Because Jacques Anquetil was absent after winning the 1960 Giro d'Italia, Roger Rivière became the main favourite.

Halfway the race, Rivière was in second place behind Nencini, and with his specialty the time trial remaining, he was still favourite for the victory.

When Rivière had a career-ending crash in the fourteenth stage, this changed, and Nencini won the Tour easily.

[2] The teams entering the race were:[1] Jacques Anquetil, the winner of the 1957 Tour de France, had won the 1960 Giro d'Italia earlier that year.

This made Roger Rivière the French team leader, and the big favourite for the Tour victory.

[5] The highest point of elevation in the race was 2,360 m (7,740 ft) at the summit of the Col d'Izoard mountain pass on stage 16.

Anglade asked his team manager Marcel Bidot to instruct Rivière to stop his attack, because Nencini and Adriaensens were dangerous opponents.

[13] Because of this, Jan Adriaensens climbed to the second place in the general classification, and he now was the main competitor for Nencini.

Adriaensens lost time in the Pyrenees, and the Italians were able to put Graziano Battistini in second place.

In the twentieth stage, news came that Charles de Gaulle, the president, would be by the route at Colombey-les-deux-Églises, where he lived.

The organisers, Jacques Goddet and Félix Lévitan asked the French national champion, Henry Anglade, if the riders would be willing to stop.

One rider, Pierre Beuffeuil had stopped to repair a tyre and knew nothing of the plan, being three minutes behind the race.

He decided to pass all the waiting cyclists and continued alone, and won the stage alone on the boulevard Jules-Guesde by 49 seconds.

[16] The most important was the general classification; it was calculated by adding for each cyclist he times that he required to finish each stage.

The drug palfium was found in his pockets, and it was thought that it had so numbed Riviere's fingers so that he couldn't feel the brake levers.