Regis Ovion (1971)

During the 1971 amateur race season, Regis Ovion’s double was a performance compared in the contemporary cycling press to the likes of Louison Bobet and Eddy Merckx - winning outright both the Trophée Peugeot de l’Avenir stage race (...run along much the same route as the Tour de France) as well as the World Amateur Road Race title. In an interesting aside, the Fédération Française de Cyclisme actually refused to issue Ovion his professional license in 1972 specifically because they sought his participation in the upcoming Munich Olympics that year.