Ranking of post-war Tours de France wins

An analysis taking into account the changes that have occurred over the past 75 years

by Roger Koeijvoets

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Les Woodland's book Tour de France: The Inside Story - Making the World's Greatest Bicycle Race is available in print, Kindle eBook and audiobook versions. To get your copy, just click on the Amazon link on the right.

Roger Koeijvoets was kind enough to share his method of ranking Tour de France wins with BikeRaceInfo readers:

Last year (2020), I wondered how Tadej Pogačar’s Tour de France win would compare to winners of the past, like Froome, Thomas, Bernal, or the giants Coppi, Anquetil, Merckx, Indurain and even Armstrong. I ran into a ranking method described by Dutch writer, chess player and cycling amateur Tim Krabbé in his book ‘43 wielerverhalen’ (‘43 Cycling Stories’) and its successor ‘De veertiende etappe’ (‘The Fourteenth Stage’), by which he classified all post war winners.

I would like to compensate for the fact that the multiplication and divisions in the formula amplify the differences. In Krabbé’s ranking Hinault 1979 is first and Froome 2017 is last. Hinault’s score is more than 50 times as high as Froome’s which is a bit unrealistic. So I took the geometrical mean of the new formula, i.e. taking the quadratic root. Besides, I standardized it to achieve an average score of 100%. Thus we get the following (post WWII) ranking.

Disqualified riders were left in, but their names are in italics.

A scene from Roger Koeijvoets' #1 Tour win: Bernard Hinault racing up the Galibier with Joop Zoetemelk on his wheel in the 1979 Tour de France, stage 17. Sirotti photo

More about this ranking and how it was achieved is below the ranking chart:

