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Grand Tour (cycling)
Cycling races Giro d'Italia, Tour de France and Vuelta a España From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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In road bicycle racing, a Grand Tour is one of the three major European professional cycling stage races: Giro d'Italia, Tour de France, and Vuelta a España. Collectively they are termed the Grand Tours, and all three races are similar in format, being three-week races with daily stages. They have a special status in the UCI regulations: more points for the UCI World Tour are distributed in Grand Tours than in other races,[1] and they are the only stage races allowed to last longer than 14 days,[2] and these differ from major stage races more than one week in duration.
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The seven cyclists who have won all three tours. Only Contador and Hinault have won each Grand Tour at least twice, and only Merckx, Hinault and Froome have won all three tours consecutively.
All three races have a substantial history, with the Tour de France first held in 1903, Giro d'Italia first held in 1909 and the Vuelta a España first held in 1935. The Giro is generally run in May, the Tour in July, and the Vuelta in late August and September. The Vuelta was originally held in the spring, usually late April, with a few editions held in June in the 1940s. In 1995, however, the race moved to September to avoid direct competition with the Giro.
The Tour de France is the oldest and most prestigious in terms of points accrued to racers of all three,[1] and is the most widely attended annual sporting event in the world.[3] The Tour, the Giro and the Road World Cycling Championship make up the Triple Crown of Cycling.
The three Grand Tours are men's events, and as of 2025, no three week races currently exist on the women's road cycling circuit. The Vuelta Femenina, Giro d'Italia Women and Tour de France Femmes are sometimes considered to be equivalent races for women – taking place over shorter, smaller routes around a week in length. The Vuelta Femenina was first held under that name in 2023, the Giro d'Italia Women was first held in 1988, and various women's Tour de France events have taken place since 1984 – with the Tour de France Femmes having its first edition in 2022.
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In their current form, the Grand Tours are held over three consecutive weeks and typically include two rest days near the beginning of the second and third weeks. If the opening stages are in a country not neighbouring the home nation of the race, there is sometimes an additional rest day after the opening weekend to allow for transfers. The stages are a mix of long massed start races (sometimes including mountain and hill climbs and descents; others are flat stages favoring those with a sprint finish) and individual and team time trials. Stages in the Grand Tours are generally under 200 kilometres in length.
UCI rules regarding 'Grand Tours'
Grand Tour events have specific rules and criteria as part of Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) regulations. For the UCI World Tour, more points are given in grand tours than in other races; the winner of the Tour de France receives 1000 points, and the winners of the Giro and Vuelta receive 850 points. Depending on the nature of other races, points vary for the winner of the overall classification[1] The grand tours have a special status for the length: they are allowed to last between 15 and 23 days – whereas other stage races are not allowed to last longer than 14 days.[2]
Teams
Historically, controversy surrounds which teams are invited to the event by the organiser. Typically, the UCI prefers top-rated professional teams to enter, while operators of the Grand Tours often want teams based in their country or those unlikely to cause controversy. Between 2005 and 2007, organisers had to accept all ProTour teams, leaving only two wildcard teams per Tour. However, the Unibet team, a ProTour team normally guaranteed entry, was banned from the three Grand Tours for violating gambling advertising laws. In 2008, following numerous doping scandals, some teams were refused entry to the Grand Tours: Astana did not compete at the 2008 Tour de France and Team Columbia did not compete at the 2008 Vuelta a España.
Since 2011, under UCI World Tour rules, all eighteen UCI WorldTeams are guaranteed a place in all three events, as well as the top two UCI ProTeams from the previous year's world ranking. As of 2025, the race organizers are free to invite two more wildcard teams from the top 40 teams in the world ranking (shrinking to the top 30 in 2026).[4] This new rule is intended to prevent organizers from favoring low-ranked domestic teams, such as the 2023 Vuelta a España, where Burgos BH were ranked 62nd and invited over many higher performing teams.[4]
In 2023, Team Jumbo–Visma riders Primož Roglič, Jonas Vingegaard and Sepp Kuss won the Giro, Tour and Vuelta respectively, making the team the first to win all three Grand Tours in a single calendar year.[5]
Competitions
The main competition is the individual general classification, decided on aggregate time (sometimes after allowance of time bonuses). There are also classifications for teams and young riders, and based on climbing and sprinting points, and other minor competitions. Five riders have won three individual classifications open to all riders (general, mountains, young and points classifications) in the same race: Eddy Merckx in the 1968 Giro d'Italia and 1969 Tour de France and 1973 Vuelta a España, Tony Rominger in the 1993 Vuelta a España, Laurent Jalabert in the 1995 Vuelta a España, Marco Pantani in the 1998 Giro d'Italia, and Tadej Pogačar in the 2020 Tour de France and 2021 Tour de France.
