The 1979 Tour de France was the 66th edition of the Tour de France, one of cycling's Grand Tours. It took place between 27 June and 22 July, with 24 stages covering a distance of . It was the only tour to finish at Alpe d'Huez twice. It was won by Bernard Hinault, who also won the points classification, and whose team won both team classifications. Remarkably Hinault and second-place finisher Joop Zoetemelk finished nearly a half hour ahead of the other GC Contenders, and in modern history this was the only time the Yellow Jersey was challenged on the ride into Paris. The mountains classification was won by Giovanni Battaglin, and the young rider classification was won by Jean-René Bernaudeau.
Teams
The following 15 teams each sent 10 cyclists, for a total of 150.
The teams entering the race were:
Pre-race favourites The big favourite was Hinault; not only was he the defending champion, but the large number of time trials made the race especially suited for him. The only cyclist thought to be able to seriously challenge Hinault was Zoetemelk, the runner-up of the previous edition.
Route and stages
The route for the 1979 Tour was revealed in November 1978. It was the shortest course since 1904, but with many climbs it was still considered hard.
Since 1974, the Tour had always been composed of 22 stages, with some of them run as split stages. Following the riders' strike in the 1978 Tour against these split stages, the 1979 Tour included no split stages. To compensate for this, the total number of stages increased to 24. The Tour had one rest day, in Les Menuires. The highest point of elevation in the race was at the summit of the Col du Galibier mountain pass on stage 17.
+ Stage characteristics and winners Stage Date Course Distance Type Winner P27 June Fleurance Individual time trial 128 June Fleurance to Luchon Stage with mountain(s) 229 June Luchon to Superbagnères Individual time trial 330 June Luchon to Pau Stage with mountain(s) 41 July Captieux to Bordeaux Team time trial 52 July Neuville-de-Poitou to Angers Plain stage 63 July Angers to Saint-Brieuc Plain stage 74 July Saint-Hilaire-du-Harcouët to Deauville Plain stage 85 July Deauville to Le Havre Team time trial 96 July Amiens to Roubaix Plain stage 107 July Roubaix to Brussels (Belgium) Plain stage 118 July Brussels (Belgium) Individual time trial 129 July Rochefort (Belgium) to Metz Plain stage 1310 July Metz to Ballon d'Alsace Hilly stage 1411 July Belfort to Évian-les-Bains Plain stage 1512 July Évian-les-Bains to Morzine Avoriaz Individual time trial 1613 July Morzine Avoriaz to Les Menuires Stage with mountain(s) 14 July Les Menuires Rest day 1715 July Les Menuires to Alpe d'Huez Stage with mountain(s) 1816 July Alpe d'Huez to Alpe d'Huez Stage with mountain(s) 1917 July Alpe d'Huez to Saint-Priest Plain stage 2018 July Saint-Priest to Dijon Plain stage 2119 July Dijon Individual time trial 2220 July Dijon to Auxerre Plain stage 2321 July Auxerre to Nogent-sur-Marne Plain stage 2422 July Le Perreux-sur-Marne to Paris (Champs-Élysées) Plain stage Total
Race overview
The prologue was won by Knetemann; Zoetemelk and Hinault both followed at four seconds. The first stage took the riders immediately into the mountains. During stage one Jean-René Bernaudeau and René Bittinger got to the front of the peloton with Bittinger claiming the stage win by eight seconds, and Bernaudeau taking 2nd but moving into the overall race lead. Stage two would be the final stage someone not named Bernard Hinault or Joop Zoetemelk would wear the maillot jaune, which was a mountain climb individual time trial where the top 5 finishers moved into the top 5 in the overall standings. Hinault won the stage and took over the race lead as Zoetemelk moved into 2nd place overall while Joaquim Agostinho, Hennie Kuiper and Sven-Åke Nilsson rounded out the top 5. Stage three ended up as a sprint finish decided amongst the strongest riders who had survived the climbs. Hinault edged Rudy Pevenage at the line but as the strongest riders had finished together there was no change atop the General classification. Stage four was a team time trial won by the consistently dominant squad with the very strong team finishing 2nd. Neither of these teams had a GC rider who was a clear and present threat to Hinault, however the 3rd and 4th place teams in and did with Kuiper and Zoetemelk. Hinault's squad finished in 5th place overall, meaning he lost time to all of these teams and his lead was now only 0:12 over Zoetemelk and 0:31 over Kuiper, who was upset at the missed opportunity following this stage as the team had chosen the wrong tires and punctured numerous times likely costing him the chance to overtake Hinault and Zoetemelk. Agostinho and his team finished 6th moving him from a tie for 2nd with Zoetemelk to 4th place overall just 0:10 ahead of Ake-Nilsson. Stage five was a flat stage where Jan Raas outsprinted Jacques Esclassan, the up-and-coming Irishman Sean Kelly, Marc Demeyer and Hinault for the win with no changes among the GC riders. Stage six saw all five out of the five top 5 finishers from the previous day once again competing for the win except this time Joseph Jacobs was able to get ahead of Hinault, Raas, Kelly, Demeyer and Esclassan to win the day by a single second. Hinault's 2nd-place finish added 0:12 to his lead over the riders closest to him in the overall standings. Stage seven came down to a three rider escape involving Christian Levavasseur, Christian Poirier and Leo van Vliet where van Vliet took the stage win as the overall situation remained static.
