Le Tour de France
1966
The Tour Steve is riding again, sixty years on — and the champion who wrote to wish him well.
The race
On 1 July 1966 the peloton rolled out of Nancy for three weeks and 4,329 kilometres of racing — the Vosges, the Pyrenees, the Alps, a swing into Spain and Italy, and home to Paris on 23 July. It was the Tour of the first drug tests, of the riders' protest at Bordeaux, and of Jacques Anquetil abandoning in the Alps while quietly steering the win to a team-mate.
That team-mate was Lucien Aimar, a 25-year-old from Hyères. He slipped clear on the road to Turin, took yellow in the Alps and never gave it back — beating Jan Janssen by sixty-seven seconds. He never won the Tour again, and he never needed to.
- The race
- 53rd Tour de France, 1–23 July 1966
- The road
- Nancy to Paris, 4,329 km, 22 stages
- The winner
- Lucien Aimar, Ford France–Hutchinson
- The margin
- 1 min 07 sec over Jan Janssen
- Third
- Raymond Poulidor, the eternal second
A letter from the champion
“Dear Steve,
I was delighted to hear that you are preparing to ride the roads of the 1966 Tour de France.
I know that course by heart — it is carved into my legs and into my memory. Cycling is an ungrateful sport, but it is also the most beautiful instrument of freedom.
I will not be on the saddle beside you, but I will be there in thought.
Bonne route.”
From Lucien's own album
Signed photographs sent to Steve to send him on his way.
Sixty years in the making
While Aimar was pulling on yellow in the Alps, Steve was getting the hang of three wheels. Head down, going for it — some things don't change.