Riders
It is rare for cyclists to ride all grand tours in the same year; in 2004, 474 cyclists started in at least one of the grand tours, 68 of them rode two Grand Tours and only two cyclists started in all three grand tours.[6] It is not unusual for sprinters to start each of the Grand Tours and aim for stage wins before the most difficult stages occur. Alessandro Petacchi and Mark Cavendish started all three Grand Tours in 2010 and 2011, respectively, as did some of their preferred support riders. For both riders in both years, only the Tour de France was ridden to its conclusion.
Over the years, 36 riders have completed all three Grand Tours in one year: Adam Hansen did so six years in a row. The only riders to have finished in the top 10 in each of the three tours during the same year are Raphaël Géminiani in 1955 and Gastone Nencini in 1957. In 2023 Sepp Kuss became the first rider since Nencini to start and finish all three tours in one year, while winning one of them - in Kuss' case the 2023 Vuelta a España.
Riders from the same country winning all three Grand Tours in a single year has happened only on four occasions. It first occurred in 1964 with French riders Jacques Anquetil and Raymond Poulidor, with the second occurrence in 2008 with Spanish riders Alberto Contador and Carlos Sastre. 2018 marked the only time three different riders from the same country won all three Tours, these being British riders Chris Froome, Geraint Thomas and Simon Yates. In 2024 Slovenian riders Tadej Pogačar (winning the Giro and the Tour) and Primož Roglič (winning the Vuelta) repeated the accomplishments of the aforementioned French, Spanish and British riders.
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Women's Grand Tour events
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As of 2024[update], no three week races currently exist on the women's road cycling circuit. Historically, women have participated in three week long stages races, with various women's Tour de France events taking place since 1984.[7][8] In the contemporary UCI Women's World Tour, the Giro d'Italia Women (first held in 1988), the Tour de France Femmes (first held in 2022) and the Vuelta Femenina (started in 2015, gaining its current name in 2023) are sometimes considered to be equivalent races for women – taking place over shorter, smaller routes around a week in length.[9][10] The Vuelta Femenina takes place in May, the Giro d'Italia Women is generally run in late June / early July and the Tour de France Femmes is held in late July following the men's Tour de France.
Some media and teams have referred to these women's events as Grand Tours, as they are the biggest events in the women's calendar.[11][10][12] However, they are not three week stage races, they do not have a special status in the rules and regulations of cycling (such as more points in the UCI Women's World Tour, or allowing an increased number of stages),[13][14] and some have argued that the races need to visit high mountains (such as the Alps) or contain time trial stages to be considered an equivalent event.[11][15]
Campaign groups such as Le Tour Entier and The Cyclists' Alliance continue to push organisers and the UCI to allow for longer stage races for women,[14] as well as to improve the quality and economic stability of the women's peloton to allow for three week long races in future.[15][16]
From 2026, the UCI will award more ranking points to Giro d'Italia Women, Tour de France Femmes and the Vuelta Femenina compared to other races in the UCI Women's World Tour.[17][18]
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General Classification winners
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Wins per year
A. a b c d e f g Lance Armstrong was declared the winner of seven consecutive Tours from 1999 to 2005. However, on 22 October 2012, he was stripped of all his titles by the UCI for his use of performance-enhancing drugs. The organizers of the Tour de France announced that the winner's slot would remain empty in the record books, rather than transfer the win to the second-place finishers each year.[20]
Wins per rider
- Active riders marked in bold.
Wins by country
Up to the end of World War II, all Grand Tour wins were shared amongst just 5 nations - the three home countries France, Italy and Spain, and Belgium and Luxembourg. Forty years later, by 1985, only four more countries - all still continental Western European - could boast of having a Grand Tour winner - Switzerland, Germany, Netherlands, Dutch and Sweden. Since then riders from a further 11 countries have won at least one Grand Tour bringing the total to 20 Grand Tour winning countries across four continents (Europe, North America, South America and Oceania), as at 2025.
- Luxembourger Francois Faber became the first non-home nation rider to win a Grand Tour by winning the 7th edition of the Tour de France in 1909, however it was not until the 33rd Giro that a non-Italian won the Giro when the Swiss Hugo Koblet won in 1950. The Belgian Edward van Dijck won the 3rd edition of the Vuelta in 1947.
