Originally Posted by
repechage
No, you were expected to be strong enough to turn a 42.
Way back, no self respecting racer raced with anything lower than a 21. The view was, if you need lower, you were off the back anyway.
Except for the more intelligent ones, like Jacques Anquetil in 1963:
'Gem' had heard that a rockslide had diverted the race up the old Forclaz, an unpaved goat-track with sections where the gradient reached 18 per cent. The regulations allowed for no changes of equipment except after mechanical failure. But Geminiani was an expert in circumventing the rules. At the bottom of the Saint Bernard, as Poulidor fought the gale ahead of him, Anquetil raised his arm and feigned an accident. "My derailleur," he cried.
"Merde," choked Geminiani. "Anquetil's in trouble."
The commissaire noted a snapped gear cable, not imagining that the mechanic had severed the line with wire-cutters.
Anquetil attacked the Forclaz on a bike set up for climbing. On the climb, pandemonium reigned. Bahamontes attacked; Poulidor collapsed, finally crossing the col four minutes behind Anquetil, who descended on his first machine after the mechanic had fitted a new cable, won the stage and the yellow jersey at Chamonix, just ahead of Bahamontes.
According to some sources
Anquetil climbed the Forclaz with 42 x 26.