Participants
There were 14 teams participating, with 10 cyclists each:
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Eddy Merckx, who had won all five times that he participated, was again the big favourite. Merckx' first part of the season had been going well, winning Milan - San Remo, the Tour of Flanders and Liège-Bastogne-Liège. If Merckx would win again, he would beat Jacques Anquetil and become the first cyclist to win the Tour six times. Merckx did not care about that record: "The idea doesn't interest me very much because then people would want me to go for a seventh and then an eighth".
A few months before the race, Merckx was unsure if he would start the Tour. His race schedule had been very busy, and he thought riding the Giro and the Tour in the same year would not work. Merckx preferred to ride the Tour, but his Italian team preferred the Giro.
Bernard Thevenet contracted shingles during the 1975 Vuelta a España, but recovered and won the Dauphiné Liberé.
Read more about this topic: 1975 Tour De France
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“A civilization which leaves so large a number of its participants unsatisfied and drives them into revolt neither has nor deserves the prospect of a lasting existence.”
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)