Eddy Merckx rode on the winning team, Faema, and also won the combination classification as well as the combativity award.

[1] The teams entering the race were:[2] The 1969 Tour de France started on 28 June, and had no rest days.

[3] The highest point of elevation in the race was 2,556 m (8,386 ft) at the summit tunnel of the Col du Galibier mountain pass on stage 10.

In the second stage, a group escaped, with Merckx's teammate Julien Stevens as highest-ranked cyclist.

In the fourth stage, Rik Van Looy escaped, because he wanted to show that even at the age of 35, he should still be selected for the Belgian squad for the 1969 UCI Road World Championships.

Désiré Letort, who had joined Stevens in the chase the previous stage, became the new leader, 9 seconds ahead of Merckx.

Notably, the 1965, 1967 and 1968 Tour de France winners in Felice Gimondi, Roger Pingeon and Jan Janssen were all distanced into the surviving peloton group which finished some two and a half minutes behind Altig.

Martin Van Den Bossche set a devastating pace while climbing the Tourmalet causing the surviving main field to break apart.

Lomme Driessens, the Directeur Sportif for Faema, told Merckx to sit up and wait for the others while taking a few minutes to get some food in him as there was still 105 kilometers to go.

Merckx didn't always agree with Driessens on tactics[13] and had second thoughts about sitting up and waiting for everyone else to catch up.

He rode consistently with undeniable power as the surviving reduced peloton just could not bring him back, or even cut into the lead he was continuously building over them.

This stage nearly doubled what was already almost certainly an insurmountable lead, and was a defining moment in cycling history when a rider did something that seemed impossible and would likely never be seen again.

July 20 the race ended with a split stage that arrived in Paris with a 37 km individual time trial.

Eric Leman narrowly won the Sprints Competition ahead of the French speaking, Belgian-British rider Michael Wright.

[16] After the controversial doping-incident with Merckx in the 1969 Giro, the rules for doping offences were changed: riders were no longer removed from the race, but were given a penalty of fifteen minutes in the general classification.

[17] Five riders tested positive: Henk Nijdam, Jozef Timmerman, Rudi Altig, Bernard Guyot and Pierre Matignon.

Altig, Guyot and Matignon were given the time penalty of fifteen minutes; Nijdam and Timmerman had already left the race when the results came out.