1978 Tour de France - Race Details

Race Details

During the prologue, held in the Netherlands, the weather was bad. The four top places were taken by Dutch cyclists, with Jan Raas the winner. The team directors then had a meeting, and all but the manager of Raas' team voted to request the Tour direction to not count the results from the prologue for the overall classification. The direction agreed, so the prologue results did not count. Jan Raas was still given the stage win, but he was not recognized as race leader, so he was not allowed to wear the yellow jersey during the first stage. The winner of the previous year, Bernard Thévenet, was allowed to wear the yellow jersey, but he refused.

In that first stage, Raas and his team were full of anger. Raas escaped close to the finish, and beat everybody by a second, thus becoming the race's leader after all. Raas lost the lead in the third stage.

The fourth stage was run as a time trial. The TI-Raleigh team was specialized in this, and they won the stage. Klaus-Peter Thaler of the TI-Raleigh team became the new leader, thanks to the bonification seconds.

Hinault beat Zoetemelk in the time trial in stage eight. Joseph Bruyere, former second man of Eddy Merckx, finished in second place and became the new race leader.

The eleventh stage included the toughest mountains in the Pyrenées. On the last mountain, the Pla d'Adet, Pollentier and Zoetemelk attacked, and Martinez and Hinault soon followed. Martinez rode away to win the stage, and Hinault won some seconds on Zoetemelk. Bruyere stayed the leader, with Hinault in second place and Zoetemelk in third place. During that stage, Thevenet retired.

The next day, the twelfth stage was scheduled, split into two sections. This meant that after the transfer from the previous stage, the riders were not in bed before 12:00 PM, and had to wake up at 5:00 AM. In the early stage to Valence-d'Agen, the riders held a strike against the early start. They rode at a slow pace of 20 kilometres per hour (12 mph), arrived at the finish well behind schedule, and crossed the finish line walking. The Tour officials canceled the stage.

The fourteenth stage was an individual mountain time trial. Zoetemelk won the stage, beating Bruyere by 55 seconds and Hinault by 100 seconds. Hinault had lost some time because his lightweight bike, that he intended to use for the steepest part, broke when he hit a spectator while changing bikes.

In the sixteenth stage, that ended on top of Alpe d'Huez, Pollentier attacked. At the foot of the Alpe d'Huez, Pollentier had a margin of two minutes. He was chased by Hinault, Zoetemelk and Kuiper, who at 4 km before the finish had closed the gap to 50 seconds. Hinault then attacked, and Kuiper could follow but Zoetemelk had to let them go. Pollentier stayed away, won the stage and became the new leader of the general classification.

As stage winner and general classification leader, Pollentier had to go to the doping control. Pollentier first went to his hotel, and was only found two hours later. Another cyclist at the doping control, Antoine Guttierrez, was found with a fake urine sample, trying to use it to fake the doping control. This device did not work, and the race doctor discovered the fraud. He then checked the other cyclists, and Pollentier was using the same fraud. Pollentier was removed from the race, and Zoetemelk became the new leader. Pollentier later explained that he tried to evade the controls because he had taken amphetamines for breathing, and he did not know if it would give back a positive test.

In the seventeenth stage, Kuiper, third in the general classification, crashed, broke a clavicle, and had to leave the race.

Hinault was only 14 seconds behind Zoetemelk at the start of the time trial in stage 20. Hinault won that time trial by more than four minutes over Zoetemelk, and became the race leader.