lead. In the second stage, a few cyclists escaped, and two of Merckx' teammates, Italo Zilioli and Georges Vandenberghe, joined the escape. Merckx' teammate Zilioli was ranked highest amongst the escaped cyclists, and none of them were considered competitors for the general classification, so Guillaume Driessens, Merckx's team leader, allowed the breakaway to work, and told Zilioli and Vandenberghe to give their best. Merckx however chased his own teammates. The group stayed away, Zilioli won the sprint and became the new leader, 4 seconds ahead of Merckx. After the stage, Merckx was angry at his team leader, because he had allowed Zilioli to "steal" Merckx' yellow jersey, but Driessens explained to him that the other teams had spent energy to chase Zilioli, and the argument was over. Team Faema won the team time trial in stage 3A keeping Zilioli the leader with Merckx in second place. Stage 3B was won by Marino Basso who edged Walter Godefroot and Cyrille Guimard in the sprint. Guimard took the green jersey from Jan Janssen as Zilioli kept his narrow lead in the overall situation. On stage 4 Herman Van Springel, who had finished 2nd in the closest Tour in history two years earlier and was in the top 10 of the general classification, made a late attack to go for the stage win on a slight uphill. He was caught right at the finish line and passed at the last possible second by De Vlaeminck and Godefroot, who took the stage win. Stage 5 was another split stage and Godefroot took another stage win with Daniel Van Ryckeghem and De Vlaeminck rounding out the podium. In stage 5B Jozef Spruyt and Leo Duyndam broke away with still an hour or so to race. Duyndam did all of the work and the two of them survived to the finish about ten seconds ahead of the hard charging peloton. At the very end of the stage Spruyt came around the exhausted Duyndam and stole the stage win. Following this Duyndam took over the Most Combative Rider lead from Joaquim Agostinho for the next few stages. Stage 6 finished at the velodrome in Valenciennes where Roger De Vlaeminck took the stage win in the sprint. During this stage Zilioli had a flat tire. Normally, if the leader in the Tour de France suffers a flat tire, a teammate would offer his wheel, and some teammates would