History of the Tour de France

Road Bike Mag
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The Tour de France celebrated three big half centuries in 2025: 50 years of the white jersey, 50 years of the polka-dot jersey, and the 50th finish on the Champs-Élysées. The Tour also returned to Superbagnères for the first time since the 1980s, an opportunity to remember the legendary Hinault-LeMond duel in a year that saw an American win the race for the first time. The early stages also passed the home of Louison Bobet, triple winner of la Grande Boucle (from 1953 to 1955), in honour of the 70th anniversary of his last victory.

The peloton got their first taste of the now legendary Champs-Élysées finale on 20 July 1975

A NEW WORLD ORDER by François Thomazeau

The 1986 Tour was defined by the rivalry of two teammates, Bernard Hinault and Greg LeMond. One was a five-time winner and a French fan favourite; the other a young American gunning for glory. The legendary Pau-Superbagnères stage marked a shift in the balance of power between these two great riders.

Greg Lemond and Bernard Hinault fought for supremacy in the Pyrenees on the 1986 Tour

The Tour de France returned to Superbagnères in 2025 after a 36-year absence and, more significantly, 39 years on from a day that is now part of race legend.

The 14th stage, from Pau to Luchon-Superbagnères, was modelled closely on stage 13 of the 1986 Tour. That was the day defending champion Bernard Hinault burnt all his matches leading attack after attack in the Pyrenees. By the time he reached the Superbagnères climb he was spent, and his teammate and rival Greg LeMond was able to counterattack to solo to victory. In a race defined by the battle between these two great riders of the La Vie Claire team, it was a day that signalled a shift in power to the younger racer.

It was also the day that I, as a young journalist with a month's experience under my belt, arrived in Luchon – without accreditation, without a car, and without a hotel reservation – and joined the circus that is the Tour de France. I would pack my bags and follow it for another 35 editions.

I was on a trial period with Reuters and was sent to Luchon at the last minute due to a strike at AFP, my employer's main competitor. It wasn't the most promising of starts. Equipped with a badge reserved for "technical services" that had reluctantly been handed over by a young official named Philippe Sudres (who would later become the Tour's communications director), I officially started work the next day, on the Luchon- Superbagnères to Blagnac stage.

In Blagnac, after filing my first article from a press room close to the finish, I ran towards the line to get my post-race interviews, hurtling down the embankment that separated me from it. And there I found myself face to face with a rider dressed in yellow. Not knowing what to do, I approached this sporting superstar shouting; "Bernard! Bernard!" He didn't look up, just brushed me aside angrily with his arm. His face was set in a furious badger-like mask, his gaze fixed beneath thick black eyebrows, his teeth clenched, his jaw ready to bite.

A Bad-Tempered Badger

My very first interview ended in fiasco, but the rider known as The Badger had every reason to look bad-tempered. Although his teammate Niki Rüttimann had just won the stage, LeMond, just 40 seconds behind him in the GC, had been quick to join a breakaway in an attempt to seize his yellow jersey.

The previous year, Hinault had won his fifth Tour title with the support of LeMond, who had sacrificed his chances for his French leader. Hinault had publicly pledged to ride in support of the American in 1986, but several attacks during the race cast doubt on the sincerity of his promise, leading to a major rift between the two riders and the entire La Vie Claire team.

This was no ordinary squad. Hinault had put this team together himself – before entrusting the financial reins to Bernard Tapie and the team management to Paul Köchli. With Tapie's money, the La Vie Claire team was a gathering of stars. Köchli liked to stress that there was no leader, that everyone, theoretically, could play their card. Indeed, gifted American climber Andy Hampsten, as well as young Frenchman Jean-François Bernard and Canadian Steve Bauer, had the potential to compensate for any of their leaders' shortcomings. But this wasn't how LeMond saw things when team support for Hinault seemed to limit his chances to attack. And, for three weeks, the 1986 Tour, undoubtedly one of the greatest editions of all time, reverberated with the tension between these two riders.

As a novice reporter, I was wide-eyed as l witnessed the daily madness within the biggest tent in the cycling world, and rubbed shoulders with the individuals engaged in this intense sporting, human, and cultural clash. The relationship between Hinault and LeMond, the beating heart of my first Tour de France, carried within it all drama of bike racing. History was unfolding before us – but we didn't know it then.

The La Vie Claire team celebrate Hinault's fifth (and final) Tour title in 1985, and a young Lemond (right)

A Clash of Temperaments

Hinault, I have to say, was impressive. Intimidating even. Strength personified. In body, class, and character. Talking to him wasn't easy. Undermining him even less so. He was, without a doubt, the alpha male of the cycling tribe. He would decide the fate of the race with a nod of the head, on a whim, or with a moment of madness and he'd certainly displayed the latter the day before by attacking on the series of climbs to Superbagnéres. But his powers were fading.

