[5] 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 2.

[5] Prior to the start of the second part of stage 15, an individual climbing time trial, Thurau was 0:51 ahead of Merckx with Thévenet in third place at 1:22, Kuiper in fourth at 1:40, in fifth was Alain Meslet, Van Impe was in sixth at 2:31 and Zoetemelk clinging to the Top 10 at 3:40.

This quick, but difficult hill climb up the Avoriaz would separate the handful of riders with a legitimate chance winning the general classification from the rest of the field as the Tour entered its third, final, and by far most grueling week.

Initially Didi Thurau was dropped with the domestiques, breakaway hopefuls and sprinters but he was able to fight his way back to the point where he could see the group of elite riders at the base of the final climb.

From there he would rejoin the group on the descent, maneuver his way to the front and actually beat everybody in the sprint to gut out an impressive stage win all while keeping himself in contention for the overall lead.

The overall situation between Thévenet, Thurau, Van Impe, Kuiper and Zoetemelk remained the same headed into stage 17, which included a grueling finish atop Alpe d'Huez.

While these riders finished considerably ahead of the rest of the field it was only Kuiper, Galdos and Zoetemelk who were able to go with Thévenet as he rode away from everyone else in pursuit of Van Impe.

Naturally Kuiper and Zoetemelk were both determined to earn their first ever Tour victory so they didn't think twice about forcing Thévenet to lead the way in chasing down Lucien Van Impe.

Before long the gap had become small enough that the television and official cars riding behind Van Impe had to move out of the way as it was beginning to look as though this hard charging chase group would catch the leader before the finish line.

One of these cars ended up hitting Van Impe severely damaging his bike in the process and while he tried to continue riding it just wasn't possible.

By the end of the stage Zoetemelk and Francisco Galdós had been dropped when Hennie Kuiper launched an attack as Thévenet was digging deeper and pushing harder than he ever had in his whole life, not so much to take advantage of Van Impe's misfortune, although this certainly worked to his benefit, but to chase down Hennie Kuiper who was up the road by himself headed for the finish line so close to him in the standings that he could take over the yellow jersey as leader of the general classification.

By the end of the day the devastation wrought on the peloton was complete as 30 riders were thrown out of the race for finishing outside the time limit set by Thévenet, Zoetemelk, Kuiper, Galdos and especially Van Impe for forcing the pace.

At this point these five riders were the only ones with a realistic chance at victory as Thévenet kept his lead by a minuscule 0:08 over Hennie Kuiper while Lucien Van Impe was still in contention in third place 1:59 behind as Galdos and Zoetemelk were about four and five minutes behind respectively.

[15] Doping was appearing to be a bit more commonplace than officials or fans realised, which contributed to a more relaxed rider culture on the subject.

While Agostinho, Merckx and Van Impe each put in a strong time trial by this point in the race Van Impe was in third at 3:22 back so realistically, with only one short time trial and one and a half flat stages remaining, only Kuiper had even the slightest chance of overtaking Thévenet and this didn't seem likely as Thévenet had just defeated Kuiper.

Being as Jacques Esclassan had a commanding lead in the points classification over Giacinto Santambrogio, Didi Thurau and sixth place sprinter Barry Hoban the escape made by Joop Zoetemelk, Michel Laurent and stage winner Gerrie Knetemann did nothing to change any of the classifications although it was another strong performance by Knetemann who would win ten Tour stages in his career and also be instrumental in helping Zoetemelk win the 1980 Tour de France along with ten time stage winner Jan Raas.

Stage 22A was the final opportunity to change the overall classification although in a time trial this short making up gaps of even over 0:20 was all but impossible, let alone the 0:37 Kuiper would need to overtake Thévenet.

In the end Thévenet would add twelve seconds to his lead officially securing his overall victory in the 1977 Tour de France.

Impressively in Stage 22B, Alain Meslet would survive a breakaway and finish nearly a minute ahead of the main field to win on the Champs-Élysées.

The podium ended up with Bernard Thévenet winning his 2nd Tour de France, followed by Hennie Kuiper in 2nd and Lucien Van Impe, who also won another mountains classification.

[17] All were fined with 1000 Swiss Francs, received one month of provisional suspension, were set back to the last place in the stage and penalised with 10 minutes in the general classification.

[15] Though he was able to stay near the second tier general classification riders approaching the end of his career as he finished in the top 20 of both the 1980 Tour de France and Vuelta.

In years before and after this Tour riders like Merckx, Hinault, Zoetemelk, Van Impe, Thévenet, Luis Ocaña and Laurent Fignon set such a high pace during mountain stages that as many as half the riders in the main field would have been expelled from the race, but exemptions were made and the time limit was altered to allow them to continue the Tour.

Spaniard Francisco Galdós earned fourth place overall as he found a way to stay with the elite riders every single time it mattered.

In the early 1990s he was worked for Team Motorola and would end up giving a young Lance Armstrong very excited instructions in his formative professional years.