Speicher continues the French dominance

The end of the road for the 40 remaining riders of the 1933 Tour de France. Learco Guerra won the stage, but had to give best to Georges Speicher overall.

Once again time bonuses affected the outcome of the Tour: eight minutes gain from four stage wins was sufficient to propel Georges Speicher ahead of the touriste - routier Guiseppe Martano. Martano was doubly unlucky, for Learco Guerra's final stage win saw him leapfrog Martano into second place.

As previously, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland, Germany and France fielded eight-man teams with forty more touristes - routiers. The French took an early option on the yellow jersey with Maurice Archambaud leading from the second day most of the way to Nice. With Leducq clearly not on form and losing time steadily through the Alps, it fell to Speicher to take the lead from the surprising, and previously totally unknown, Belgian Lemaire, at Marseille. After Lemaire lost eight minutes in the Pyrenees on the stage to Pau, it merely remained for the dominant French team to look after Speicher while two former or future World Champions, Guerra and Jean Aerts dominated the closing stages. Meanwhile, the Spaniard Vincente Trueba carved his little niche in the sport's pantheon by winning the first King of the Mountains competition from Antonin Magne and the unlucky Martano.

Remarkably, and controversially, Speicher was not selected by the French for the World Championships later in the year. When another rider dropped out on the eve of the race, he was pulled in at short notice. Legend has it that he was found the night before the race in a cinema! Despite having given up training after the Tour, he started the race, attacked alone after thirty miles and eventually won by five minutes. He thus became the first rider to complete the Tour/World Championship double. In 1936 he went on to win Paris Roubaix; this feat of having won the World's three hardest races is one he shares with Fausto Coppi, Louison Bobet, Jan Jannsen, Felice Gimondi, Eddy Merckx and Bernard Hinault alone.

Stage winners

In a nutshell

• Vicente Trueba is the Tour's first King of the Mountains

Results

Overall

1st: Georges Speicher, France, 4395km in 147h 51' 37" (29.732km/h)
2nd: Learco Guerra, Italy, @4' 01"
3rd: Guiseppe Martano, Italy (Touriste - Routier), @5' 08"
4th: Georges Lemaire, Belgium, @15' 45"
5th: Maurice Archambaud, France, @21' 22"
6th: Vincente Trueba, Spain (Touriste - Routier), @27' 27"
7th: Léon Level, France (Touriste - Routier), @35' 23"
8th: Antonin Magne, France, @36' 37"
9th: Jean Aerts, Belgium, @42' 53"
10th: Kurt Stöpl, Germany, @45' 28"

(40th: Ernest Neuhard, France (Touriste - Routier), @3h 57' 44")

Mountains

1st: Vincente Trueba, Spain (Touriste - Routier), 126
2nd: Antonin Magne, France, 78
3rd: Guiseppe Martano, Italy (Touriste - Routier), 75

Team

1st: France 444h 32' 50"
2nd: Belgium @1h 20' 56"
3rd: Germany @2h 40' 24"' 50"

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