1970 Tour de France

Lore & Background

By the summer of 1970, Eddy Merckx was no longer a rising star; he was the standard against which every other rider measured himself. His 1969 Tour victory had announced his arrival, and the 1970 race was his declaration of intent. The Belgian's riding style—long, sustained attacks on climbs, ferocious sprints on flat stages, and an almost supernatural ability to find another gear when the peloton thought the race was settled—made him a figure of both awe and resentment among rivals.

The Molteni team, an Italian outfit, provided Merckx with a solid but not star-studded supporting cast, meaning the Belgian often had to do the heavy lifting himself. This isolation in the GC battle made his attacks all the more dramatic: a single rider pulling away from a field of 150, the peloton watching from a distance as the yellow jersey vanished over the next crest. Raymond Poulidor, the perennial French favourite, was the most consistent challenger, but the gap between the two in 1970 told a story of a new generation asserting itself.

The race's mountain stages in the Pyrenees and the Alps provided the theatre for Merckx's best moments. He did not merely defend the yellow jersey; he attacked in it, turning the leader's advantage into a weapon. This philosophy—offense as the best defense—became the defining lesson of the 1970 Tour and a template for future generations of grand tour winners.

In Their Own Story

The air above the col was thin and cold, the kind of altitude that turns the lungs into bellows and the legs into lead. Merckx dropped his shoulders, tucked his elbows, and began to pedal in a rhythm that felt less like cycling and more like a slow, deliberate act of violence against the gradient. Behind him, the peloton was a ribbon of colour stretching back down the switchbacks, tiny and distant, already calculating how many seconds he had lost. A spectator on the roadside, a woman in a sun hat, pressed her face to the guardrail and watched the yellow jersey disappear over the crest. She did not cheer. She simply held her breath, as if the mountain itself were being eaten, one pedal stroke at a time, and she was watching the last bite.

Reader's Guide

The 1970 Tour de France is remembered as a masterclass in aggressive grand tour racing, the kind of edition where the winner does not simply win but makes the act of winning look like an assault. Eddy Merckx, fresh off his 1969 title, entered the race in Lyon with the yellow jersey effectively his to defend, and he treated it that way from the first mountain stage.

The Pyrenean stages set the tone. Merckx attacked early and often, refusing to let the peloton settle into a passive rhythm. Rivals, including the ever-present Raymond Poulidor, found themselves chasing rather than dictating. The Belgian's Molteni team, while capable, could not always cover every move, meaning Merckx frequently rode alone in the yellow, his silhouette shrinking against the grey limestone of the high passes.

The Alpine week brought the decisive battles. Merckx's attacks on the long, grinding climbs were not the short, explosive surges of a one-day specialist; they were sustained, methodical, almost bureaucratic in their cruelty. He would open a gap, then simply keep pedalling, forcing the chasing group to work at a pace that bled their legs dry. By the final week of flat stages, the GC was effectively decided, and Merckx rode into Paris with the yellow jersey and the quiet confidence of a man who had already won the race in the mountains.

What made 1970 unforgettable was not a single dramatic crash or a last-day photo finish. It was the totality of Merckx's control, the sense that the race was a three-week argument in which one man simply made the better points, every day, until there was nothing left to debate.

Did You Know?

• Eddy Merckx's 1970 victory was his second consecutive Tour de France win, part of a career total of five overall titles (1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1974).
• Merckx was only 25 years old during the 1970 Tour, having been born on 17 June 1945 in Meens, Belgium.
• His aggressive, attack-heavy riding style earned him the enduring nickname 'The Cannibal' (Le Cannibale) among French journalists and fans.
• The 1970 race was one of the first Tours in which Merckx's dominance was widely acknowledged as a generational shift in grand tour racing, separating the Poulidor era from what followed.