Tour de France
30
Raymond Poulidor
the 1994 prologue stage, Lille-Euralille (7.2 km), with 55.152 kmh. The fastest stage win was by the 2005 Discovery Channel team in a team time-trial. It completed the 67.5 km between Tours and Blois at 57.32 kmh. The longest successful post-war breakaway by a single rider was by Albert Bourlon in the 1947 Tour de France. In the stage Carcassone-Luchon, he stayed away for 253 km. It was one of seven breakaways longer than 200 km, the last being Thierry Marie's 234 km escape in 1991. Bourlon finished 16 m 30s ahead. This is one of the biggest time gaps but not the greatest. That record belongs to José-Luis Viejo, who beat the peloton by 22 m 50s in the 1976 stage Montgenèvre-Manosque. He was the fourth and most recent rider to win a
Successful breakaways
stage by more than 20 minutes.