Stage eight was another team time trial which caused some movement in the standings. TI–Raleigh and Ijsboerke were once again among the strongest teams and were separated by only 0:08 with Raleigh claiming another win. As a result, their highest place rider Ueli Sutter moved into 4th place overall. Ijsboerke finished 3rd behind Hinault's Renault team, who put together a very strong ride finishing in 2nd just 0:06 behind Raleigh. The Miko–Mercier squad of Zoetemelk and Nilsson finished 4th but lost nearly two minutes to Renault meaning Hinault now had some breathing room leading Zoetemelk by 1:18 and the now 3rd place Nilsson by 2:40. The Peugeot–Esso team of Kuiper and the Flandria team of Agostinho fared poorly with Kuiper dropping from 3rd to 7th place at 4:30 behind, whereas Agostinho remained in 5th place, but was now 4:05 back. Stage nine was a pivotal stage that had major ramifications for the top riders who had to contend with the much dreaded cobblestones of Roubaix. Any of the cobbled sections included in the Tour are always treacherous, they result in numerous, if not dozens of minor and occasionally major crashes, many riders get multiple flat tires and depending on the weather it is either intolerably hot and dusty or so muddy that no rider has a clean face by the end of the stage.
This stage was no different and in the end a group of five riders survived to the finish line in the lead group where André Dierickx, Didi Thurau, Michel Pollentier and Zoetemelk crossed the line 0:19 behind Ludo Delcroix. Hinault was actually able to distance himself and gain time on many of the other GC riders and the ones he did not gain time on he stayed even with. Nilsson, Sutter and Kuiper all crossed with the same time as Hinault whereas other top 10 riders going into the stage including Gery Verlinden and Bernaudeau lost time to him. Joaquim Agostinho had a disastrous day in which he lost his 5th place, fell out of the top 10 altogether and was more than 10:00 behind Hinault. By his standards Hinault also had a disastrous day, as he lost the yellow jersey, which he was not happy about as he threatened following the stage that, "there are some riders who will suffer plenty after what happened today", in reference to the select group of riders who got away from him and survived in the breakaway. Of the 5 breakaway survivors Dierickx gained enough time to come within about 3:00 of Hinault but he was not considered a realistic threat. Neither was the stage winner Delcroix and while Thurau or Pollentier might have been threats if they had gaps upwards of ten minutes on Hinault, both of them were still ten minutes or more behind the Badger and therefore irrelevant as far as his pursuit of his 2nd Tour victory was concerned.
As such his anger was seemingly directed primarily at Zoetemelk, who had taken over the lead by 2:08, and was a very real threat to Hinault. In essence the only rider that could beat him, did beat him, and beat him by a considerable margin somehow finding a way to avoid the crashes, the flat tires, the protesters and ‘surviving’ within the winning group of this stage of the Tour which was borrowed from The Hell of the North. Even though Hinault had dropped to 2nd place more than two minutes off the lead, Five time tour champion Jacques Anquetil was pleased with the way Hinault responded following this stage and predicted that Hinault won the Tour, because he had kept his losses limited. In stage ten Jo Maas outlasted his breakaway companions including Pol Verschuere and Ludo Peeters to take the stage win and jump into the top 10 overall as the breakaway had finished close to ten minutes ahead of the peloton. During the stage eleven ITT it became a near certainty that the battle for the 1979 Tour de France would be decided solely between Hinault and Zoetemelk as following this stage the 3rd place rider would be more than 7:00 behind. Hinault won the stage by a narrow margin of just eight seconds over Knut Knudsen but more importantly he cut Zoetemelk's lead from 2:08 down to 1:32.
During stage twelve Christian Seznec beat Joseph Borguet by one second to win the stage as Hennie Kuiper, who started the day in 5th place at 8:00 off the lead joined in the attacks to try to cut into Zoetemelk and Hinault. He managed to win a decent chunk of time back and in the process jumped back into 3rd at +6:09. In stage thirteen however, he would lose back much of the time he gained. Winning the stage three seconds ahead of Rudy Pevenage, was Pierre-Raymond Villemiane who jumped from 10th place up to 6th. Villemiane was a distant threat to the leaders and therefore not pursued by either of their teams, but Hinault did manage to take a three-second bite out of Zoetemelk's lead cutting it down to +1:29. In stage fourteen Zoetemelk added 0:20 to his lead over 3rd place Kuiper, 4th place Sutter and 5th place Nilsson, however Hinault was able to get away from Zoetemelk and win back 0:40 on the Dutchman, cutting his lead to under a minute. Finishing atop the stage podium was Demeyer, followed by Esclassan and Kelly.