The Centennial of the Yellow Jersey

A visit to the special exhibit on the centennial of the introduction of the Yellow Jersey to The Tour de France at France’s National Museum of Sport in Nice made an excellent transition from twelve days of nothing but cinema at Cannes back to the world of the bike.  It was a twenty-mile ride to Nice, almost as many miles as I’d ridden during the festival on my daily commute from our apartment to the Palais, and mostly flat, which my atrophied legs welcomed.

The ride took me through Antibes past some of the highest priced property on the planet. Some of the miles were along the Mediterranean and some on separated bike lanes, making it more pleasant than it might have been with the constant flow of speeding traffic along this scenic route.

The museum was a couple miles inland adjoining a large soccer stadium.  There were no bike racks so I just locked the bike to itself and leaned it against a window that peered into the museum.  The young woman who sold me a ticket asked where I was from, then, “Is The Tour de France famous in Chicago?”  

“Yes,” I replied. “it is known by all.”  That made her happy.

The introduction to the exhibit stated that 271 riders have worn the Yellow Jersey, not counting Lance Armstrong, David Zabriskie, Floyd Landis, George Hincapie and Stefan Schumacher, Americans all other than Schumacher, who had been stripped of the honor for being drug-assisted.  Byarne Riis offered to return his Jersey after his confession, but they let him keep it. 

Much attention was given to the French rider Eugene Christophe, the first to wear the jersey when Tour director and founder Henri Desgrange decided before the 11th stage of the 1919 Tour, sixteen years after the first in 1903, that the leader needed a bright jersey to make it easier for the fans along the road to identify him.  Christophe wasn’t all that excited about having to wear it, especially when his fellow riders mocked him as looking like a canary and chirped at him.  But just like the Eiffel Tower, that initially had its detractors, the Yellow Jersey has become a world-renowned icon and a garment that every racer covets. 

The exhibit included quite a few of the Yellow Jerseys of the winners of The Race.  Those of Roger Walkowiak from 1956 and Oscar Pereiro from 2006 were hung side by side, lumping them together as two of the unlikeliest winners of The Race.  There was a jersey from 2003 signed by all the living winners of The Race on the occasion of its 100th anniversary.  Armstrong’s name was in a prominent position, as he had won the previous four editions.  A panel describing Armstrong’s reign was headlined “Soleil Noir” and referred to his era as “epoch frelatée” (the adulterated era).

There was a replica of Christophe’s Yellow Jersey, as he chose to be buried in his actual Yellow Jersey.  I was delighted to learn the name of his cemetery, Malakoff, south of Paris, as another to search out.  Among the many relics in the exhibit was his fork from the 1919 Tour that he broke.  He suffered the same ill-luck in the 1913 Tour.  He was leading the 1919 Tour by thirty minutes when he broke his fork on the penultimate stage and lost over two hours.  He ended up third.  The public felt so sorry for his second stroke of bad fortune that hundreds donated money to him, more than the winner received.  The newspaper that sponsored The Tour ran a list of all those who donated, which ran twenty pages.  The exhibit had a sample of some.

The exhibit also had quite a few screens showing racing footage and interviews.  There was an extraordinary few frames shot by a spectator capturing the legendary crash of Luis Ocaña in the rain in the Pyrenees during the 197l Tour when he was in Yellow and a threat to defeat the seemingly invincible Eddie Merckx.  This is one of those seminal moments in Tour lore acknowledged by a plaque at the site.

Another video of particular note showed the great rivals Jacques Anquetil and Raymond Poulidor in a mob of fans at the end of a stage kissing one another while a reporter attempts to interview Anquetil.  Of more recent vintage was Christopher Froome running up Mount Ventoux in Yellow after his bike was wrecked near the finish in the 2016 Tour. 

One could put on a headsets and listen to interviews with many of the legends going all the way back to Louison Bobet in the ‘50s, one of a trio of three-time winners of The Tour before Anquetil became the first five-time winner.  There was also some historic footage of Bobet climbing the Izoard, near the Italian border, passing Fausto Coppi standing along the route with a camera in hand, as he had declined to race The Tour that year.

I spent over two hours devouring every item in the exhibit and would have spent even more time if my French had been good enough to listen to all the audio provided.  A very young and gaunt LeMond spoke French in one.  The usually grim and determined, stone-faced Bernard Hinault was shown in uninhibited ecstasy early in his career.  

Eddie Merckx holds the record with the most days in Yellow, 111, though he declined to wear the Jersey the day after Ocaña crashed out.  Fabian Cancellera holds the record for the most days in Yellow by a rider who never won The Tour—29.  Patrick Sercu, who recently died, holds the record for the shortest amount of time in Yellow—just twelve minutes during a nine-kilometer time trial in 1974 back in the days when there were two or even three stages squeezed into one day, really taxing the riders.

The sixteen riders who had to abandon The Tour while in Yellow, as happened to Ocaña, were acknowledged.  Most were victims of a crash, but some were sent packing due to drug violations.  The last was Michel Rasmussen in 2007 when it was discovered he had lied about his whereabouts for the drug-testers before The Tour.  There were three occasions when a rider won The Race on the last stage, earning the Jersey, but not getting to wear it in action—Jean Robic in 1947, Jan Jansson in 1968 and Greg LeMond in 1989.  A chart listed the first rider to wear the Jersey for the 24 countries represented by a Yellow Jersey-wearer.  Slovakia was the last country to join the club with Peter Sagan in 2016.

The exhibit couldn’t help but include Yvette Horner, the star of the caravan for many years playing the accordion, and a great fan favorite.  She was pictured three times through the exhibit with someone in Yellow—Bobet at the end of the 1953 Tour, Antonin Rolland, who never won The Tour but spent twelve days in Yellow in the 1955 Tour and Andre Darrigade, who won 22 stages, the fifth most and the most by a sprinter until Mark Cavendish came along.

The exhibit was curated with the assistance of the Amaury Sport Organization (ASO), that runs The Tour.  A coffee-table-sized book was created in conjunction with the exhibit.  After it’s six-month run it could easily be made into a permanent exhibit elsewhere.  I would gladly seek it out again wherever it might turn up.  The Grand Départ for The Tour will be in Nice next year. They might as well leave it up until then.