© Presse Sports
Far behind riders of the stature of Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Mark Cavendish, in the history of the Tour de France there have been almost three hundred men who only got a fleeting taste of glory. As the countdown to the start of the race on 7 July continues, letour.fr is retracing the steps of 10 champions who clinched a single stage win. In 1994, the Mont Ventoux was the focal point of the stage to Carpentras, where Eros Poli, one of the worst climbers in the peloton, managed to win after a 171 kilometres alone at the front in a display of sheer Italian class.
He looked like a fish out of water, but he was about to land the catch of a lifetime! Eros Poli, the archetypical self-effacing rider, was perfectly comfortable with his role as a domestique. The indefatigable, powerful and devoted Italian was one of the cogs in the machine of Mario Cipollini, a sprinter who never failed to blast away from the opposition as long as his train put him in the right position. Whether it was pulling on long straights to shut down an escape or shepherding and protecting his captain from the wind in the finale, Eros was top of the class. In the mountains, he was also good at setting the right pace in the gruppetto to make sure the worst climbers in the peloton finished inside the time limit. The Giant from Verona was one of these dreadful mountain men. Seeing him in action in the stage from Montpellier to Carpentras seemed as far-fetched as seeing an anvil have a go at the 4×100 metres medley world record. Yet the 1994 was a bag of surprises.
It all started when “Cipo” suffered a nasty injury during the last edition of the Vuelta held in April. Without the flamboyant sprinter to rack up win after win in the first week of the Tour, Mercatone Uno had been flailing around like a fish out of water since the start in Lille. Eros decided to roll the dice with solo attacks, for example in the stage to Futuroscope, but was bested by stage hunters from GB-MG Maglificio. It was precisely one of them, Rolf Järmann, who attacked treacherously when most of the peloton had ground to a halt for a “technical stop”. This angered Eros Poli, who caught the insolent Swiss, dropped him and went on a solo adventure with 171 kilometres to go, as if he had forgotten that the Mont Ventoux stood in his way.
The lowly rider
The gamble seemed insane at first, but Eros Poli steadily worked to shorten the odds. As he reached the foot of the Bald Mountain with a margin of 23′45″, his objective became clear. He had to limit the damage to a minute per kilometre and crown the Mont Ventoux with about 4 minutes to spare if he was to win the stage. Poli dragged his 1.94 m, 87 kg frame up the roads of the mountain, sweating like an animal and grinding on despite Pantani jumping from the peloton and mounting a furious chase. He went over the top and started the descent to Carpentras, still 41 kilometres away. However, the toughest part was over for Poli, who had been part of the team that won gold in the team time trial in the Los Angeles Olympics and felt right at home chugging along on the flat. He ended up crossing the line with 3′39″ on the runner-up. The following day, Françoise Inizan from L’Équipe described Poli’s victory as a poetic and metaphorical work: “Eros Poli spared a delicate thought for all the lowly riders of the peloton. For all the anonymous assistants and loyal servants of their kings.”

© Presse Sports
Far behind riders of the stature of Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Mark Cavendish, in the history of the Tour de France there have been almost three hundred men who only got a fleeting taste of glory. As the countdown to the start of the race on 7 July continues, letour.fr is retracing the steps of 10 champions who clinched a single stage win. In 1974, young Dutch rider Henk Poppe beat the top sprinters to claim the first ever Tour stage run in Britain. He was a true one-hit wonder!
It was 1974 and Merckx Mania was in full swing. It was hard to see who could deny Eddy his fifth overall win, especially with Luis Ocaña and Joop Zoetemelk injured and out of the race. The 61st edition of the Tour broke new ground, sending the peloton to British shores for the first time. Plymouth had the honour of hosting this historic stage. The powerful Molteni team had seized the reins of the race, first with Merckx after the prologue in Brest and then with Joseph Bruyère, who had gained time from a breakaway in the following stage. The Cannibal was as voracious as ever after the short boat trip, featuring in all the moves and battling for bonus seconds on the 14 laps of a circuit that included a road bypass.
The birth of a star?
While Merckx’s rivals for the overall refrained from challenging him during this stage, a fierce battle raged on among the sprinters. Barry Hoban, eager to impress in the first British outing of the Tour, was expected to take the fight to Patrick Sercu. Few people were watching the small Frisol team, a newcomer to the peloton that featured mainly generous Dutch rouleurs such as Fedor den Hertog and Cees Priem, but also a 22-year-old sprinter who flew under the radar despite his big frame: 1.87 m and 81 kg. It was the first Tour de France for Henk Poppe, but he was racing without any inhibitions. The young lad, a product of the Dutch cycling school, was able to go toe-to-toe with the Belgian veterans of a thousand criteriums, kermesses and village races. Merckx opened the final sprint, but it was Poppe who surged to beat Jacques Esclassan and Patrick Sercu. The birth of a star? Sercu handily regained control in the next few stages, with the young talent failing to finish higher than 14th, only to bow out in the Alpine stage to Serre-Chevalier. That was the end of his short Tour career… but that one victory will always be his.

