Federico Bahamontes ans Jacques Anquetil Tour de France 1963

The first Vuelta-Tour double (Jacques Anquetil, 1963)

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When Jacques Anquetil won Vuelta a Espana on 15th May, he became the first rider in the history of cycling to win all three Grand Tours at least one time. When he managed to win also the Tour de France that year, he became the first rider to make the Vuelta-Tour double. By the way, the Tour victory was his fourth one, which was also a record.  Nobody managed to win the Tour de France four times before.

 

Anquetil tried to win the Spanish Grand Tour previous year already, but he had to give up the race with only a few stages left. There were rumors about Anquetil quitting the race due to frustration because he couldn't dominate against his teammate Rudy Altig on the final time trial (15th stage).

But next year was different. Anquetil dominated the race from the beginning. He claimed the leader jersey in stage 1/b,  a 52 km long time trial. He and his team had only one job: to defend his leading position till the end.

They didn't fail and Anquetil won the race.

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Five weeks later winning Tour de France was a bit more difficult. But Anquetil surprised his rivals with a stunning performance in the mountains as he won the stage between Pau and Bagnères-de-Bigorre in the Pyrenees. But the yellow jersey was still  on other riders ( Eddy Pauwels, Seamus Elliott, and Gilbert Desmel, respectively). After the 16th stage (Grenoble-Val d'Isere) Federico Bahamontes jumped up into the leading position.

Then came the next tough day in the Alps (Stage 17 between Val d'Isere and Chamonix), and Rafael Geminiani, the boss of the team partly named after him (Saint-Raphaël-Gitane-R. Geminiani), came up with the idea, that Anquetil should change the bike on the road up to the Col de la Forclaz.  Nevertheless,  bike change for tactical reasons wasn't allowed those days, so they faked a mechanical issue with snipping through a gear cable, claiming that it had snapped.

Anquetil won the stage and also took the yellow and has kept it until Paris.

Fun fact: because the Tour was competed by national teams in the previous decades (even during the Giro-Tour doubles of Fausto Coppi), Jacques Anquetil's double victory was the very first time, when a professional team could win two Grand Tours within a season.

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