The Curse Of The Yellow Jersey
by fmk on Dec 8, 2010 12:52 PM EST
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PrintA lot of people wither on endlessly about the so-called curse of the World Champion's rainbow jersey. But what of the curse of the Tour de France's yellow jersey? Most commentators will tell you it doesn't exist, that - quite the reverse - the maillot jaune is haberdashery's version of Red Bull: it gives you wings. But let's cock a snoot to those know-it-alls. What of all the times the yellow jersey has been donned only to see the wearer crash out of the race or suffer a major défaillance? Here's just two such stories.
July 10th 1983. Pau. The edge of the Pyrénées. A stage win for France, Philippe Chevalier, with a Dutchman, Gerard Veldscholten, second. Ireland's Sean Kelly wins the sprint for third. A year ago he won the stage into Pau, when Bernard Hinault had the journalists scratching their heads by appearing to set up the sprint for him. Denmark's Kim Andersen started the day in yellow, the first Dane ever to lead the Tour, and finishes safely with the bunch. But the bonifications fall in Kelly's favour and the extra ten seconds they give him push him ahead of Andersen on GC. The Dane's stint in yellow ends six days after it began.
Kelly's not the first Irishman to wear the Tour's maillot jaune. Jacques Anquetil's domestique Shay Elliott beat him to that twenty years earlier, when reigning World Champion Jean Stablinski repaid a debt from the previous year's Worlds. But today Kelly is certainly the most feted Irishman in the Tour's history. His yellow jersey goes well with his green one. Add the two to Stephen Roche's white jersey and you can make as close to the Irish tricolour out of the three jerseys as the Tour allows you.
Kelly's happiness is shared by all on his team, domestiques and support staff alike, not least Kelly's soigneur, Willy Voet. But happiest of all - perhaps even happier than Kelly himself - is his Sem directeur sportif, Jean de Gribaldy. This is vindication of De Gri's belief in Kelly. He's proven that the one-time sprint specialist is really a true all rounder. Two victories in Paris-Nice and now this, leading the Tour de France. And, in a year with no big star dominant in the Tour, Kelly is now among the favourites for overall victory.
The next day the heat is up. The peloton has four major climbs ahead of it as it enters the Pyrénées. The Aubisque. The Tourmalet. The Aspin. The Peyresourde. Kelly has a jour sans. From the start of the stage he's in trouble. At times he seems to need both feet to get one pedal to move. By the top of the Aubisque, the maillot jaune is six minutes off the pace. Kelly pulls back time on the descent and in the valley before the Tourmalet. By the summit of the Tourmalet that has been frittered away and, unable to hold a wheel, the maillot jaune is fifteen minutes down. Kelly again pulls back time on the descent. By the summit of the Aspin he is only thirteen minutes adrift. By the time the race rolls into Luchon his deficit is down to ten minutes.
This jour sans is the first of many in a Tour career in which, as the years ahead will unfold, the Irishman's Tour dreams will teeter and topple on one bad day in the mountains. Four top ten finishes - seventh in 1983, fifth a year later, fourth the year after that and ninth in 1989 - will be as close as Kelly ever comes to winning la grande boucle.
Scotland's Robert Millar has won the stage. His Peugeot team-mate Pascal Simon - himself having a marvellous year, with victory in the Dauphiné Libéré in the run up to the Tour (though that will soon be stripped from him for a doping infraction - at least he doesn't get caught doping at the Tour, where five others will return positive samples over the course of the race, including (yet again) Joop Zoetemelk) - usurps Kelly and dons the maillot jaune. Laurent Fignon lies second, waiting for his time to come, and now wears the white jersey (Roche has had an even bigger mare of a day than Kelly, losing three minutes more than his compatriot and surrendering the best young rider jersey to the rising French star. Another mare in the Pyrenees and a mare in the Alps will help teach Roche how tough the Tour can be).
Simon's own tenure in yellow is not to be blessed by good fortune. He cracks his shoulder blade in a chute the next day, early into the stage. But he perseveres in yellow. His team-mates Millar, Roche and Australia's Phil Anderson sacrifice their own Tour hopes to nurse him through each day. Until the Alpe d'Huez stage, six days after Simon's crash, when he is finally forced to abandon, before getting to the Alpe. Fignon's time has come. There will be no curse on his yellow jersey. Not this year at least.
