Description

After the 1972 Tour de France, there were rumours that the 1973 Tour would become easier, to suit French cyclist Cyrille Guimard better. However, when the 1973 Tour route was announced in December 1972, the organisation had included three more mountains compared to the 1972 route. The race started on 30 June, and had two rest days, in Divonne-les-Bains and Bolquères Pyrenees 2000. The highest point of elevation in the race was 2,556 m (8,386 ft) at the summit tunnel of the Col du Galibier mountain pass on stage 8.

Zoetemelk won the opening prologue, one second ahead of Poulidor. In the first part of the next stage, Teirlinck won and took over the lead. Ocaña and Herman Van Springel fell down when a dog crossed the road, but both suffered no serious damage. In the second part of that stage, Van Springel bridged the gap to Catieau, who had escaped. Van Springel did all the work to stay away, while Catieau did not help his team captain’s rival. They stayed away until the end of the stage, where Catieau won the sprint, and Van Springel became the new race leader.

In the third stage, a group with Guimard and Ocana escaped. Van Springel, Zoetemelk, Fuentes, Thévenet, and Poulidor were not in that group and had to chase them. The group stayed away, Guimard won the sprint, and Catieau became the race leader. More important for the final result was that Ocaña won more than two minutes on Zoetemelk, and more than seven minutes on Fuente.

In stage seven, when the first mountains were climbed, Ocaña attacked, and only Zoetemelk could follow. A few kilometers from the summit, Zoetemelk had to let Ocaña go, and Ocaña finished solo. Ocaña became the new race leader, almost three minutes ahead of Zoetemelk.In the eighth stage, Ocaña and Fuente both attacked. Ocaña and Fuente did not like each other, and when Fuente stopped working, Ocaña was angry, especially when Fuente passed him just before the top of the Izoard to steal the points for the mountain classification. When Fuente had a flat tire, Ocaña did not wait for him and left him behind, beating him by one minute at the finish line. All the others were far behind: Thévenet and Martinez followed after seven minutes, the other pre-race favourites after twenty minutes.

In the thirteenth stage, Poulidor crashed and was taken away in a helicopter. In the sixteenth stage, the cyclists were slower than expected and finished one hour after the latest time schedule. The train that they should have taken had already left, and they had to use buses.

In the time trial in stage 17, Fuente lost second place in the general classification to Thévenet. He tried to take second place in the mountain stage 18, but he failed and even lost some time.

Excerpt from Wikipedia – Read the full entry by clicking here