|
Stages:
|
16 |
|
Kms:
|
2.967 |
|
Riders:
|
90 |
|
Teams:
|
9 |
|
Kms/hour:
|
35,008 |
|
Retired:
|
36 |
Triumph solved, in this edition, the bad performance
that Jesús Loroño had showed the previous year. The rider from Vizcaya was
able to achieve the final victory after reducing the fifteen minutes of difference
that separated him from Federico Martín Bahamontes and he did it in one just
stage, the tenth stage. Loroño attempted a breakaway, strangely allowed by
Bahamontes and arrived at The Finish leading on the pelotón by twenty-one
minutes. This incomprehensible attitude on the part of "El Águila de Toledo"
deprived him of a victory he had in his hands and he had to feel satisfied
with the first position in the Climbers Overall Standings, a minor prize taking
into account his ambitions before the beginning of the race and the way the
race was proceeding.
Bahamontes showed, an unusual passivity and a strange behaviour all throughout
the race as well as his short skills as fortune-teller since he had even predicted
that Loroño would be the winner in the mountain and himself in the Individual
Overall Standings. His forecast was completly wrong seeing the final results
since, unfortunately for him, these were completely the other way round.
The control that the Spanish riders showed was absolute and pushed the foreign
riders into the background, in spite of having among them such important men
as the French Walkowiak and Geminiani or the Italian Nencini. The national
riders took all the important prizes (Individual Overall Standings, Climbers
Overall Standings and Team Standings) and they finally put an end to the foreign
control which had lasted for two years.
Loroño and Bahamontes were followed in the first five positions in the Individual
Overall Standings by Bernardo Ruiz, third, the Portuguese rider Ribeiro Da
Silva, fourth, and the French rider Geminiani, fifth. In the Climbers Overall
Standings, the Spanish riders Bahamontes, Morales and Aspuru took the first
three positions.