Years later, for one of David Walsh's books about him, Kelly recalls that one day in yellow - his only day in yellow throughout a Tour career that saw him set a new record for green jersey victories (four, one fewer than his tally for stage wins) - and is still proud of the day he lead the Tour de France: "with the [yellow] jersey on my back I had a bad day. I couldn't get up the climbs, the heat was unbelievable and I did feel the weight of the jersey. But wearing it, if only for one day, was still worth it."
* * * * *
Now it's up to you to help me. Let's get the ball rolling on a new Tour myth, the myth of the curse of the yellow jersey. Let's compile a compendium of days the yellow jersey seemed to weigh the wearer down, not give him wings. I want your stories from Tours ancient and modern, stories in which the yellow jersey brought more sorrow than happiness. Cadel Evans. Floyd Landis. Chris Boardman. You know more of these names and their stories than I do. Share the knowledge and contribute to extending the Tour's rich mythology. Come the Tour next year, I look forward to hearing Phil 'n' Paul banging on about the curse of the yellow jersey when the maillot jaune looks like he's having a mare of a day.
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Cheeky? Moi? But all I want is stories of riders who have défailled themselves.
pounding along in three ratios like a sonata
like a Ritter with pommelled scrotum atra cura on the step
Botticelli from the fork down pestling the transmission
tires bleeding voiding zeep the highway
by fmk on Dec 8, 2010 4:18 PM EST up reply actions 1 recs
somehow
I think this post needs to be buried if PdC will ever get that live chat with Harmon and Kelly . . .
(one of my fave Kelly stories involves the time he is alleged (and I do have a witness, I think) to have nodded an answer during a radio interview. Which out Pauwels Pauwels).
The nodding to radio interview story comes from Walsh in the Kelly book, it’s more an urban myth designed to show how quiet and retiring he was in the early days, compared to the way he came out of his shell in latter years.
I have the recollecton of seeing him getting a cut on his eye-brow stitched while beng interviewed, during a Nissan Classic I think. Hard as fuckin’ nails.
And what’s to bury here? The man had a bad day in the mountans. Everyone has a jour sans now and then.
pounding along in three ratios like a sonata
like a Ritter with pommelled scrotum atra cura on the step
Botticelli from the fork down pestling the transmission
tires bleeding voiding zeep the highway
by fmk on Dec 8, 2010 4:53 PM EST up reply actions
but I heard the story in the 80s
from a guy who’d worked as a mech for a euro team.
There was also a story involving Eric Vanderarden, an emergency nature break, and a cycling cap making its way through the peloton , , ,
Not saying it’s not true (I’ve nodded to questions on radio, it’s easy to do) but it has the ring of an urban myth, and gained currency after the Walsh book in the eighties (as did the one about the wife and the car, with the punchline of ‘the bike comes first’, and the story about him still being a virgn based on his pre-race celibacy).
pounding along in three ratios like a sonata
like a Ritter with pommelled scrotum atra cura on the step
Botticelli from the fork down pestling the transmission
tires bleeding voiding zeep the highway
by fmk on Dec 8, 2010 6:54 PM EST up reply actions
Jeff Bernard 1987
Wins on Mont Ventoux, dons yellow, and embarks on a fast track to palookaville, with only a brief stop for a time trial win a week later. Bernard’s aversion to greatness seems like CW now. I don’t know where he rolled in on that stage to Villard-de-Lans, won by Delgado; I can only find the top ten and he ain’t there.
"Next year we will build a strong team around Tom. We don't need pseudo-stage racers any more in this team." -Patrick Lefevre, 2005
by Chris Fontecchio on Dec 8, 2010 5:31 PM EST reply actions
L'Ouch.
Of course, it presumably had more to do with the curse of having emptied himself on Le Geant de Provence than what color jersey he was wearing the next day.
"Next year we will build a strong team around Tom. We don't need pseudo-stage racers any more in this team." -Patrick Lefevre, 2005
by Chris Fontecchio on Dec 8, 2010 6:18 PM EST up reply actions
If he’d emptied himself he should have just topped up. Unless he was already over the limit.
pounding along in three ratios like a sonata
like a Ritter with pommelled scrotum atra cura on the step
Botticelli from the fork down pestling the transmission
tires bleeding voiding zeep the highway
by fmk on Dec 8, 2010 6:33 PM EST up reply actions
Ah Jef. The curse of the yellow jersey or the curse of Bernard Tapie?
pounding along in three ratios like a sonata
like a Ritter with pommelled scrotum atra cura on the step
Botticelli from the fork down pestling the transmission
tires bleeding voiding zeep the highway
by fmk on Dec 8, 2010 6:09 PM EST up reply actions
I've read
That Systeme U (Guimard, Fignon and Mottet) were not at all pleased about their compatriot stealing all the limelight so they devised a plan to make Bernard’s life hell on the stage to Villard-de-Lans, attacking him early and often until his team support was gone.
