A race with national teams
The 1967 Tour de France began on July 1 in Angers and finished in Paris on July 23. It was the 54th edition of the race. Its most unusual feature was the organisation of the teams. From the early 1960s the Tour had been contested by commercial teams, sponsored by bicycle makers and other companies. For 1967 and 1968 the organisers returned to national teams, as had been the practice in earlier decades, with riders wearing the colours of their countries and some regional squads added to fill out the field.
This format meant that riders who were rivals in the rest of the season rode as team-mates, and national pride was a more visible part of the race. It did not last: commercial teams returned in 1969.
Roger Pingeon wins
The overall winner was Roger Pingeon of France. He was not a rider who had been widely expected to win, and his victory was seen as a surprise by many followers of the sport. The runner-up was Julio Jimenez of Spain, a strong climber who also won the mountains classification, and the third place went to Franco Balmamion of Italy, who had won the Giro d’Italia in 1962 and 1963. Jan Janssen of the Netherlands won the points classification, and would go on to win the Tour the following year.
Pingeon’s win owed much to his steady performances in the mountains and his ability to avoid losing time in the time trials. The margin over Jimenez was a few minutes, close enough that the order was a subject of debate during the three weeks.
Tom Simpson on Mont Ventoux
The race is remembered above all for the death of Tom Simpson, a British rider, on Thursday, July 13. The 13th stage ran from Marseille to Carpentras and included the climb of Mont Ventoux, a bare limestone mountain in Provence that is known for its heat and exposure. Simpson was 29 years old.
Simpson had been a pioneering figure in British cycling. He had won the world road race championship in 1965, and in the Tour of 1962 he had become the first British rider to wear the yellow jersey. He was riding for the British team in the 1967 race.
On the climb, in very hot conditions, he began to weave across the road and then fell. He remounted with help but collapsed again, and died on the mountain. A reportedly well-known phrase attributed to him, asking to be put back on his bike, is often repeated, but accounts of his last words differ and its exact wording should be treated with caution.
Deaths at the Tour were rare, and his drew wide attention. A memorial was later placed near the spot on the road, and many cyclists still stop there when they ride the climb.
The doping question
Medical examination after Simpson’s death reportedly found traces of amphetamines, and tubes of stimulants were said to have been found among his belongings. The heat, the effort and the drugs have all been discussed as contributing factors, and the exact weighting of each cannot be fixed with certainty. What is clear is that the incident pushed the question of doping into public view.
Doping controls had been introduced in French cycling in the mid-1960s, and some riders had protested against them, including a one-day strike in the 1966 Tour. After Simpson’s death the sport’s authorities moved to strengthen testing rules, though the problem continued for decades. In 1967 itself, the sport’s culture often treated some drug use as normal, which is part of why the incident prompted debate rather than a quick change.
The story of the cyclist Tom Simpson goes beyond one race; for this article the key point is that his death shaped how the whole race was remembered, more than the final classification.
Reading the 1967 race today
The Tour of 1967 can look like two stories in one. One is a conventional race, with a French winner, Spanish climbing and a Dutch points champion. The other is the loss of a rider at the foot of the sport’s most notorious mountain. The national team format also gave the event a different feel from the commercial races before and after it.
For readers following the sport as one part of a busy year, the Tour sat alongside events in other sports such as the Wimbledon championships in the same month, and the contrast was stark: while the tennis season was a story of continuing, if changing, tradition, the cycling year included a death that forced the sport to ask difficult questions about itself.