after his win in
Maastricht, Netherlands, on stage two
Rudi Altig won the prologue, where Merckx finished second. In the team time trial in the second part of the first stage, Merckx's team won, and this gave Merckx the lead. In the second stage, a group escaped, with Merckx's teammate
Julien Stevens as highest-ranked cyclist. There were no dangerous competitors in the escape, so Merckx did not chase them. The group stayed away, and Stevens took over the lead, with Merckx in second place. In the fourth stage,
Rik Van Looy escaped, because he wanted to show that even at the age of 35, he should still be selected for the Belgian squad for the 1969
UCI Road World Championships. Van Looy quickly took several minutes, and became the virtual leader of the race. With less than 40 km to go, Stevens tried to defend his lead by attacking. He was followed by a group of cyclists, including
René Pijnen, one of Van Looy's teammates. Pijnen was trying to stop the chase, and this angered the other cyclists in the group. The group nonetheless was able to reduce the margin to less than a minute, and Stevens conserved his lead. Merckx won the short time trial in stage 8, but only gained two seconds on Altig. Stage 8B was a half stage in which
Andrés Gandarias and
Michele Dancelli got away from the bunch by almost two minutes setting themselves up for a sprint but Dancelli pulled away near the end and won by four seconds. In the ninth stage,
Roger Pingeon and Merckx were away, with Pingeon winning the sprint. Altig lost almost eight minutes, and was out of contention. The second place was now taken by Pingeon, more than five minutes behind. Stage 10 saw the previous year's runner up
Herman Van Springel win the stage which included the climbs of the
Col du Télégraphe and the
Col du Galibier. He finished about two minutes ahead of the Merckx group with the GC only changing slightly. Merckx added some time in the eleventh stage, which he won, and the twelfth stage, where he finished in the first group. After the twelfth stage, Merckx was leading by more than seven minutes. After he won the time trial in stage fifteen, it was more than eight minutes. By then, his victory was all but assured, he just had to make sure that he stayed with his competitors. In the seventeenth stage however, Merckx did something historic. This stage would see the climbs of the
Col de Peyresourde,
Col d'Aspin,
Col du Tourmalet and
Col d'Aubisque and the Faema team controlled the pace of the bunch from the very start.
Martin Van Den Bossche set a devastating pace while climbing the Tourmalet causing the surviving main field to break apart. Nearing the summit Merckx attacked to claim the points but as he cleared the summit he realized no one else was with him and he attacked again as the descent began. At the bottom of the hill several minutes later he had built a lead of about a minute and it only began to grow from there. Lomme Driessens, the
Directeur Sportif for Faema, told Merckx to sit up and wait for the others while taking a few minutes to get some food in him as there was still 105 kilometers to go. Merckx didn't always agree with Driessens on tactics and had second thoughts about sitting up and waiting for everyone else to catch up. When he got his next time check and realized he now had a gap of +3:00 he decided to attack even harder and by the time he reached the summit of the Aubisque he had a gap of about +7:00. He rode consistently with undeniable power as the surviving reduced
peloton just could not bring him back, or even cut into the lead he was continuously building over them. Michele Dancelli crossed the line in 2nd within a group of seven riders just shy of eight minutes behind Merckx. Everyone else including the defending champ was close to or well beyond fifteen minutes behind Merckx. This stage nearly doubled what was already almost certainly an insurmountable lead, and was a defining moment in cycling history when a rider did something that seemed impossible and would likely never be seen again. By winning the final time trial, he increased his winning margin to almost eighteen minutes. July 20 the race ended with a split stage that arrived in Paris with a 37 km individual time trial. The winner of the Points Classification was Merckx, the winner of the
Combination Classification was Merckx, the winner of the King of the Mountains competition was Merckx, the Yellow Jersey was won for the first time by Merckx, Merckx was also named the Most Combative Rider and won six stages. Before or since no other rider has accomplished winning all of these competitions in the same tour.
Eric Leman narrowly won the Sprints Competition ahead of the French speaking, Belgian-British rider
Michael Wright. During the
2019 Tour de France Eddy Merckx and the 50th anniversary of this Tour were honored at the Grand Depart in Belgium.
Doping After the controversial
doping-incident with Merckx in the 1969 Giro, the rules for doping offences were changed: riders were no longer removed from the race, but were given a penalty of fifteen minutes in the general classification. After every stage in the 1969 Tour, three cyclists were tested. These were either the first three of the stage, the first three in the general classification, or three randomly selected cyclists. Nijdam, Timmerman and Altig requested their B samples to be tested, but they also returned positive. Altig, Guyot and Matignon were given the time penalty of fifteen minutes; Nijdam and Timmerman had already left the race when the results came out. ==Classification leadership and minor prizes==