The 1980 Tour de France was the 67th edition of the Tour de France. The total distance was over 22 stages. In the first half of the race, Bernard Hinault started out strong by winning the prologue and two stages. However, knee problems forced Hinault to abandon the race while still in the lead. Joop Zoetemelk became the new leader, and defended that position successfully. Just as in 1979, when Hinault and Zoetemelk finished nearly a half hour ahead of the rest of the field, the 1980 edition was a battle between these two riders until Hinault abandoned. At the time Hinault was just 21 seconds ahead of Zoetemelk and the race was about to enter the Pyrenees. Zoetemelk did not wear the yellow jersey during stage 13 though he did in every stage thereafter finishing the race with nearly a seven-minute advantage over second place Hennie Kuiper. It was his first Tour victory in his tenth attempt, after already having finished second in five editions.
The points classification was won by Rudy Pevenage, who also won the intermediate sprints classification. The mountains classification was won by Raymond Martin, and Johan van der Velde won the young rider classification.
Teams
Two weeks before the Tour would start, there were only twelve teams interested in starting the Tour. The teams with Italian and Spanish sponsors were focussed on the Giro d'Italia and the Vuelta a España, and thought their cyclists were not able to compete in two grand tours in one year. This prevented Giovanni Battaglin of the Spanish-based , the winner of the mountains classification of 1979, from defending his title. Francesco Moser, who had left the 1980 Giro d'Italia injured, was the only Italian cyclist on the initial starting list, but he was not able to start, so the 1980 Tour was without Italian cyclists. One more team was added to the starting list, so the Tour 1980 started with thirteen teams, each with ten cyclists. The Boston–Mavic–Amis du Tour team was a combination of the Belgian Boston–Mavic team and French cyclists without a contract, combined into the "Amis du Tour" team.
The teams entering the race were:
Boston–Mavic–Amis du Tour
Pre-race favourites
The three most important favourites for the victory were Bernard Hinault, Joop Zoetemelk and Hennie Kuiper. Hinault was the winner of the two last editions, and had earlier that year won the 1980 Giro d'Italia. Zoetemelk, the runner-up of the last two editions, had switched teams to the TI–Raleigh team, which was considered one of the strongest teams. Kuiper had left the TI–Raleigh team and moved to the Peugeot team. The manager of that team, Maurice De Muer, had already managed Bernard Thévenet to a Tour win, and this made Kuiper confident.
Route and stages
The 1980 Tour de France started on 26 June, and had two rest days, in Saint-Malo and Morzine. The highest point of elevation in the race was at the summit of the Col du Galibier mountain pass on stage 17.
Before the race, Hinault expressed dissatisfaction with the cobbled sections in stages five and six. In the 1979 Tour, Hinault had lost time in these sections, and he considered to organise a strike. Even though no strike was held, the route was still changed: after the fifth stage, tour organiser Félix Lévitan decided to change the first of the stage, to avoid the worst cobbled sections.
The 25 stages were won by riders from only four countries. In this year's edition of the Tour, the last rider in the general classification after the consecutives mountain stages (16-19) was eliminated.
+ Stage characteristics and winners Stage Date Course Distance Type Winner P26 June Frankfurt (West Germany) Individual time trial 1a27 June Frankfurt (West Germany) to Wiesbaden (West Germany) Plain stage 1b Wiesbaden (West Germany) to Frankfurt (West Germany) Team time trial 228 June Frankfurt (West Germany) to Metz Plain stage 329 June Metz to Liège (Belgium) Plain stage 430 June Spa (Belgium) Individual time trial 51 July Liège (Belgium) to Lille Plain stage 62 July Lille to Compiègne Plain stage 7a3 July Compiègne to Beauvais Team time trial 7b Beauvais to Rouen Plain stage 84 July Flers to Saint-Malo Plain stage 5 July Saint-Malo Rest day 96 July Saint-Malo to Nantes Plain stage 107 July Rochefort to Bordeaux Plain stage 118 July Damazan to Laplume Individual time trial 129 July Agen to Pau Plain stage 1310 July Pau to Bagnères-de-Luchon Stage with mountain(s) 1411 July Lézignan-Corbières to Montpellier Plain stage 1512 July Montpellier to Martigues Plain stage 1613 July Trets to Pra-Loup Stage with mountain(s) 1714 July Serre Chevalier to Morzine Stage with mountain(s) 15 July Morzine Rest day 1816 July Morzine to Prapoutel Stage with mountain(s) 1917 July Voreppe to Saint-Étienne Hilly stage 2018 July Saint-Étienne Individual time trial 2119 July Auxerre to Fontenay-sous-Bois Plain stage 2220 July Fontenay-sous-Bois to Paris (Champs-Élysées) Plain stage Total
Race overview
The prologue was won by Hinault, who finished :05 ahead of Gerrie Knetemann and 0:23 ahead of the closest general classification rider Hennie Kuiper. Stage 1A was a sprint finish won by Jan Raas and Stage 1B was the first Team Time Trial in which TI–Raleigh claimed the victory ahead of Renault and Peugeot gaining enough in the time bonus for Knetemann to become the new leader. In Stage 2 Rudy Pevenage, Yvon Bertin and Pierre Bazzo escaped in a breakaway and were able to stay away the entire stage winning by nearly ten minutes over the rest of the field. Pevenage claimed the stage victory with Bazzo taking second and while Bertin took third he was the highest placed of the three and took over the lead in the general classification.