© Presse Sports
Far behind riders of the stature of Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Mark Cavendish, in the history of the Tour de France there have been almost three hundred men who only got a fleeting taste of glory. As the countdown to the start of the race on 7 July continues, letour.fr is retracing the steps of 10 champions who clinched a single stage win. Back in the 1963 Tour, the Saint-Raphaël team conquered the stage to Roubaix with an Irishman who had put down roots in France. The velodrome gave Seamus Elliott his greatest victory… and a sense of closure.
Everyone called him a friend. Seamus Elliott, always wearing a grin on his plump face, spoke fluent French with just a hint of an accent from the Emerald Isle. Even more importantly, he rode his heart out for leaders such as Jean Stablinski and Jacques Anquetil, happy to sweep his own ambitions under the rug without a word of complaint. Although Elliott and his friend „Stab“ had been racing for different teams in the 1962 Worlds, he had done everything he could to slow down the chase in the small group fighting for victory, resulting in the rider from northern France winning gold and the Irishman having to settle for silver. In 1963, the stage from Jambes to Roubaix was well-suited to „Shay“, who had narrowly missed a victory in the Hell of the North due to a broken saddle. The Irishman’s tactics dovetailed with the plans of his leader at Saint-Raphaël. „Maître Jacques“ urged his teammates to control the breakaway, which had good odds of making it to the finish.
Mission accomplished
Stablinski and Elliott —the team’s best assets on this sort of terrain— slipped into the leading group. Elliott was forced to dig deep after suffering two punctures on the cobblestones, the last one just 20 km before the line. Fortunately for the Irishman, the world champion shepherded him back to the escape group on both occasions. Once again, smart tactics and powerful feelings all pointed towards the need to work together in such a tricky finish, particularly with Stablinski seeing an opportunity to return the favour. Stablinski was godfather to Elliott’s young son. The Irishman took a leaf out of little Pascal’s book to hang on alone at the front for the final six kilometres before the velodrome. „Shay“ finished 33″ ahead of a small group of chasers led by none other than Stablinski —good enough to pull on the yellow jersey. Antoine Blondin hailed this double whammy, which no other Irish rider had accomplished, in a piece in L’Équipe titled Ça fait Dublin par où ça passe, where he outlined his vision of an international peloton ahead of his time: „He belongs to a migratory species of cyclists who feel at home anywhere as long as there is bread and a saddle. He is a citizen of the roads, and a race number is his passport.“ Decades before Sean Kelly and Stephen Roche pulled off even greater victories in the 1980s, Elliott kept the yellow jersey for four days, until Angers. Once in Paris, the jersey was safely on Anquetil’s shoulders. Mission accomplished.

© Presse Sports
Far behind riders of the stature of Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Mark Cavendish, in the history of the Tour de France there have been almost three hundred men who only got a fleeting taste of glory. As the countdown to the start of the race on 7 July continues, letour.fr is retracing the steps of 10 champions who clinched a single stage win. Back in the 1956 Tour, Jean-Pierre Schmitz produced one of the most epic rides in the history of Luxembourgish cycling to win a Pyrenean stage that seemed to have fellow Luxembourger Charly Gaul’s name written all over it.
Everyone knows that the first non-French rider to win the Tour was a Luxembourger. François Faber opened the account in 1909, followed a couple of decades later by Nicolas Frantz. Fast-forward to 1956 and the two-time winner of the race (1927 and 1928) was serving as the director of a mixed Luxembourgish-British-Portuguese team for what was expected to be Charly Gaul’s triumphal parade in the Tour de France. The favourite had put his country back on the map the previous year by finishing third overall and winning the mountains classification. The Angel of the Mountains could count on the support of a brother-in-arms who was only slightly less talented. Going into his Tour debut, Jean-Pierre Schmitz already had a few impressive performances under his belt, including second place in the 1954 Critérium du Dauphiné and a nice silver medal won at the Worlds in Frascati, Italy in late summer 1955. Although no-one expected it to be necessary, „Jempy“ was more than ready to step up to the plate if his leader and friend ran into trouble.
A prodigious jump
That is precisely what happened as the peloton rolled out of Pau for the second Pyrenean stage. Gaul showed signs of weakness and Nicolas Frantz gave the go-ahead for the rest of the team to attack. The time had come for Schmitz to shine. After catching the breakaway of the day, he kept his powder dry on the ascent to the Col de Aspin, only to attack on the descent, climb the Col de Peyresourde on his own and plunge to the finish in Luchon. This is how Pierre Chany described this monster performance in the next day’s edition of L’Équipe: „The way the ’spare Luxembourger‘ came back on the climbs was absolutely stunning. Just think of it: after trailing the breakaway by eight minutes while still in the peloton with 54 kilometres to, Mr J.-P. crossed the line in Luchon no less than 2′08″ ahead of runner-up Fernand Picot!“ An opportunity to repeat this flash of brilliance never presented itself to Schmitz, who spent most of his career as a luxury domestique to Charly Gaul, particularly in the latter’s victorious Grande Boucle in 1958. Every man at his station!