00:00It's the Queen stage of the Tour de France 1974, and the GC group is preparing to tackle
00:12Pla-Da-Dé, the last of five climbs.
00:15Eddy Merckx leads by over two minutes, and he's looking to tighten his grip on yellow,
00:19while Raymond Poulidor, now 38 years of age, is still up there with the best, and he seems
00:24determined to roll back the years.
00:29With eight kilometres to go, Poulidor, the oldest rider in the race, goes on the attack,
00:33with Merckx scrambling to close the gap.
00:39On one of the steepest sections of the climb, the Belgian is fighting hard, but he can't
00:43get across to Poulidor.
00:44This is a special moment for the Frenchman.
00:47He may be over seven minutes down overall, but it has been seven years since his last
00:51stage victory on the Tour, and he's hunting it down in the hardest outing of this edition.
01:00Poupou remains the ultimate crowd favourite, and he has cheered all the way to the summit
01:04of Pla-Da-Dé.
01:07It's a moment of pure delight for the man who famously never wore the yellow jersey,
01:12his seventh and final stage victory on the Tour de France.
01:15He finishes a minute and 49 ahead of Merckx, climbing to fifth in the general classification.
01:27You've finally got the win you've been chasing for several days, for several years even.
01:32It's been a long time since I've won a Tour de France stage.
01:35Well, 74 was decidedly the end of an era.
01:39It was also the year that Merckx won the Tour de France for the fifth and final time.
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