Hinault tried to be the fourth cyclist, after Fausto Coppi, Jacques Anquetil and Eddy Merckx, to win the Giro-Tour double.

[4] Notable absent was Lucien Van Impe, who was second in the 1981 Tour de France, winning the mountains classification.

Van Impe wanted to join, but his team Metauro was not invited, as the organisation considered it not strong enough to ride both the Giro and the Tour.

[14] Bernard Vallet would attack the climb for the KOM points but Phil Anderson would win the stage and for the second year in a row don the yellow jersey for at least a day.

Vallet moved into 2nd 0:38 behind Anderson as Peeters fell to third and Hinault ended up in 7th nearly a minute down strangely setting the stage for a repeat of the surprise from the year before, when Anderson became a challenger to Hinault in a similar manner to Cyrille Guimard becoming the only realistic challenger to Eddy Merckx during the 1972 Tour de France.

Unfortunately for Clère, even though at one point he had built up about a ten-minute gap, he would end up getting a flat tire and then suffer a mechanical costing him so much time that the main field would catch him before he reached town and following the laps around the circuit Frank Hoste would end up out sprinting Claude Criquielion and Bruno Leali in a bunch finish.

Winning the stage was the consistently dominant TI–Raleigh–Campagnolo–Merckx squad who caused Kelly, Clére, Willems and Vallet to each drop in the standings as Raleigh now had four riders in the Top 10 overall with Johan van der Velde being their primary GC contender now sitting in 8th place at 1:53 behind.

Aside from Hinault out of the 125+ riders still in the Tour at this point only Jan van Houwelingen, Joop Zoetemelk and Daniel Willems finished within 2:30 of Knetemann's time.

The sportswriters were correctly beginning to fear that Hinault was going to run away with his 4th Tour victory as 2nd place Knetemann was not considered an overall threat to the yellow jersey and aside from Anderson in 3rd the only other rider remotely close to Hinault was the now 7th placed Zoetemelk, who might have given Hinault one of his only serious challenges between 1978 and 1980, but at this point Zoetemelk was pushing 36 years old, was one of the oldest riders in the peloton and admitted, just as he had in his very first Tour back in the 1970 Tour de France against Merckx, that he was up against the greatest rider in the world and was only riding to beat everybody else.

Sean Kelly survived with the elite riders and was therefore able to win the stage by out sprinting Anderson and Van de Velde at the finish.

Hinault kept Zoetemelk close all day and crossed five seconds ahead of him as Anderson and Van der Velde were each dropped and lost about a minute apiece.

Stage 17 was won by Winnen, who moved into 3rd place overall 7:13 behind Hinault who kept Zoetemelk marked all day and lead the elite riders across the line some two and a half minutes after Winnen methodically hammering out the final kilometres in the mountains with his 4th Tour victory in five years all but assured.

Also on this stage Bernard Vallet ended up being dropped by the GC favorites and fell out of the top 10 overall, but he had gained enough points in the King of the Mountains competition to assure himself of the victory over Jean-René Bernaudeau meaning as long as he finished the final few stages he would be wearing the Polka Dot Jersey on the podium in Paris.

In stage 18 Adri van Houwelingen won the day by surviving a solo breakaway finishing 10:31 ahead of the rest of the field.

As a result, the final overall standings seemed to be in place with Anderson in 5th, Winnen falling back to 4th, Van der Velde jumping up to 3rd with Hinault and Zoetemelk remaining 1st and 2nd respectively.

[17] Hinault responded by risking crashing and getting injured by getting to the front of the pack once the race hit the circuit finish on the Champs-Élysées where he was able to out sprint the likes of Yvon Bertin, former Green Jersey winner Rudy Pevenage, a surprising Paul Sherwen, Fons de Wolf and everybody else dreaming of glory to seize the biggest sprinter's stage of them all.

In 3rd place on the overall podium was Johan van der Velde, in 2nd place for 6th and final time, setting a record that will likely never be equaled was Joop Zoetemelk, who also set a record for his 11th Top 5 finish and joining the likes of Coppi, Anquetil and Merckx by winning the Giro-Tour double was Bernard Hinault.

A cyclist that left the Tour unauthorized would lose all the prize money that he won so far, receive a fine, and would not be allowed to join the next year.