Rank	Year	Winner	Country	Score	L5 (mm:ss)	#Stage Wins	#Riders Arrived in Paris	Time (hh:mm:ss)
1	1979	Bernard Hinault	France	151,4%	32:43	7	89	103:06:50
2	1969	Eddy Merckx	Belgium	141,4%	33:04	6	86	116:06:02
3	1981	Bernard Hinault	France	137,6%	20:26	5	121	96:19:38
4	2004	Lance Armstrong	USA	137,4%	14:30	5	147	83:36:02
5	1973	Luis Ocaña	Spain	136,9%	30:20	6	87	122:25:34
6	1970	Eddy Merckx	Belgium	136,7%	19:54	8	100	119:31:49
7	1999	Lance Armstrong	USA	128,5%	15:11	4	141	91:32:16
8	2001	Lance Armstrong	USA	127,2%	13:28	4	144	86:17:28
9	1984	Laurent Fignon	France	126,5%	16:35	5	124	112:03:40
10	1952	Fausto Coppi	Italy	126,4%	35:36	5	78	151:57:20
11	1972	Eddy Merckx	Belgium	126,2%	19:09	6	88	108:17:18
12	2014	Vincenzo Nibali	Italy	124,7%	11:24	4	164	89:59:06
13	1971	Eddy Merckx	Belgium	124,1%	21:00	4	94	96:45:14
14	2002	Lance Armstrong	USA	123,5%	13:54	3	153	85:05:12
15	1974	Eddy Merckx	Belgium	121,2%	11:24	8	105	116:16:58
16	1948	Gino Bartali	Italy	120,8%	37:53	7	44	145:36:56
17	1951	Hugo Koblet	Switzerland	120,8%	32:53	5	66	142:20:14
18	1997	Jan Ullrich	Germany	118,7%	20:32	2	139	100:30:35
19	1982	Bernard Hinault	France	118,0%	12:16	4	125	92:08:46
20	1992	Miguel Indurain	Spain	115,1%	14:37	3	130	100:49:30
21	1993	Miguel Indurain	Spain	112,9%	16:26	2	136	95:57:09
22	2021	Tadej Pogačar	Slovenia	112,8%	10:13	3	141	82:56:36
23	1954	Louison Bobet	France	109,8%	31:38	3	69	140:06:05
24	1989	Greg Lemond	USA	109,1%	9:39	3	138	87:38:35
25	2013	Chris Froome	UK	108,7%	7:27	3	169	83:56:40
26	1986	Greg Lemond	USA	108,1%	24:36	1	132	110:35:19
27	1998	Marco Pantani	Italy	108,0%	11:26	2	158	92:49:46
28	2012	Bradley Wiggins	UK	107,8%	11:04	2	153	87:34:47
29	1949	Fausto Coppi	Italy	107,5%	38:59	3	55	149:40:49
30	1988	Pedro Delgado	Spain	104,0%	14:04	1	151	84:27:53
31	1963	Jacques Anquetil	France	104,0%	15:00	4	76	113:30:05
32	1950	Ferdi Kübler	Switzerland	102,9%	34:21	3	51	145:36:56
33	1991	Miguel Indurain	Spain	102,7%	10:10	2	158	101:01:20
34	1958	Charly Gaul	Luxemburg	101,3%	13:33	4	78	116:59:05
35	1975	Bernard Thévenet	France	100,5%	19:29	2	86	114:35:31
36	1995	Miguel Indurain	Spain	100,0%	11:34	2	115	92:44:59
37	1965	Felice Gimondi	Italy	99,8%	12:56	3	96	116:42:06
38	1957	Jacques Anquetil	France	99,3%	20:17	4	56	135:44:42
39	2020	Tadej Pogačar	Slovenia	98,8%	6:07	3	146	87:20:05
40	2005	Lance Armstrong	USA	98,0%	11:01	1	155	86:15:02
41	2015	Chris Froome	UK	96,3%	9:48	1	160	84:46:14
42	1978	Bernard Hinault	France	96,3%	12:50	3	78	108:18:02
43	1980	Joop Zoetemelk	Netherlands	96,0%	15:37	2	85	109:19:14
44	1962	Jacques Anquetil	France	94,8%	14:04	2	94	114:31:54
45	1964	Jacques Anquetil	France	94,1%	10:34	4	81	127:09:44
46	2009	Alberto Contador	Spain	93,7%	6:04	2	156	85:48:35
47	2000	Lance Armstrong	USA	93,3%	11:50	1	127	92:33:08
48	2018	Geraint Thomas	UK	92,9%	6:08	2	145	83:17:13
49	1953	Louison Bobet	France	92,8%	18:05	2	76	129:23:25
50	2016	Chris Froome	UK	92,1%	5:17	2	174	89:04:48
51	1985	Bernard Hinault	France	91,0%	7:44	2	144	113:24:23
52	1996	Bjarne Riis	Denmark	90,4%	7:07	2	129	95:57:16
53	1961	Jacques Anquetil	France	90,3%	16:09	2	72	122:01:33
54	2007	Alberto Contador	Spain	87,9%	8:17	1	141	91:00:26
55	2003	Lance Armstrong	USA	86,5%	6:51	1	147	83:41:12
56	1994	Miguel Indurain	Spain	85,5%	10:10	1	117	103:38:38
57	1987	Stephen Roche	Ireland	84,9%	9:32	1	135	115:27:42
58	1947	Jean Robic	France	84,6%	15:23	3	53	148:11:25
59	1955	Louison Bobet	France	83,7%	13:18	2	69	130:29:26
60	1976	Lucien Van Impe	Belgium	81,5%	12:39	1	87	116:22:23
61	1977	Bernard Thévenet	France	79,4%	12:24	2	53	115:38:30
62	2006	Floyd Landis	USA	78,0%	5:08	1	139	89:40:27
63	2011	Cadel Evans	Australia	77,3%	3:57	1	167	86:12:22
64	1983	Laurent Fignon	France	74,5%	7:53	1	88	105:07:52
65	2010	Alberto Contador	Spain	73,8%	6:54	0	170	91:58:48
66	1967	Roger Pingeon	France	73,6%	9:47	1	88	136:53:50
67	2008	Carlos Sastre	Spain	69,8%	3:05	1	145	87:52:52
68	1960	Gastone Nencini	Italy	68,6%	13:12	0	81	112:08:42
69	1959	Federico Bahamontes	Spain	67,3%	8:22	1	65	123:46:45
70	1990	Greg Lemond	USA	66,9%	5:00	0	156	90:43:20
71	2019	Egan Bernal	Colombia	64,9%	4:05	0	155	82:57:00
72	1956	Roger Walkowiak	France	64,4%	10:25	0	88	124:01:16
73	2017	Chris Froome	UK	61,0%	3:05	0	167	86:20:55
74	1968	Jan Janssen	Netherlands	58,2%	3:29	2	63	133:49:42
75	1966	Lucien Aimar	France	54,5%	5:27	0	82	117:34:21

 

Hinault 1979 is the clear winner, although intuitively I would have placed my bets on Merckx 1969, who comes in second. From a statistical point of view, however, Hinault is superior, his achievements are similar to Merckx’, but achieved in far less time, therefore his lead is deserved.

