You might wonder which Tour de France edition was the slowest and wich one the fastest. Here you have the answer.
The slowest Tour de France
was the 13th edition, held between 29th June and 27 July in 1919. The 5560 km long route of the race was divided into 15 stages. (And it wasn’t even the longest ever edition.)
Because the First World War ended only a few months earlier, most of the cyclists had not enough possibility to train. Routine and experience of how to ride a Tour de France mattered, no wonder, that mostly the older riders dominated the race.
On the other handy the international elite peloton suffered devastating personal losses: three of the former Tour de France winners, Lucien Petit-Breton (winner of 1907and 1908), François Faber (1909) and Octave Lapize (1910), also many less successful athletes died during the war.
And of course, the war caused terrible damages in the infrastructure of France, which made to organize and conduct a multiple-stage race around the country more complicated.
Firmin Lambot, winner of Tour de France 1919
When Firmin Lambot, the overall winner of the race crossed the finish line of the last stafe, his average speed during this 5560 km long adventure was
24,1 km/h
Also, it might be worth to mention, that this was the Tour de France when the yellow jersey was introduced – another consequence of the war. Because most of the French commercial teams joined to the consortium La Sportive, and most of the cyclists competed in grey jersey, it seemed a great idea to create a very distinguishable jersey for the actual leader of the general classification.
The fastest Tour de France edition ever
comes from a totally different era. And you might have expected it. Yes, it was the first overall victory of Jonas Vingegaard in 2022. His average speed was