Until the 3rd July 2024, when Mark Cavendish claimed his 35th Tour de France stage victory, French cyclist Jean Alavoine was holding a unique record in the history of Tour de France:
there were 14 years between his first (1909) and his last (1923) stage victory.1
Indeed, Alavoine was one of those riders managed to have success before and after the First World War. (His brother, Henri, a professional cyclist too, was less fortunate, he was killed in action as a pilot in 1916.)
Before the war, Alavoine finished in Top3 of Tour de France twice, both in 1909 and 1914 he was 3rd in general classification.
After the war he had even better results, three 2nd places in 1919, 1922, and 1923. It was Tour de France 1922, when he came closest to the yellow jersey, he wore it for 5 days. Unfortunately, bad luck prevented him to win the race, after his chain broke several times in the 11th stage.
Nevertheless, when it came to mountain stages, he was usually very active. He achieved most of his stage victories in the Pyrenees, like the one in the 6th stage in 1922. (Even in 1909, before Tour de France visited the high mountains he won a stage in this region.)
Jean Alavoine won a total of 17 Tour de France stages during his career.
Only seven cyclists have a better result than him.
He was one of the first riders, who had success both at Tour de France and Giro d’Italia. In 1920, he won 3 stages and managed to finish the Giro in 3rd place in the general classification.
After abandoning Tour de France in 1924, Alavoine had retired from professional racing. But from time to time he attended cycling races. It was one of those events where he had an accident and died in 1943.
- meanwhile Cavendish’s first stage victory is dated back in 2008, that makes a 16 years gap between the first and last stage victory of a cyclist [↩]