Eddy Merckx was attempting to win his sixth Tour de France, but became a victim of violence.

Many French spectators were upset that a Belgian might beat the record of five wins set by France's Jacques Anquetil.

[1][2] The teams entering the race were:[1] Eddy Merckx, who had won all five times that he participated, was again the big favourite.

Merckx did not care about that record: "The idea doesn't interest me very much because then people would want me to go for a seventh and then an eighth".

His race schedule had been very busy, and he thought riding the Giro and the Tour in the same year would not work.

[4] Bernard Thévenet contracted shingles during the 1975 Vuelta a España, but recovered and won the Dauphiné Liberé.

[7] The final stage had become more popular over the years, and the Tour organisers therefore moved the finish line from the Vélodrome de Vincennes to the more prestigious Champs-Élysées.

[8] 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.

Merckx started the Tour aggressively, which caused the peloton to split in two groups in the first stage.

In the second part of the first stage, the field split again, but this time Thevenet and Poulidor were also in the first group.

[3] Trying to follow Gimondi on a downhill, the team car of Bianchi went off the road, falling 150 meters down a cliff.

[5] Thévenet was the new leader, and improved his margin in the sixteenth stage by winning with more than two minutes on Merckx.

While riding to the start of the seventeenth stage, Merckx collided with Ole Ritter, and broke a cheekbone.

[20] The most important was the general classification, calculated by adding each cyclist's finishing times on each stage.

1975 was the first year that the leader of the classification wore a white jersey with red polka dots.

[27] At the conclusion of the Tour, Eddy Merckx won the overall super-combativity award, also decided by journalists.