The Breton believed the race had to be earned; it demanded panache, effort, suffering. There was no room for leniency or self-pity. Of course, he'd promised at the finish of the 1985 Tour that he would help Greg LeMond win the race. But that support would be given “à la Hinauit". Without any favour. Greg LeMond hadn't understood him. As a rider, a man, a personality, he was totally different. While the Breton could appear single-minded, stubborn and sometimes narrow-minded – although he could also be most charming, when his disarming smile transformed that brooding badger countenance completely – the American was open, voluble, approachable, and undoubtedly naive. LeMond may have had an even bigger engine than his anything-but-model teammate, a VO2 max that was probably unprecedented, but he was less aggressive, less dominant. Hinault was a boxer looking for a knockout punch, LeMond needed to be on the ropes to give his best. From this perspective, by attacking him until the final day of the 1986 Tour, Hinault may have done him the best service possible.

Two Truths

Many years later, I got the opportunity to meet both men again: Hinault in 2013 during filming for a documentary called Slaying the Badger about the 1986 Tour, and LeMond a little later for a debate in London. Their positions hadn't changed. Each told a radically different story about the 1986 Tour, or rather, two versions of the same story, two truths, each as valid as the other.

For Hinault: "LeMond won that 1986 Tour, so l kept my word. The fact that l toyed with him on the Tour made him bigger. He had to chase it, which made his success even greater." For LeMond: "Let's be clear, he did everything that he could to screw me over. I won against my own team, which was unprecedented!"

I think they're both right, but that they simply didn't speak the same language, or race in the same way. That iconic photo of them hand in hand at the Alpe d'Huez finish later in the race was a sign more of a turning point than of friendship.

Following that July of 1986, the Tour truly became a global event thanks to the first victory taken by an American. In fact, throughout my career, l've yet to see a Frenchman win Le Tour.

50 YEARS YOUNG by Louis Doucet

The best young rider classification in the Tour was first introduced in 1975, and with it the awarding of le maillot blanc. The now-famous white jersey has been a springboard to success for many past champions, from Laurent Fignon and Greg LeMond to Tadej Pogačar.

Greg Lemond won the white jersey in 1984

Cycling fans love to identify the next generation of champions and, since 1975 when the white jersey was first awarded to the Tour's best young rider, they've had the opportunity to assess whether the wearer could be a future champion.

Its first winner, Francesco Moser, didn't have the chance to turn his white jersey into yellow after finishing seventh in what turned out to be his only appearance at the race. But his career did produce one of the greatest Classics hunters in history, and a 1984 win of the Giro d'Italia. Laurent Fignon made his debut in white in 1983. After racing under the radar in the early stages, he climbed to second in the GC in the Pyrenees to claim le maillot blanc. After a week of riding across southern France in white, he swapped white for yellow at the top of Alpe d'Huez, riding into Paris to win both the overall race and the young rider classification.

Greg LeMond succeeded him as the white jersey winner the following year, when he took third place on his Tour debut. The American should also have wore white in 1985 – but between 1983 and 1987 the classification was only open to race debutants. The following year, in 1986, LeMond won the Tour and remains a prime example of a rider who won white before conquering yellow.

In the following decade, Jan Ullrich and Marco Pantani both won the young rider classification before their respective overall victories in 1997 and 1998, but that was during the 1989-1999 period when the white jersey was no longer awarded, although the competition was still calculated.

After the jersey's comeback in 2000, the next to pull off a "double top" was Alberto Contador, who danced up the climbs and into white when he took his first stage win at Plateau de Beille in 2007, then went on to finish in yellow and claim his first overall Tour win.

2018 winner Geraint Thomas wore white in 2010 before ceding the jersey to Andy Schleck, who wore it into Paris and was later awarded the overall win as well when Contador was stripped of the title following the outcome of a doping investigation.

Most recently, Egan Bernal and Tadej Pogačar have savoured the double pleasure of winning the Tour and the best young rider title. In fact, the white jersey became like a second skin for the Slovenian champion: the only four-time winner of the young rider classification has won eight of his 17 stages in white, one more than in yellow.

Tadej Pogačar claimed the jersey four times, from 2020 until 2023

Changing Parameters

A white jersey first appeared at Le Tour in 1968, when it went to the lead rider in the combination classification (best rider in the overall, points and climbing competitions). This classification was removed in 1975, when the young rider classification made its debut. Any neo- professional rider (less than three years professional) qualified to wear the white jersey as the leader of the category. The rules changed in 1983, when the competition was only open for first-time competitors, but in 1987 it became open to all cyclists less than 26 years of age of the year following that Tour – and it's remained that way since.

