Jürgen Tschan (1970)

In his first full season as a professional rider, Jürgen Tschan of West Germany pulled off a stunning solo victory at the October 1970 Paris-Tours race - an event traditionally considered a "sprinters’ classic" because more often than not it culminates with a mass sprint of would-be contenders along the 2.7 km Avenue du Grammont. That year, however, the winning break occurred almost immediately following the feed at roughly 160 km into the 286 km race. Not too long thereafter, Jan Janssen (...World Road Race Champion from 1964 and winner of the Vuelta a España in 1967 as well as the Tour de France in 1968 - now riding for team BIC) broke from the lead group and Jürgen Tschan seized the opportunity to get away with him. With Janssen savvy enough to recognize that he was the far better sprinter of the two, Jan offered the twenty-three year old Tschan a deal whereby he was to be financially compensated if he cooperated fully in the break. As captured in this particular photograph taken during the event, the pair worked well together, managing to steadily put distance between themselves and Rene Pijnen (...a more than fair sprinter himself) who had also managed to slip away by then and who was desperately trying to bridge the distance between the forward pack and the pair of lead riders. But as they approached the final few kilometers, Janssen found himself thoroughly spent and he collapsed from heat exhaustion, actually going so far as to fall off his bicycle. To quote Tschan’s fellow Peugeot-BP-Michelin teammate Billy Bilsland in his summation of the ensuing confusion, “(director sportif Gaston)...Plaud gave a rare bit of team direction at this stage. Tschan looked back at the (team) car as if to say, ‘What do I do?’ and Plaud shouted, ‘Keep going!’”. And it proved to be as a simple as that - Tschan would solo across the finish line with a hard charging Pijnen following along in second place and Guido Reybrouck back in third.