The yellow jersey (worn by the leader of the general classification) changed hands several times with Charly Mottet, Roche, Jean François Bernard and Delgado all wearing it before Roche used the final 35 kilometers time trial to overturn a half-minute gap and win the Tour by 40 seconds, which was at the time the second-narrowest margin (in 1968 Jan Janssen had beaten Herman Van Springel by 38 seconds; two years after Roche's victory, Greg LeMond beat Laurent Fignon by 8 seconds).