THE "BALLETJES" MAN! by Quentin Fine

While the mountains classification was introduced in 1938, the bright polka-dot jersey signalling its leader only made its first appearance on the Tour in 1975. The first man to wear it into Paris, Lucien Van Impe, looks back at how it came to define his career.

Lucien Van Impe in polka dots in the 1975 Tour

“In Flanders, l'm still known as 'balletjes', which translates as 'small dots'. That says a lot about the significance of this jersey on my career." Seated in a corner of the Octopus, the little bar in Erpe-Mere that his brother Raymond has run for nearly half a century, 78-year-old Lucien Van Imp laughs, a gilded frame above him containing one of his red-and-white polka-dot jerseys. The fabled garment is celebrating a significant birthday this year, 50 years having passed since the Belgian was the first rider to wear it into Paris.

"l still remember very clearly when this distinctive jersey was presented to me. I thought it had a very particular flavour," says the Flemish champion, laughing. "That year, I was once again aiming to win the mountain classification, which l'd already claimed twice (1971 and 1972), but I told myself that I was going to play things strategically so that I wouldn't have to wear that strange jersey for three weeks. But I didn't count on Joop Zoetemelk, who just pipped me when sprinting for the points in the best climber classification on the opening half-stage, from Charleroi to Molenbeek. The Tour had started in Belgium and I couldn't let one of my great rivals parade around my home country with this new symbol on his shoulders. So I made it a point of honour to take the polka-dot jersey on the second half-stage between Molenbeek and Roubaix, and I never let it go again until the finish on the Champs-Élyséesl"

That first victory in red and white was highly significant in the career of the rider then racing for the Gitane-Campagnolo team. "Prior to the creation of the polka-dot jersey, the leader of the mountains classification was only rewarded with a small crest embroidered onto their jersey," recalls Van Impe. "There was nothing ostentatious about it at all. The polka-dot jersey changed everything. Its wearer suddenly became the most easily identifiable rider in the peloton, even more so than the yellow jersey or the world champion in rainbow stripes! When l had it on my shoulders, l could see people pointing at me, even on flat stages, and that boosted my popularity no end."

This public and media recognition encouraged the man also known as "the little monkey of the mountains" to make that Jersey his priority come July. "l had the immense honour of winning the Tour in 1976, which was a real accolade for me! But today, youngsters I meet know that I won the best climber classification six times, but not always that my name appears among the Tour's winners.

"As a kid, Federico Bahamontes was my idol and, when l had the privilege of meeting him, l told him that l dreamed of winning the mountain classification six times like him. lt was the pull of the summits that made me want to be a racing cyclist. So when l folded that last polka-dot jersey into my suitcase on the evening the 1983 Tour finished, l said to myself that l'd achieved something pretty good in my career."

THE TRIPLE CROWN by Louis Doucet

To mark one hundred years since the birth of Louison Bobet, and 70 years since his third consecutive Tour title in 1955, the Tour paid tribute to the French champion by taking a pass through his home town in Brittany.

Louison Bobet raced in the rainbow jersey in 1955, where he dominated on Mount Ventoux

One hundred years on from Louison Bobet's birth, the Tour de France returned to his home town of Saint-Méen-le-Grand. This tribute celebrated a French hero of the 1950s who became the first rider to win three consecutive editions 70 years ago exactly. On his arrival at the Parc des Princes on 30 July 1955, he was congratulated by Philippe Thys, whose run of success (1913, 1914, and 1920) had been interrupted by the First World War.

The quest for the treble was a laborious one for the Breton, who made his debut at the Tour in 1947 and became a major player the following year, when he finished fourth after winning two stages and spending nine days in yellow. Up against rivals such as Gino Bartali, Fausto Coppli, Ferdi Kübler and Hugo Koblet, plus with some unlucky setbacks in July, the peloton's most popular rider had to wait for his Tour coronation, building up a palmarès that included Milan-San Remo (1951), the Tour of Lombardy (1951), and Paris-Nice (1952) in the meantime.

Bobet's reign finally began in 1953, when he brought order to a divided French team, thanks largely to a demonstration of his powers on the climb of the lzoard. The following year, he made it to his mountain when Kübler wilted on its slopes. He appeared in the world champion's jersey for the third act, exchanging it for the yellow jersey in the Pyrenees on stage 17. Harried on the return to Paris by the revelatory Charly Gaul and Belgian rouleur Jean Brankart, he finished the Tour in pain, but increasingly aware of the athletic tour de force that he’d achieved.