The Youngest Tour de France Winners

Age at win: 19 years, 352 days

Cornet was a rookie bike racer in 1904 when he entered the second-ever Tour de France. In its early days, the Tour was just seven stages, but they were monstrous: the shortest was 268km and two others were more than 450km. The race was a hot mess, with partisan fans blocking and sabotaging racers—even going as far to physically attack riders—and cheating was widespread. The first four riders to finish, including defending champion Maurice Garin, were disqualified. That left Cornet, days short of his 20th birthday, as the youngest-ever champion.

Age at win: 21 years, 364 days

Pogačar has been a massive talent since his Under-23 days, winning races like the Tour de l’Avenir—the so-called Tour de France for young riders—and other prestigious races. He joined the WorldTour in 2019 and already has 17 pro wins, including three Tour stages and the overall. He also took home the white jersey for the Tour’s best young rider and the polka-dot jersey for the best climber.

The only other racer ever to win three jerseys in the same Tour? Eddy Merckx, who is widely considered the best men’s road racer of all time. In his first Tour in 1968, Merckx won the yellow, polka-dot, and green jerseys (the best young rider standings didn’t start until 1975). Merckx won more than 500 pro races, including all three Grand Tours and five one-day Monuments, many of which he won multiple times. No pressure!

Age at win: 22 years, 187 days

Another prodigy of the early Tour years, the Luxembourg-born Faber was the first non-French winner of the Tour. Faber rode for the powerful Alcyon team, the INEOS of its day, which swept the top four spots in the standings, largely on individual efforts (teams didn’t use the same kind of strategy as they do today). Outside support was forbidden, and racers generally rode for themselves.

The Tour by then had expanded to 14 stages, and Faber won six of them. But for the 1909 Tour, organizers switched things up and ordered the standings based on points for placing, not overall time. Despite his youth, the 1909 race was Faber’s fourth entry in the Tour. It would be his only win, although he finished second in 1908 and 1910.

Age at win: 22 years, 196 days

Another incredibly talented young rider, Bernal, like Pogačar, has been keenly watched since his days as a development rider. In 2017, he won several prestigious stage races, including l’Avenir, which prompted INEOS (then Sky) to buy out his contract and sign him to an unusually long five-year deal. They were promptly rewarded, as Bernal has been nothing short of phenomenal since in stage races, including last year’s Tour, where he took the lead with a bold, late-race attack on the now-infamous 19th stage that was shortened due to hailstorms that washed out the route. This year wasn’t his year, as he DNF’d with back pain, but the Bernal-Pogačar battle for the next many Tours promises to be one for the ages.

Age at win: 22 years, 280 days

Lapize has an eventful history with the Tour de France. He entered six times, but only finished once: his 1910 victory, when he also won three stages. That year, the Tour standings were calculated by points, like the 1909 edition. Lapize’s teammate and fellow young star François Faber had an early commanding lead, but he was injured in a crash halfway through. Lapize steadily cut into Faber’s lead, taking the yellow jersey just two days before the race entered Paris.

In the days when bike racers were generalist, Lapize also won the grueling cobbled classic Paris-Roubaix three times and was a stalwart in the super-long “brevet” style races like Paris-Brest-Paris and Paris-Bruxelles.

But Lapize might be best known for a legendary moment from his 1910 Tour, the first year the race went into the high Pyrenees (a tale worth telling all on its own). After pushing his bike across the summit of the Col d’Aubisque (derailleurs were crude devices in those days, and wouldn’t be allowed in the Tour until 1937), Lapize glared at race officials and say “You are murderers! Yes, murderers!” The quote lives in infamy.