1984 Vuelta a España

The 39th Edition Vuelta a España (Tour of Spain), a long-distance bicycle stage race and one of the 3 Grand Tours, was held from 17 April to 6 May 1984. It consisted of 19 stages covering a total of 3,593 km, and was won by Éric Caritoux of the Skil–Sem cycling team. It was one of the most surprising grand tour victories in cycling history as Caritoux, a virtual unknown who was part of a lineup that was thrown together at the last minute, won by the closest margin in history.

Caritoux, a second year professional, had shown his climbing talent earlier that year by winning the stage up the Mont-Ventoux of the 1984 Paris–Nice but he did not enter the 1984 Vuelta a España thinking of the overall classification.

On stage 8 Roger De Vlaeminck, one of the oldest riders professionally, won the first Vuelta stage of his career which gave him a stage win in all three grand tours. Fourteen years earlier he won his first grand tour stage during the 1970 Tour de France and had won 22 Giro stages in between. On the 12th stage to Lagos de Covadonga an area in Asturias which includes one of the most important climbs of the Vuelta, Caritoux finished second behind the German Raimund Dietzen. Caritoux took the leader's jersey from Pedro Delgado. Alberto Fernández was 32 seconds behind Caritoux in the general classification at that stage. Fernández had been third the year previously in the Vuelta a España and in the Giro d'Italia. On the stage 14 mountain time trial, Caritoux lost five seconds. Caritoux lost further time in the final individual time trial but still managed to finish the race with a slender lead of six seconds over Fernández, the smallest margin in the history of the Vuelta a España, and also the smallest ever seen in a Grand Tour. Fernández died later on in 1984.