Then, like adding insult to injury, Bernard punctured at the most inopportune of times and his chances of winning the race went kaput. I don’t think he truly deserved to win that race overall (since Roche and Delgago were superior in the high mountains) but it would have been very interesting if he’d arrived at the finall TT with only a small deficit, I’m guessing he would have at least finished 2nd that year and who knows…
Système-U had a grudge against Tapie. Guimard had lost two of his best riders to the man who brought galactico tactics to winning the Tour, and Fignon just didn’t like him. Stephen Roche also makes a point that people in general in the peloton simply didn’t like Jef, ramming it home by pointedly saying no one wanted to sign for the team at the end of 87. On the day Jef défailed himself, Système-U had decided to attack at the first feed zone, Leoncel. They needed to regain time lost in the ITT the day before. Others had the same idea, Roche not least among them. Unfortunately for Jef, he punctured before the top of the climb leading up to the feed zone. The peloton didn’t wait for him, he fluffed his wheel change and only recaught the peloton as they hit the feed zone. Which is when .Système-U launched their attack. Most of his time loss came late in the afternoon, over the final mountains. With all the whining he did about no one waiting when he punctured and the attack in the feed zone the new Hinault was sounding more like the old LeMond.
Funny other story: roughly the same thing happened Jef four months earlier in Paris-Nice. He took the white jersey on teh Mt Faron climb and then got pulped the enxt day by Fignon and go, losing the jersey.
pounding along in three ratios like a sonata
like a Ritter with pommelled scrotum atra cura on the step
Botticelli from the fork down pestling the transmission
tires bleeding voiding zeep the highway
Christian Vande Velde
Not sure if the comparison is apt, CVV never showed anywhere near the early promise of Bernard in my opinion. He may have underachieved and had his career derailed these last few years, but he never had any results to match the hype and the hope Bernard inspired in 86 and 87. Bernard was a leader who then was injured/crash-prone/underachieved and then settled to be a superdomestique for Indurain before calling it quits. CVV was a lieutenant for a long time and then was sort of successful while still underachieving/crashing in the Giro in his later years. I have always thought of JF as more analogous to someone like Kloden in that he never seemed to want the pressure of being a leader.
USPS made sure he had no results
rumors on the ground were that he out-tested Armstrong.
Riders who showed any signs of upsetting the Bruyneel/Armstrong system were cordially shown the door.
Great history in this post, as usual.
Can’t help you with history since i only started following the tour in 99, which is the same year i started riding on the road.
"Your not going won't unbreak her arm."
Lots of examples since 99. Cuddles this year, f’rinstance. And Flandis a few years back. Seriously, like how cursed was that jersey? Compared, LeMond got off lightly with ethe curse on his 86 jersey.
pounding along in three ratios like a sonata
like a Ritter with pommelled scrotum atra cura on the step
Botticelli from the fork down pestling the transmission
tires bleeding voiding zeep the highway
by fmk on Dec 8, 2010 6:33 PM EST up reply actions
Evans curse day on Madeleine this year was bittersweet, as despite losing the jersey, I think most of us were amazed at his courage riding with his Elbow injury:
moo
Just one question
Didnt they have yellow sticking plaster?
"More accurately, the principle of Occam’s Razor recommends selecting the competing hypothesis that makes the fewest new assumptions"
I don't know
But I don’t think I’ve ever seen it in a colour other than black or blue.
Death before decaf! :D
- gavia
It's not "sticking plaster"
http://www.therapytaping.com/cat/150/Kinesio-Tex-Tape.html
Comes in lots of colors, but why you’d use it as a substitute cast is just plain stupid.
I know it isn't
Just saying, I’ve never seen it in a colour other than black or blue. Tennis players use it often.
Death before decaf! :D
- gavia
Ok yellow colouring on the kinesio tape then.
"More accurately, the principle of Occam’s Razor recommends selecting the competing hypothesis that makes the fewest new assumptions"
PS Witch doctor do you get it from?
