10 fun facts about the 2021 Tour de France
Pogačar, Vingegaard and Carapaz set an unusual record
Photo by:
Sirotti
1) For the first time in Tour history, the same three riders made up the top-3 on two consecutive stages. Tadej Pogačar, Jonas Vingegaard and Richard Carapaz were one-two-three on Stages 17 and 18.
2) Not only is Tadej Pogačar the youngest rider to win two Tours de France, he’s also the youngest to win consecutive Grand Tours.
3) Pogačar has won the yellow, polka dot and white jerseys in two consecutive editions of the Tour.
4) Pogačar joined five riders—including Bernard Hinault and Eddy Merckx—who won three stages in each of their first two Tours.
5) Mark Cavendish won the green points jersey for the first time in ten years, beating Rik Van Looy’s old Grand Tour record of five years between Vuelta a España points titles.
6) With his win on Champs-Elysées, Wout Van Aert became the first rider since Bernard Hinaut in 1979 to win a mountain, time trial and sprint stage in one edition of the Tour.
7) The top-14 all came from different teams, the first time that has ever happened. The previous record was different teams in the top-11 in 1970.
8) Of the riders in the top-10, runner-up Vingegaard, fourth-place Ben O’Connor, seventh-place Alexey Lutsenko and eighth-place Guillaume Martin all achieved their highest career Grand Tour places.
9) The French (Martin, David Gaudu, Aurélien Peret-Peintre) and the Dutch (Wilco Kelderman, Wout Poels, Bauke Mollema) had the most riders in the top-20 with three each.
10) Dan Martin and Pello Bilbao both finished four Grand Tours in 2020 and 2021. Because of the adjusted 2020 schedule and the slightly earlier Tour de France, Bilbao rode 84 Grand Tour stages in 323 days and Martin, because he raced the shorter 2020 Vuelta instead of the 2020 Giro, rode 81 stages. Bilbao didn’t finish below 16th in those four Grand Tours.