- Swede Gösta Pettersson won the 1971 Giro and hence was the first Scandinavian to win a Grand Tour. The year before in his first year as a professional, at age 29, he was on the podium of the Tour de France. He didn't win a stage in either of his Grand Tour overall podiums. His only Grand Tour stage win came when he beat Eddy Merckx in the sprint in Stage 7 of the 1972 Giro.
- American Greg Lemond won the 1986 Tour de France to become the first non-European Grand Tour winner. Lemond was on Grand Tour podiums 6 times (5 in Tours de France) from the 10 Grand Tours he finished. He had started Grand Tours 16 times between 1983 and 1994. He won 5 Tour stages and one in the Giro.
- Irishman Stephen Roche won the 1987 Giro - Tour double in the year he became the first British Isles Grand Tour winner. By becoming the first Irishman to win the World Championship road race that same year he became the second ever Triple Crown winner.
- Colombian Luis Herrera won the Vuelta in the same year to become the first South American Grand Tour winner. Herrera "instantly became a national hero."[21]
- Russian Evgeni Berzin won the 1994 Giro and so was the first Eastern European Grand Tour winner. Berzin's first year as a professional was 1993, two years after the break up of the Soviet Union.
- Australian Cadel Evans won the 2011 Tour de France becoming the first Oceanian, and first from the southern hemisphere, Grand Tour winner. He was 34 years old. Evans podiumed 5 times across all three Grand Tours from his 18 starts between 2002 and 2014. He finished all those he started bar one and won 3 Grand Tour stages.
All three wins in the same year by one country
All three wins in the same year by a home rider
Winners of all three Grand Tours
Seven cyclists have won all three of the Grand Tours during their career:[22]
Hinault and Contador are the only cyclists to have won each Grand Tour at least twice.
Winners of three or more consecutive Grand Tours
Eddy Merckx: 4 Grand Tours – Giro (1972), Tour (1972), Vuelta (1973), Giro (1973)
Fausto Coppi: 3 Grand Tours – Giro (1952), Tour (1952), Giro (1953).
Bernard Hinault: 3 Grand Tours – Giro (1982), Tour (1982), Vuelta (1983).
Chris Froome: 3 Grand Tours – Tour (2017), Vuelta (2017), Giro (2018).
Winners of multiple Grand Tours in a single year
No rider has won all three Grand Tours in a single year in any classification (general, points, mountain, young rider). Few riders have even finished all three in a single year; of those who have, two finished in the top ten in each: Raphaël Géminiani (4th, 6th and 3rd in the Giro, Tour and Vuelta in 1955) and Gastone Nencini (1st, 6th and 9th in 1957).
Eleven riders have achieved a double by winning two grand tours in the same calendar year.[22]
Of the above eleven, Pantani, Roche and Battaglin's doubles were their only Grand Tour victories in their careers.
Merckx, Roche and Pogacar also won the men's road race at the World Championship in the same year as their Giro-Tour double to complete the Triple Crown of Cycling.
Smallest margin between 1st and 2nd placed rider
The margins between the winner of a Grand Tour and the runner-up are often narrow, and rarely larger than a few minutes.
As of 2021, there have been 54 Grand Tours with a winning margin less than one minute. The smallest margins are as follows:
The biggest winning margin in a Grand Tour was 2h 59' 21" in Maurice Garin's win at the first Tour de France in 1903. The biggest margin in the history of Giro d'Italia was in 1914 when Alfonso Calzolari won by 1h 57' 26", and the biggest margin in the history of Vuelta a España was in 1945 when Delio Rodríguez finished 30' 08" clear.
Days leading classification
In previous tours, sometimes a stage was broken in two (or three). "Days" column gives the number of times the cyclist was a classification leader at the end of the day. Numbers in brackets include split stages.
after the end of 2025 Tour de France
Sixteen other cyclists have led the overall standings in all three Grand Tours during their careers. No rider has done so in a single season.
Tadej Pogačar amassed most Grand Tour days at the top of the classification in a single calendar year - 39 in 2024.
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Points classification winners
The Tour/Giro/Vuelta triple has been achieved by five riders – Djamolidine Abdoujaparov, Mark Cavendish, Laurent Jalabert, Eddy Merckx and Alessandro Petacchi.
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Mountains classification winners
The Tour/Giro/Vuelta triple has been achieved by two riders – Federico Bahamontes and Luis Herrera.
