Lowest stage placed grand tour winner

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Beebo

Firm and Fruity
Location
Hexleybeef
The natural follow-up:
Worst sprinter to win the Green Jersey?

(I know quite a famous example who recently won it with only 2nd places ^_^ )
often the best sprinter doesn’t make Paris due to injury or the mountains.
Cipollini never won it because he never finished the race.
so has anyone ever won the Green with fewer point that someone who was eliminated.
 

Dogtrousers

Kilometre nibbler
The early tours were all on points. 1 for first, 2 for second and so on. Lowest points wins the race overall.

Then they tried switching to overall time. Both had drawbacks. Desgrange wanted riders to flog themselves to death. But the riders wouldn't cooperate. Under the points system they didn't flog themselves fast enough. Under overall time they didn't flog themselves hard enough for the win.
 

T4tomo

Guru
often the best sprinter doesn’t make Paris due to injury or the mountains.
Cipollini never won it because he never finished the race.
so has anyone ever won the Green with fewer point that someone who was eliminated.

That's a hard one to check, as the eliminated riders wont appear in any total of final standings. Super Mario generally used to just do the first week and then publish photos of himself on the beach with super models on the alpine stages. I imagine that Zabel would have overhauled his points total at elimination well before the end of the race as he wouldn't have been far behind him on most stages.

{Tomo has a google session....}
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Ok so in 1980, Jan Raas retired after stage 12 (same stage as Hinault who was in yellow at the time) and on 196 green jersey points. Rudy Pevenage (who was 2nd in standings when Raas retired) held onto the green jersey and finally tallied 194 points!

http://memoire-du-cyclisme.eu/eta_tdf_1980_1989/tdf1980_12.php

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_Tour_de_France#Classification_leadership_and_minor_prizes

Joop Zoetemelk inherited yellow when Hinault retired and hung onto it until Paris
 

Aravis

Putrid Donut
Location
Gloucester
That's one hell of a site! Procyclingstats is good, but the information gets increasingly sketchy as you go back, and MduC has loads that PCS doesn't - for the Tour anyway.

The two possible instances that came immediately were Sean Kelly in the 1987 Vuelta and Cyrille Guimard in the 1972 Tour. Even MduC can't help me with Kelly, but Guimard retired from the 1972 Tour on stage 18 with 228 points; Merckx won the jersey with 196.

I would be very surprised if Kelly's position in 1987 wasn't very similar.
 
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