Stage 3 was won by Henk Lubberding and Bertin ended up falling off the back losing considerable time, which made Pevenage the new overall leader going into the second individual time trial (ITT) in Stage 4. Bernard Hinault was aiming to win his third straight Tour de France and in the ITT he looked to be well on his way dominating the rest of the field. Of the 122 riders remaining in the main field only six of them were able to come within 2:00 of Hinault and nobody was able to finish within a minute of the defending champ. Joop Zoetemelk was the closest to him taking second place at 1:16 back and in the overall situation overall Pevenage remained leader by about a minute over Bazzo with Hinault closing the gap to within six minutes.
Stage 5 was run in terrible weather, but the aggressive Hinault was looking to distance himself from the competition and went on the offensive together with Kuiper. Hinault won the stage, with Kuiper finishing right on his wheel, gaining more than two minutes on all of the other of the general classification Riders although following this stage many riders began experiencing tendinitis problems, including Hinault. Going into Stage 6 Hinault was within four minutes of Pevenage in the general classification and built a lead of more than 3:00 on Kuiper, nearly 4:00 on Zoetemelk and more than 5:00 on Raymond Martin and Joaquim Agostinho. The stage was won by Jean-Louis Gauthier by a full second over the rest of the field with no major changes in the overall classification.
Stage 7A would prove to be the beginning of a remarkable run by the TI–Raleigh team, who won the team time trial (TTT) beginning a stretch where a rider from this team would win seven stages in a row. During this TTT Hinault's knee problems were showing, as he could not do his part of the workload, although his Renault team still managed a respectable 4th place behind Raleigh, Peugeot and Ijsboerke. ‘Panzer Group Post’ as they were known because of their Directeur Sportif Peter Post, attacked relentlessly in an effort to win stages and contain any attacks made by Hinault to put Zoetemelk in a position where he could defeat Hinault in the upcoming high mountain stages. The plan was working as Stage 7B was won by Jan Raas, Stage 8 by Bert Oosterbosch, Raas would win again in Stage 9 and Stage 10 was won by Cees Priem. After stage 10 Pevenage was still in Yellow by 2:44 over Bazzo with a 4:20 advantage over Hinault, however The Badger was in the lead among the serious contenders although his lead over Zoetemelk had been cut to 2:00 with Kuiper 2:24 behind Hinault.
Stage 11 was a time trial prior to going into the high mountains of the Pyrenees and if Hinault wanted to match the likes of Louison Bobet, Jacques Anquetil and Eddy Merckx by winning his third Tour de France in a row he would have to perform well. The day however, belonged to Zoetemelk as he took the Stage victory with only eight riders finishing within 2:00 of him. Finishing 0:46 behind was Hennie Kuiper with Agostinho coming in 3rd, Oosterbosch finishing 4th and Hinault in 5th 1:39 back. Hinault was back in the yellow jersey but his lead over Zoetemelk was a minuscule 0:21. Rudy Pevenage fell to 3rd place and Kuiper was 1:31 back with no other general classification (GC) contenders within 5:00. Normally, Hinault was the better time trialist, so Zoetemelk's stage victory made him confident that he had the chance to win the Tour.
In Stage 12, Gerrie Knetemann and Ludo Peeters escaped and managed to beat the Peloton by more than a minute with Knetemann beating Peeters at the finish line. Late that evening, with the first stage of the high mountains looming, Hinault decided to withdraw. Zoetemelk, until that moment second in the general classification, became the new leader, but refused to don the yellow jersey during the following stage following the example of Eddy Merckx who refused to wear it in the 1971 Tour de France after Luis Ocaña left the race as leader. In Stage 13, Zoetemelk rode in his notoriously conservative style, allowing Raymond Martin to escape, as he was a distant threat in the general classification, but he kept Kuiper close, who was now his main rival for the overall victory. Zoetemelk would not stray from who he was as a rider and maintained this defensive tactic for the rest of the race. Martin won the stage breaking the impressive streak of TI–Raleigh and climbing into 3rd place in the process. Not only this but during this stage he distinguished himself as the strongest rider on a very talented Miko–Mercier team, who also had Christian Seznec and Sven-Åke Nilsson as GC contenders and for the previous several years also had Zoetemelk, who remained the overall leader, with Kuiper in 2nd place at 1:10 behind him. In Stage 14 Ludo Peeters escaped again, this time finishing alone more than a minute ahead of the Peloton for the stage win and in Stage 15 Bernard Vallet gutted out an impressive win finishing just four seconds ahead of Jean-Raymond Toso and the 1975 Tour de France and 1977 Tour de France winner Bernard Thévenet who was nearing the end of his career.
Going into Stage 16 Zoetemelk was now 1:18 ahead of Kuiper and 5:03 ahead of his former teammate Martin. In the 16th stage, one of Zoetemelk's present teammates Johan van der Velde, who had been riding a very good Tour, nearly fell off his bike and cut off Zoetemelk with van der Velde's back tire hitting Zoetemelk's front causing him to viciously crash into the pavement. Zoetemelk quickly remounted and continued the race but was bleeding from his arm and thigh. Jos De Schoenmaecker won the stage with the group of favourites coming in over a minute later as Zoetemelk was not only able to get back to the elite group, but he also put another 0:16 into Kuiper .