The 1969 Tour de France was the 56th edition of the Tour de France, one of cycling's Grand Tours. It took place between 28 June and 20 July, with 22 stages covering a distance of . The participant teams were no longer national teams, but were once more commercially sponsored. The race was won by Eddy Merckx who absolutely dominated the rest of the field. As an example in 1967 nine riders finished within 20:00 of the winner, in 1968 nineteen riders were within 20:00 but in 1969 the 10th place rider was +52:56, the 20th place rider was +1:17:36 and only Roger Pingeon finished inside 20:00 of Merckx. The 1969 race is the only time that a single cyclist has won the general classification, the points classification and the mountains classification as well. Eddy Merckx rode on the winning team, , and also won the combination classification as well as the combativity award. Teams In 1967 and 1968, the Tour was contested by national teams, but in 1969 the commercially sponsored teams were back. The Tour started with 13 teams, each with 10 cyclists: Eddy Merckx had been removed from the 1969 Giro d'Italia in leading position because of a positive doping result, and was initially not allowed to join the 1969 Tour de France, but his suspension was later lifted. The teams entering the race were: Route and stages The 1969 Tour de France started on 28 June, and had no rest days. The highest point of elevation in the race was at the summit tunnel of the Col du Galibier mountain pass on stage 10. Race overview Rudi Altig won the prologue, where Merckx finished second. In the team time trial in the second part of the first stage, Merckx's team won, and this gave Merckx the lead. In the second stage, a group escaped, with Merckx's teammate Julien Stevens as highest-ranked cyclist. There were no dangerous competitors in the escape, so Merckx did not chase them. The group stayed away, and Stevens took over the lead, with Merckx in second place. In the fourth stage, Rik Van Looy escaped, because he wanted to show that even at the age of 35, he should still be selected for the Belgian squad for the 1969 UCI Road World Championships. Van Looy quickly took several minutes, and became the virtual leader of the race. With less than 40 km