champion Froome took several falls during the early days of the Tour de France, and the heavy betting favorite was forced to withdraw with injury. But Froome returned in 2015 and won the next three renditions of the contest. He made the podium again in 2018 when the race was won by his teammate, Geraint Thomas from Wales.
Froom is the only rider to have won the Tour de France four times. However, the Tour de France winners list shows four individuals have taken the contest on five occasions, the most recent being Spain’s Miguel Induráin.
Five Tours and the Giro D’Italia Double
Induráin won the Tour for five consecutive years (1991-1995). Ill and underperforming from the outset of the 1996 Tour, the rider nicknamed ‘Big Mig’ retired at the start of 1997. History shows he is one of seven riders to have won the Giro d’Italia in May before taking the hallowed Tour de France yellow jersey in July of the same year.
Bernard Hinault, another five-time Tour de France winner, was another to complete the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France same-season double. The remarkable Frenchman entered a total of thirteen Grand Tours during his career. Forced to abandon one of them while leading and finishing second twice, he won the other ten. No other rider has come close to that tally.
During a career that spanned from 1975 to 1986, Hinault won 28 stages of the French race. It places him third on the Tour de France stage winners list which is jointly topped by pure-sprinter Mark Cavendish and another five-time Tour de France winner, Eddy Merckx. They have 34 stage wins apiece to their credit.
Eddy Merckx Ate Them Alive
Nicknamed ‘The Cannibal’, Merckx is considered the greatest Tour de France winner and bike racer of all time. In 1969, the Belgian won the Points, Mountains, Combination, Sprint, and Combativity awards at the Tour. Had the Young Riders classification – which replaced the Combination classification – existed at the time, Merckx would have won that jersey too!
After four consecutive victories, Merckx missed the 1973 Tour de France – amid rumors that organizers had asked him to skip the race because he would make it uncompetitive – instead he contested and won cycling’s other two Grand Tours, the Giro d’Italia and the Vuelta a España.
He returned to win the Tour de France for a fifth time in 1974, And his name could have been etched on the Tour de France winners list for a sixth time in 1975 if a spectator had not leaped out from the crowd and punched the champion in the kidney.
Merckx subsequently fell and broke his cheekbone, which meant he was unable to challenge Bernard Thévenet who went on to win the Tour. Merckx bravely took second on this occasion. When Merckx brought the curtain down on his career, he had also claimed seven editions of the Milan-San Remo and five Liege-Bastogne-Liege.
He is the most decorated of all Tour de France winners and Eddy Merckx has been given the following titles and honors: The French Legion of Honour, Officer in the Belgian Order of Leopold II, Commander of the French Legion of Honour, and Knight in the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic.
Two French Heroes of the 1960s
The first five-time Tour de France winner was Jacques Anquetil. A great rider against the clock, he was a master technician who won the Tour in 1957 and then four consecutive years from 1961 to 1964.
Anquetil was the first French rider to wear the yellow jersey from start to finish, and he amassed 16 stage victories during his career. But Anquetil was inherently shy and anything but flashy on or off his bike. The fact he won eight major tours without once crossing the top of a mountain in the lead meant his victories were never accompanied by adulation.
Popularity was not a problem for Anquetil’s countryman and sometimes rival, Raymond Poulidor. In 14 appearances between 1962 and 1976, Poulidor never made the Tour de France winners list, but he did finish second five times and was third on three other occasions.
Poulidor did suffer two retirements, but he also enjoyed an additional three top-10 finishes. Nevertheless, despite over 30,000 miles of Tour de France racing – far more than the circumference of the planet – he never once wore the famous Tour de France leader’s yellow jersey.
French Tour Record Breakers in the Books
Sylvain Chavanel is not amongst the French winners of the Tour de France, but this individual does have the distinction of making more appearances in the race than any other rider. Eighteen attempts at the Tour between 2001 and 2018 yielded three stage victories and gave the Frenchman two combativity awards.
French riders took seven of the first eight editions of the Tour De France. The country also had a purple patch in the 1950s and early 1960s. 1977-1985 was another fruitful period producing eight Tour de France winners in nine years.
Overall, 21 French riders have won the Tour a combined 36 times. Belgium follows on the Tour de France winners list with 18 victories (courtesy of 10 winning cyclists). Spain sits third having taken the three-week spectacle 12 times.
The Great British French Invasion
UK Tour de France winners were non-existent until Bradley Wiggins took the 2012 version of the race. Chris Froome won the 100th edition of the Tour 12 months later. This race featured the most famous climbs from the history of the race, Mont Ventoux and Alpe d’Huez, which was climbed twice in a stage for the first time.
Froome would win the race three more times as clear favourite with online bookmakers before the 2018 scorer, Geraint Thomas gave Great Britain a sixth success in seven years. Columbia, Slovenia, and Denmark have tasted Tour de France success since.
LeMond Beat the Lies and the Bullet
With Armstrong’s disqualification, American winners of the Tour de France are limited to just one. That winner, Greg LeMond took the race three times. Like Froome and Merckx, LeMond was unfortunate not to have won the race at least once more.
A fine 1984 debut – when finishing third and winning the white ‘young riders’ jersey – was followed by an excellent second-placed effort when helping his teammate, Bernard Hinault take the title in 1985.
Despite an agreement, LeMond had to fight Hinault for victory in 1986. Ultimately successful, a sequence of Tour wins looked likely until, three months before the 1987 Tour got underway, the 26-year-old was accidentally shot in the back by his brother-in-law while on a turkey hunt.
Within 20 minutes of bleeding to death and with 60 pellets in his body, a return to professional racing appeared impossible. But, with 35 shotgun pellets remaining in his body – including three lodged in the lining of his heart and five more embedded in his liver – LeMond returned to elite cycling to win the Tour de France for a second and third time in 1989 and 1990.
