van den Akker, Pieter. "Informatie over de Tour de France van 1971" [Information about the Tour de France from 1971]. TourDeFranceStatistieken.nl (in Dutch). Archived from the original on 2 March 2019. Retrieved 2 March 2019.
van den Akker, Pieter. "Het bergklassement (bolletjestrui) in de Tour de France" [The mountain classification (polka dot jersey) in the Tour de France]. TourDeFranceStatistieken.nl (in Dutch). Archived from the original on 26 March 2019. Retrieved 8 April 2019.
van den Akker, Pieter. "Informatie over de Tour de France van 1971" [Information about the Tour de France from 1971]. TourDeFranceStatistieken.nl (in Dutch). Archived from the original on 2 March 2019. Retrieved 2 March 2019.
van den Akker, Pieter. "Het bergklassement (bolletjestrui) in de Tour de France" [The mountain classification (polka dot jersey) in the Tour de France]. TourDeFranceStatistieken.nl (in Dutch). Archived from the original on 26 March 2019. Retrieved 8 April 2019.
The 'wheelsucker' labels directed towards Lucien Van Impe and Joop Zoetemelk by Guillaume Driessens [nl] was a way of saying they did not attack to win and instead follow someone else who attacks to win.[162] Zoetemelk first gained the label after his second place to overall winner Eddy Merckx in the previous Tour, when it was joked that he was as pale as when he began the race because he was always riding in Merckx's shadow.[163][164]
The aggressive and bully-like nature of Eddy Merckx's directeur sportifGuillaume Driessens [nl] was not reserved solely for opposing riders. In fact, Merckx disliked Driessens before he was his directeur sportif. Specifically, Merckx did not like the manner in which Driessens would talk down to him and tell him what he was doing wrong when they were on opposing teams earlier in his career.[165]
