Race Details
The prologue was won by Dietrich Thurau, who made his debut in the Tour. Thurau wanted to be the leader when the Tour would enter his native Germany in stage 13. In the second stage, big mountains were scheduled, unusually early in the race, and Thurau saw this as the biggest threat to this goal. When Van Impe, Thevenet and Kuiper were away leaving Thurau behind, Thurau worked together with Merckx, and they were able to get reach the leaders, and Thurau was able to win the sprint.
The second part of the fifth stage was a time trial. Eddy Merckx, at that moment only 8 seconds behind Thurau, was expected to win enough time on Thurau to become the new leader, but surprisingly Thurau won the time trial, and extended his lead.
Thurau was able to keep control of the race for the next stages, and when the Tour entered Germany, he was still leading the race, 51 seconds ahead of Merckx.
The second part of the fifteenth stage was an individual mountain time trial, won by Zoetemelk. It was later revealed that Zoetemelk failed a doping test on that stage, so he was given a penalty of 10 minutes. Second placed Van Impe was declared the winner of the stage in his stead. Thevenet became second in the stage, and took over the lead in the general classification, 11 seconds ahead of Thurau now in second place.
Thurau was initially dropped in the sixteenth stage, but fought his way back to the main group, and won the sprint.
In the seventeenth stage, Van Impe attacked. Van Impe was only 33 seconds behind in the general classification, so was a direct threat to Thevenet. Thevenet chased him, followed by Kuiper and Zoetemelk, who let Thevenet do all the work. Van Impe was then hit by a television car, and needed a new rear wheel. While he was waiting for this, Kuiper escaped and passed Van Impe, followed by Thevenet. Kuiper won the stage, and decreased his margin to Thevenet to 8 seconds. Thevenet was angry at Zoetemelk and Kuiper for having him do the chase on Van Impe. The riders had gone so fast on that stage, that 30 cyclists finished outside of the time limit, and were expelled from the race.
The eighteenth stage was initially won by Agostinho, but he failed the doping test. The second placed cyclist, Menendez, also failed the doping test. The third placed cyclist was Merckx, but he had not been tested, so could not be given the stage victory. As a result, nobody is credited as the stage's winner.
At that point, there was only serious opportunities for Kuiper to win back time on Thevenet, the time trial of stage 20. Instead of winning back time, Kuiper lost 28 seconds, and only bad luck could stop Thevenet from winning the race.
The last stages went without problems for Thevenet. The final time trial was won by Thurau, who thus won five stages in his debut Tour. Thevenet won some more seconds on Kuiper, and ended only 48 seconds ahead of Kuiper, the smallest margin since 1968.
Read more about this topic: 1977 Tour De France
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