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Young rider classification winners
The Tour/Giro double has been achieved by three riders – Egan Bernal, Nairo Quintana and Andy Schleck. The Giro/Vuelta double has been achieved by one rider – Miguel Ángel López. The Tour/Vuelta double has been achieved by two riders – Tadej Pogačar and Remco Evenepoel.
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Grand Tour stage wins
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Stage wins by rider
Three cyclists have won stages in all three of the Grand Tours in the same season: Miguel Poblet in 1956, Pierino Baffi in 1958 and Alessandro Petacchi in 2003.[23] The rider with the most Grand Tour stage wins in one season is Freddy Maertens who won 20 stages in 1977: 13 in the Vuelta a España and 7 in the Giro d'Italia.
- Cyclists whose names are in bold are still active.
- This list is complete up to and including the 2025 Giro d'Italia.[24]
a Not counting the two-man team time trial Prologue win in 1973 Giro.
b Not counting the TTT/ITT combined format Preface win in 1988 Tour.
Stage wins by country
Before 1958, all Grand Tour stage winners had come from just 10 western European countries: France, Luxembourg, Italy, Belgium, Spain, Austria, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland and Portugal. By 1973 the list of countries had expanded by just four more countries, all European (Great Britain, Ireland, Denmark and Sweden), to a total of 14. As of 2025, riders representing 42 countries, and all continents except Asia, have won stages in Grand Tours.
- Englishman Brian Robinson became the first non-continental Grand Tour stage winner winning Stage 7 of the 1958 Tour de France, after Italian Arigo Padovan who crossed the line first was relegated for sprinting irregularities.[25]
- Dane Ole Ritter became the first Scandinavian stage winner when he won the 45km (28mi) long Stage 16 ITT in the 1967 Giro. A year later he broke the hour record in Mexico.
- Colombian Martin Emilio Rodriguez was the first Grand Tour stage winner from the Americas, and first South American, when in the flat Stage 15 of the 1973 Giro he attacked with 4km to go to beat the chasing peleton by 3 seconds.[26]
- Australian Donald Allan became the first Grand Tour stage winner from a southern hemisphere nation in an upset win of Stage 17 of the 1975 Vuelta in a bunch sprint in front of thousands of fans in a finish in a Bilbao football stadium.[27]
- South African Alan van Heerden became the first African to win a Grand Tour stage winning Stage 7 of the 1979 Giro in a sprint win among a small breakaway. Van Heerden rode in the pro peloton 1979-1980 despite South Africans being banned from cycling from 1976 due to apartheid - how this happened "remains a mystery to this day".[28]
- Russian Vladimir Malakhov was the first eastern European Grand Tour stage winner, winning the final Stage 19 of the 1985 Vuelta in a bunch sprint photo finish.
- Greg Lemond of the United States became the first North American to win a Grand Tour stage when he won the penultimate Stage 20 46km long ITT of the 1985 Tour de France, beating teammate Bernard Hinault by 5 seconds. Hinault won that Tour overall by 1'42" with Lemond second, Lemond won the 1986 Tour by 3'10" with Hinault second.
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Grand Tour finishers
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The rider who has finished most Grand Tours is Matteo Tosatto, with 28 across 20 years (12 Tours, 11 Giros and 5 Vueltas, 1997-2016). Tosatto also has the most participations with 34 (12 Tours, 13 Giros and 9 Vueltas). Adam Hansen has finished the most consecutive Grand Tours: 20 tours from 2011 Vuelta a España till 2018 Giro d'Italia.
Only 36 riders have finished all three Grand Tours in one season. Adam Hansen has done this six times consecutively. Marino Lejarreta completed every grand tour of the season for the 4th time in 1991. His record of 4 was not passed until Adam Hansen completed the Vuelta in 2016. Bernardo Ruiz was the first rider to ride every tour of a season on three occasions which he completed in 1957. Both Eduardo Chozas and Carlos Sastre have accomplished the feat twice.[29][30]
Gastone Nencini (1957) and Sepp Kuss (2023) are the only cyclists to both ride all three Grand Tours and win one in the same season. The best average finish was in the first year three Grand Tours were finished in one season, 1955, when Raphaël Géminiani finished 4th, 6th and 3rd in the Giro, Tour and Vuelta, respectively. Nencini's 1st, 6th and 9th is the only other time a rider has finished top 10 in all 3 Grand Tours in a year. In Marino Lejarreta's 4 years that he rode 12 Grand Tours, he finished in the top 10 in eight of them including top 5 five times.
Riders finishing all three Grand Tours in a season
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See also
References
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