"More accurately, the principle of Occam’s Razor recommends selecting the competing hypothesis that makes the fewest new assumptions"
Oh Z, def, so def. Though he was cursed wthout the jersey anyway (sorry, I clearly haven’t got the hang of this, have I?)
pounding along in three ratios like a sonata
like a Ritter with pommelled scrotum atra cura on the step
Botticelli from the fork down pestling the transmission
tires bleeding voiding zeep the highway
by fmk on Dec 8, 2010 9:03 PM EST up reply actions
When did Dave Z's curse really get going?
Was this what got the ball rolling?
The day his Da took the stabilisers off his first bike and he realised he didn’t know how to ride upright without decking it?
pounding along in three ratios like a sonata
like a Ritter with pommelled scrotum atra cura on the step
Botticelli from the fork down pestling the transmission
tires bleeding voiding zeep the highway
by fmk on Dec 9, 2010 3:26 AM EST up reply actions
That was my thought as well. Sucked to lose the jersey that way...
"Bitches, they were bitches"
- tgsgirl
by JustJoshinYa on Dec 8, 2010 10:07 PM EST up reply actions
Wim Van Est
FIrst Dutchman to hold yellow and he (and the jersey) ride 70 metres off a cliff on Col d’Aubisque in 1951.
A very brief video of the monument to Wim and a view of the cliff is in you Aubisque link in your story.
Separately, Cancellara has had a few lousy days in yellow …. maybe unsurprisingly once the mountains arrive. Off the top of my head Col de la Colombiere in 2007 (2008?), and in the Juras this year (the Chavanel stage win day … stage 7?).
moo
Flying of a mountain in the mallot jaune – someone told him that the yellow jersey really does give you wings.
pounding along in three ratios like a sonata
like a Ritter with pommelled scrotum atra cura on the step
Botticelli from the fork down pestling the transmission
tires bleeding voiding zeep the highway
1971.
Ocana leading the great Merckx by 7 minuttes going into the Pyrenees. Here, with the weather turning bad, Merckx attacked several times on the descend causing him to crash and take Ocana down in the process. Ocana left the race in a helicopter and Merckx went on the win the race with more than 9 minuttes to Zoetemelk.
Yeah
That stands out for me.
Also, Eugene Christophe back the early days, the broken forks that repeatedly stopped him challenging for 2/3 tours. The essence of bad luck in le grande boucle.
"Champions aren´t made in the gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them - a desire, a dream, a vision." - M.Ali
He was leading in the first one, wasn’t he? Well, leader on the road anyway. I have him more in The Tour de France and the lost art of being an Heroic Failure.
And Cuddles is so def our modern Heroic Failure. His curséd yellow jersey this year only adds to the story.
pounding along in three ratios like a sonata
like a Ritter with pommelled scrotum atra cura on the step
Botticelli from the fork down pestling the transmission
tires bleeding voiding zeep the highway
Great example.
Did Merckx take Ocaña down in that one? I thought his brakes faled in the rain. And Zoetemelk sliding into him was what done the real damage. Never have liked Zoetemelk. Can’t undersatand why so many oldies seem to love him so.
pounding along in three ratios like a sonata
like a Ritter with pommelled scrotum atra cura on the step
Botticelli from the fork down pestling the transmission
tires bleeding voiding zeep the highway
Did Merckx take Ocaña down in that one?
Some argue that Merckx initiated Ocana’s fall, but clearly Zoetemelk did the real damage.
Ocana was pushing it on the downhill to catch Merckx, taking risks probably
then Zoetemelk barrelled into him as he was getting up from the first crash.
That’s more or less what I thought happened. Shit happened and then the Dutchman slid into him. Good story regardless. Yellow jerseys crashing out of the Tour are always good stories.
pounding along in three ratios like a sonata
like a Ritter with pommelled scrotum atra cura on the step
Botticelli from the fork down pestling the transmission
tires bleeding voiding zeep the highway
Chris Boardman
1998 tour. He dominates the prologue in Dublin (no surprise there). Next day crashes heavily, breaks his hip and season over. Arguably his career went downhill from then on.
by thebongolian on Dec 9, 2010 7:10 PM EST via mobile reply actions
It ended there, didn’t it? Famous Gruan headline of the time: Boardman retires to take drugs.
pounding along in three ratios like a sonata
like a Ritter with pommelled scrotum atra cura on the step
Botticelli from the fork down pestling the transmission
tires bleeding voiding zeep the highway
maybe on the road
thought he raced the sydney olympics but i might be wrong
by thebongolian on Dec 10, 2010 8:28 AM EST up reply actions
Rolf Sorensen in 1991
Sad case. He never stood a chance of winning the race overall but on the 5th stage he crashed with only a few kilometers left in the stage, breaking his collarbone in the process. He finished the stage in tears and even talked about riding the first few K’s of stage 6 just so he could salute the crowd and honor the jersey, instead the pain was so great that he was a DNS the following day and the race lead remained vacant until stage 7.
