1964 Tour de France

Lore & Background

By 1964, Jacques Anquetil was already a monument of the sport. His riding style was almost alien to the era's rough, aggressive peloton: long, relaxed, economical, with a cadence so smooth it looked like he was coasting. He could sit in the middle of the peloton, arms out of the handlebars, and still be the fastest man on the road. His time trials were a form of public spectacle; rivals would watch him disappear into the distance and simply stop chasing. In 1964, that same metronomic calm carried him to a fifth yellow jersey, and because of the sheer consistency of his performance across all three weeks, it felt less like a victory and more like a statement of natural law.

Raymond Poulidor, by contrast, was the Tour's perpetual almost-man. A climber of extraordinary tenacity, he could attack on the steepest gradients and make the strongest riders in the world chase. Yet every year, the gap opened in the flat stages and the time trials, and he would cross the Champs-Élysées in second place, his face set in that famous expression of frustrated determination. The 1964 Tour was the third consecutive year he finished that way, and the pattern would continue for several more seasons. Fans in France adored both men, but the Poulidor heartbreak became a kind of national ritual, a story of near-perfection that never quite arrived.

The broader context of the mid-1960s Tour was one of a sport still largely defined by its French and Belgian riders, with the peloton a close-knit, almost family-like group. The races were shorter, the stages fewer, and the drama came from individual brilliance rather than the team-tactics spectacles of later decades. The 1964 edition, with its two dominant French protagonists, captured that world at its most romantic and personal.

In Their Own Story

The last time trial of the 1964 Tour stretched along a straight, tree-lined avenue outside the finish city. The crowd had been waiting since morning, their voices hoarse from cheering Poulidor through the mountains three days earlier. When Anquetil emerged from the start gantry on his steel-framed bike, the noise shifted. He settled into his position, elbows wide, and began to pedal. The first kilometer was unremarkable. By the third, the gap on the timing board was already a minute. By the fifth, the commentators had stopped saying his name and simply described the distance he was covering. The crowd, to their credit, cheered him just as loudly. When he crossed the line, he did not celebrate. He simply dismounted, wiped the sweat from his forehead, and walked toward the motorbike with the same unhurried gait he had carried for five thousand kilometers. Behind him, a few hours later, Poulidor would finish his trial, look at the clock, and say nothing. He never said much after a second-place finish. He just got on the next bus.

Reader's Guide

The 1964 Tour de France was unforgettable not for a single explosive moment but for the slow, inexorable accumulation of Anquetil's superiority over three weeks. From the opening stages, the French time-trialist made clear that this would be his race. He rode the flat and rolling sections with a languid economy that left rivals chasing his rear wheel, and in the individual time trials he simply extended his lead by margins that felt almost casual.

The mountain weeks in the Alps and Pyrenees offered Poulidor his best chance. On the steepest climbs, the Clermont-Ferrand rider attacked with a ferocity that made the peloton scatter, and for a few kilometers each day he was the strongest man on the road. But the gaps he closed in the mountains were erased, stage by stage, in the flat finishes and the time trials. Anquetil never had to chase. He never had to attack. He simply rode, and the mathematics of the general classification did the rest.

The final week carried a quiet, almost funereal calm. The result was no longer in doubt, and the drama shifted to who would fill out the podium. Poulidor, to his credit, never dropped his head. He rode every remaining stage as if the yellow were still within reach, and the crowd rewarded him with a standing ovation that Anquetil, for all his genius, never quite elicited in the same way. The 1964 Tour ended as it had for two years running: Anquetil in yellow, Poulidor in white and red, and a nation of cycling fans divided between admiration for the winner and a fierce, tender loyalty to the man who came so close, again and again.

Did You Know?

• Jacques Anquetil's 1964 victory was his fifth and final Tour de France win, making him one of the most decorated riders in the race's history at that time.
• Raymond Poulidor finished second in the 1964 Tour, continuing a run of consecutive runner-up finishes that earned him the lasting nickname 'L'Éternel Second' (The Eternal Second).
• Anquetil was nicknamed 'Le Diable Rouge' (The Red Devil), a reference to his dominant red race kit and his seemingly supernatural ease on the bike.
• The Anquetil–Poulidor rivalry is widely regarded by cycling historians as one of the greatest and most personal rivalries in the history of professional road cycling.