It was won by mountain specialist Lucien Van Impe in a battle with the previous winner Bernard Thévenet and Joop Zoetemelk.

[3] The teams entering the race were:[3] Eddy Merckx, who already had won the Tour de France five times, had troubles to find his form in 1976, and suffered from saddle sores.

The highest point of elevation in the race was 2,115 m (6,939 ft) at the summit of the Col du Tourmalet mountain pass on stage 15.

The directeur sportif for the Flandria team was Guillaume "Lomme" Driessens, a man who knew what it took to win the Tour de France having directed Merckx; and he was hesitant about allowing his young potential star starting a Tour this early in his career, but he was overridden by the team owner Pol Claeys and Maertens was added to the start list.

Stage 3 was another ITT, a 37 km ride around a beach resort along the English Channel known as Le Touquet Paris Plage.

[16] Again it was Maertens stealing all of the headlines handily beating the three favorites, as well as the time trial specialists by a considerable margin of over two minutes.

In fact, the 2nd place rider at +1:37 behind was neither a favorite nor a specialist but rather his best friend within the peloton, and another young Belgian in Michel Pollentier, who shared the exact same birthday as Maertens, but was one year older.

Another up and coming rider who performed well during the time trial was the Dutchman and defending World Champion Hennie Kuiper who finished 2:57 behind Maertens, but still fared better than Thévenet, Van Impe and Zoetemelk.

Stage 4 was won by Kuiper, who beat Eric Loder in a sprint as the two of them finished nine seconds ahead of Piero Gavazzi, Guy Sibille and Gerard Vianen.

During stage 6 from Bastogne to Nancy, Italian rider Aldo Parecchini escaped and won on a solo breakaway where he finished four and a half minutes ahead of the main field.

Going into the first rest day the overall situation had Maertens in the maillot jaune by 2:04 over Pollentier, 3:16 over Kuiper, 3:23 over Jean-Pierre Danguillaume and 3:31 over Raymond Poulidor.

Maertens felt he was ready for this however, as he and his friend Michel Pollentier had ridden Alpe d'Huez twenty times during the off-season to be sure he had mastered every one of the twenty-one hairpin turns.

In fact, early in the stage Van Impe rode up alongside Maertens, smiled wryly, and told him he was going to attack at the foot of the Alpe.

Loud cheers of laughter and approval rang out across the peloton, but race officials were not nearly as amused as before long he was spotted and fined 175 francs for "making ridiculous jokes", prompting the Dutchman to remove his new hat and toss it to some fans standing alongside the road.

In 3rd place was Poulidor at +1:36, in 4th was defending champ Thevenet at +1:48, in 5th was Galdos at +2:04 with Bertoglio just one second behind him as Pollentier, Kuiper, Delisle and José Martíns rounded out the top 10 with each rider more than +4:00.

Viejo was not a threat to the overall leaders so going into the 2nd rest day there were no major changes atop the general classification, but his stage victory was remarkable as it was the biggest winning margin in post-World War II history.

By the end of the day however, Delisle had surprised the entire field by staying away, and building a gap of 4:59 over Antonio Menéndez by the time he crossed the finish line atop the Pyrenees 2000 resort.

Stage 14 included the Col de Mente, the Portillon, Peyresourde, a summit finish at St.-Lary-Soulon and would change the Tour dramatically as by the end of the day nearly no one would be within ten minutes of the Yellow Jersey.

This in conjunction with the facts that at the time it was still burned in everyone's mind what Ocana had done to essentially win the 1971 Tour, and the last time Ocaña had ridden a stage that included the Col de Menté, during the 1973 Tour de France, he dropped every rider in the field and won the stage by several minutes over everyone other than Zoetemelk.

[19] Whatever Guimard's reasons, he wanted Van Impe to join in this attack which also included other very strong climbers in the Giro contender Walter Riccomi and Spanish climbing specialist Pedro Torres, but this obviously was not part of the pre-planned strategy and on the surface seemed unnecessarily risky, as Van Impe was reluctant to do so when Guimard gave him the order.

Guimard followed his gut and became animated, threatening to hit him with the team car if he didn't attack[4] and after the discussion was over Van Impe was on his way to bridging the gap as Zoetemelk, Delisle, Poulidor and the defending champ watched without reacting, either feeling unable to survive a long range attack, or in the case of Zoetemelk not feeling the breakaway would survive.

When Van Impe joined the breakaway they continued working together and their gap over the fast depleting peloton gradually increased.

Zoetemelk rode on his own in pursuit, furiously giving chase, kilometre after kilometre and was able to come within about a minute of catching Van Impe, but as Van Impe arrived within the breakaway group made up of incredibly strong climbers, they all began working together taking turns doing the heavy work at the front causing the gap back to Zoetemelk to increase.

Delisle had fallen to 3rd at 9:27, Riccomi had jumped to 4th at 10:22 as the rest of the new top 10 including Poulidor, Galdos, Bertoglio, Freddy Maertens, José Pesarrodona and Luis Ocaña were beyond eleven minutes.

Zoetemelk was the only rider with a realistic chance of overtaking Van Impe but the two of them would finish together 5:44 behind the winner Panizza and 2:16 behind the surviving breakaway riders including Enrico Paolini, Arnaldo Caverzasi, Donato Giuliani, Antonio Menéndez, Georges Talbourdet, Carlos Melero, José Martíns and Michel Pollentier who climbed back up to 7th place overall by surviving within this breakaway.

The biggest battle of the day however, was won by Van Impe who finished in 4th place 0:51 behind Bracke, but far more importantly more than a minute ahead of Zoetemelk, meaning he now led the Dutchman by 4:33.

The only thing to be decided during the time trial was the 3rd and final podium position as Poulidor and Delisle had been tied for 3rd place since Puy-de-Dôme with both of them 12:15 behind Van Impe, and the Italian rider Riccomi just a few seconds behind the two of them.

He found himself in good position in the front of the pack, but he came up just short having to settle for 2nd place as Gerben Karstens put the finishing touch on what, for him, had been a very successful Tour.

He was in contention of winning the 1977 edition leading the race on Alp d'Huez when, perhaps ironically, he was hit by a car, and had to wait several minutes for a new bike as the riders who were pursuing him continued right on by.

Bernard Thévenet – would abandon this Tour during the 19th stage at no point ever being a legitimate threat to defend his title from the previous year.