Why is the Tour de France leader’s jersey yellow?

It is undoubtedly the greatest symbol of cycling, the Tour de France yellow jerseythe jersey that every runner wants to wear at least once in their sporting life, what can be said about the end of wearing it on the day of the end of the race, which has reached the extreme that there are some cycling races that also give yellow jersey to their best broker, ownership Lap In 1955, a yellow jersey was established to identify the leader. A jersey that, like everything in life, has an origin and few know that it wasn’t born at the very start of the career. The Tour de France It began to be performed in 1903, in a total of six stages of approximately 400 kilometers each-can you imagine the stages of this duration today, the comments they would form? – and the first winner was the French cyclist Maurice Garinborn in Italy, and who, like the other participants, will have to compete in this inaugural edition with the same bike every day, having to fix it itself if it has suffered a mechanical problem. Garin invested a total time of 94h’33’14 “, with a margin of 2h59’21” in his countrymen Lucien Pottier at 4h29’24 ”at augereau fernandsecond and third respectively.

However, the appearance of the first yellow jersey did not occur until 1919, thirteen years after the end of the first edition of the race, in which, as today, the leader of the race was distinguished, although before its establishment a green bracelet was used to mark and vary the first type.

THE OTHER JERSEY OF THE TOUR

Along with the yellow Tour in the Tour jersey three more jerseys were ‘distributed’:
-Those on the mountain, the characteristic polka dot jersey, inspiration for many other mountain jerseys, did not appear until 1975, although the race began to reward the best mountain cyclist in 1933, it was the first mountainous classification for the Cantabrian Vicente verbatim
-The one with the best sprinter. The characteristic green color, worn by the triple world champion several times, debuted on the Tour in 1953. However, its history is still unique, as it was initially awarded to the one with the smallest score, and not it still survives. 1959 changed the system, by awarding points for finishing the best
-The one with the most beautiful young man. It had to wait until 1975 to see the light, which served as a reward to the youngest rider, although its origin, as happened in many other aspects of the Tour, was very different. With him, the best runner of the combination was recognized in 1968, the classification that can be said to reward the most complete cyclist, by combining time, points and mountain
*All of these jerseys, as well as the ‘yellow’, can be purchased on the Tour website, and there are more versions for babies

The color choice was made by the creator of the Tour de France, Henri Desgrangeeditor-in-chief of the newspaper ‘L’Auto’ -After the years, it will be current ‘The Team’ and first race pattern – and the reason is simple: it’s yellow because it’s the color they used on the pages of their diary. the French runner Eugene Christophe He was the first cyclist to have the honor of wearing a yellow jersey, long ago on July 19, 1919, unique at the start of the 11th stage, since Grenoble and will end with Geneva. It couldn’t be done before and he wore it for five stages.

The ‘unofficial’ version of the first yellow jersey

the Belgian cyclist Philippe Thystriple winner of the Tour in 1913, 1914 and 1920, obtained in 1953 for Pierre Chany’s book ‘The Fabulous History of the Tour’, who twice wore a yellow jersey before 1919. It was for one day that he won his first two Tours. Although given credibility, it was not picked up by the newspapers then and could not be verified, so it is not official.

THE GREAT PLUSH LION

The yellow Tour de France jersey has had several sponsors throughout history, but it was only in 1981 that French bank Crédit Lyonnais (currently LCL) began to sponsor the jersey worn by the best rider at the event. Six years later, the banking entity decided to deliver an obedient stuffed lion daily to the yellow jersey wearer, taking advantage of the installation of Crédit Lyonnais bank’s central offices in the city of Lyon (France). The first to receive it on the podium in Paris was the Irishman Stephen Roche and since its inception it has been common to see pictures of various Tour leaders, such as Chris Froome, with all the teddy bears.

And it is that we must not forget that although in the year 1930 it was when the Tour began to broadcast by radio, it was not until 20 years later when televisions began to provide content the mother of all races of cycling.