This one certainly continues to hurt Sorensen. As a commentator on Danish TV during
the yearly showing of the TdF, he makes sure everyone remembers his ill fortunes.
Poor guy had no luck
He quit the following year as well on the very first day! (due to illness if I’m not mistaken)
The Sorensen race crash was even incorporated into a quiz during this year's show.
Not sure if Leth managed to get the Ocana incident included as well. Nevertheless on aggregate Leth leads the H2H by some distance.
What a wuss. Did Tyler abandon when his arm was falling off? No, he didn’t. And I’m pretty sure Honoré Barthélémy wouldn’t have been too impressed either.
:)
pounding along in three ratios like a sonata
like a Ritter with pommelled scrotum atra cura on the step
Botticelli from the fork down pestling the transmission
tires bleeding voiding zeep the highway
Steve Bauer in 1990 was an interesting one
Can you imagine how petrified the race favorites must have felt after gifting Bauer, Chiappucci and co. a lead of more then 10 minutes on the first flat stage of the race? Remember, this is the same Bauer who had finished 4th overall in the GC as recently as 1988, a race which featured all the classic climbs such as the Tourmalet, Alpe d"Huez and Luz Ardiden.
Bauer could not be dismissed as a pretender. So of course everyone was speculating in the eve of the first big mountain stage that the favorites like Lemond, Delgado, etc. were going to have their work cut out for them eating into that deficit.
Instead Bauer shocked everyone by wilting on the first alpine stage of the race, a relatively “easy” mountain stage, which served as a stepping stone to the monster stage to Alpe D’ Huez the following day. I’ve never read or heard Bauer comment on his collapse that stage but it must have been devasting to experience an inexplicable loss of form after holding such a huge buffer over everyone that mattered.
Steve Bauer
Any relation to Jack?
Jack would really rock the Tour.
pounding along in three ratios like a sonata
like a Ritter with pommelled scrotum atra cura on the step
Botticelli from the fork down pestling the transmission
tires bleeding voiding zeep the highway
Also
Ronan Pensec a few days later exploded in the uphill TT. Like Bauer he’d finished in the top 10 of the GC on 2 or 3 separate occasions before 1990 so naturally the 10 minute buffer made him extremely dangerous. Instead he let down all of France by collapsing on the stage to Villard de Lans.
Oh Fernarndo, the fun we could have if we tried to compile a list of all the Frenchie riders who have let down France over the years in the Tour.
pounding along in three ratios like a sonata
like a Ritter with pommelled scrotum atra cura on the step
Botticelli from the fork down pestling the transmission
tires bleeding voiding zeep the highway
Good going guys. You know, with all these examples I’m begining to think there really is a curse of the yellow jersey :) That’ll learn me for trying to be cheeky.
pounding along in three ratios like a sonata
like a Ritter with pommelled scrotum atra cura on the step
Botticelli from the fork down pestling the transmission
tires bleeding voiding zeep the highway
cock a snook
the use of “snoot” may be a false etymology, but could be a legit regionalism.
The double snook with both hands in front, end to end, is also known as " long bacon. " The classic double snook can be done with the second hand atop the head, thumb touching the crown, fingers up, like a cock’s comb. That association probably also being a false etymology (cock is clearly the verb, not the bird).
And I can't add to the list because I can't decide...
Some people are in yellow accidentally or strategically, not because they have any hope of keeping it. Cancellara may have lost it (and other leaders jerseys in other races) more than anyone, given his penchant for winning prologues, but that’s neither a curse nor a failure. So we’re really looking for…what.. People who went all out to honor the jersey, and therefore either crashed or “défailled” themselves.
Do we need a counter-thread of people who were jersey presumptives who “défailled” themselves while NOT in yellow? I propose Indurain ’96 (this may be picking the low hanging fruit).
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