This is no different from Krabbé’s list. But as we move on we can see that Krabbé’s top 11 still has not changed since 1981, whilst my new method has 4 new entries: 3 times Lance Armstrong and 1 time Laurent Fignon. The best entry from the last 10 years is Vincenzo Nibali (2014). We can find him on the 12th spot.

This year, Pogačar’s win was more convincing than last year’s. This has resulted in a 22nd place (39th last year), right between Indurain 1993 and Bobet 1954.

Of course, this entire ranking system is open for dispute, as Krabbé already admitted. One might argue that other parameters should be included. E.g other jerseys (Pogačar won 3 of the 4 available ones), or team strengths (the weaker the team, the better the individual achievement). It would be very interesting to see how others would go about it. So feel free to give it a try! However, I totally agree with Krabbé’s opinion that any ranking method should pass the gut feeling test.

How the ranking was achieved:

From this (Krabbé's) story (1982) we can read as follows (the translation is mine):

“The first criterion was of course the lead. I didn't take the lead over number 2, which is often the result of calculation, but the lead over number 5 – in this number, L5, the lead is distributed more normally. As a second criterion I included the Tour winner's grit or superiority. How would I express that better than in the number of stage wins achieved, denoted by S?

“To temper the chance factor that this entails, I added 1 to it; as a result, the final product for Tours whose winner did not win a single stage (Walkowiak, Nencini, Aimar) would also not be 0.

“Then a correction was needed for the leveling that has taken place over the years. It is known: the faster the Tour is ridden, the easier it is for the riders. But also: the more difficult for the stars to excel. (And, conversely, the harder the easier.) Well, the Tours used to be much more difficult due to worse roads, longer stages, more difficult regulations (until 1955 the rider had to change a flat tire himself). I express the heaviness of the Tour in the average speed of the winner, ASW. The higher ASW, the more valuable a win, so that figure can just be multiplied.

“Finally, a correction had to be made for the differences from Tour to Tour; courses, weather conditions, distance. I expressed that in the percentage of the started riders that made it to Paris, PP. The same paradox applied to this figure as to ASW, so PP was also directly included in the denominator. (Krabbe is wrong here, he means 'numerator', there is no denominator in the whole formula, RK).

“Overall, my merit formula for Tour wins was: L5 x (S+1) x ASW x PP.”

Next comes the list, which he updated and put online in 2001. In 2014 he published the list again. He noticed the top 11 had not changed and many recent winners were ranked low. Krabbé:

“That seems to indicate that I counted stage wins too strongly. And those are more and more difficult to achieve by the larger pelotons. In the early eighties there were about one hundred and fifty departures; in recent years there have been almost two hundred. I could adjust my formula – but then I would take it too seriously.”

So Krabbé decided to leave it that way. I didn’t. Last year I published a new list, that I updated after this year’s Tour. They’re in Dutch, which is the reason for this new blog post.

A few corrections to Krabbé’s approach seemed necessary, to compensate for the developments Krabbé already mentioned. According to me, however, there is no reason to change the lead (V5) or the number of stage wins (S+1). At the same time the Tours have become much shorter over the years and were completed in much less time. By not including the distance but the time spent on the bike (T), we implicitly use the speed (ASW) that Krabbé already used, but also the fact that Tours have become ever shorter. Coppi used almost 152 hours for his Tour win in 1952, while Pogačar did it in less than 83 hours this year. He, therefore, had much less time to build up a lead. I put it in the denominator: the less, the better.

In addition, Krabbé uses the percentage of riders who arrived in Paris, but he also acknowledges in his postscript that the number of participants has increased significantly over the years. Combining these two data, I don’t use the percentage but the number of riders who have arrived in Paris (AP). Then you get the formula V5 x (E+1) * AP / T.