Jonas Vingegaard had been wearing the Tour de France leader’s famous yellow jersey for almost a week when the question came.
It wasn’t a matter of race strategy, keeping pace or the best way to keep his nerve and his lead through more days of twisty roads, tight turns and punishing climbs. It wasn’t a question of fitness or form.
Would he be more comfortable, Vingegaard was asked, if he were in second place?
“It would be easier, yes,” he replied. “Certainly.”
For all the credit and respect it earns, for all it means in a sport obsessed with data and detail, the sacred yellow jersey has a surprising number of inconveniences and drawbacks.
For example, teams can use a wind tunnel for hours to perfect every detail of a rider’s positioning, bike and clothing. The reward, if the rider does well enough to get into the lead? A new jersey from the race’s official sponsor, Santini, which may not fit or perform the same way.
“It’s a bit different,” said Tadej Pogacar, two-time Tour winner and a regular wearer of the yellow jersey. “You’re not used to it.”
Then there are the obligations. After crossing the finish line on each day’s stage, the race leader is guided through a dizzying array of tasks. He is being interviewed by the Tour. He is being interviewed by the race’s official broadcast partners. He signs several jersey facsimiles. He climbs the podium, along with a few other riders (a group that includes the stage winner and the leaders of several other classifications) for a presentation and photos.
Then he has to fight his way through a crowd of journalists and a video press conference. The last stop, and possibly the longest, is at the doping control. He is there until nature calls. “I would be at the hotel an hour earlier every day,” said Vingegaard, if only he were not in the yellow jersey.
Still, it is the highest honor for any other rider to wear it for even a day, a moment in the first line of the obituary. “My mind explodes,” Yves Lampaert said with tears in his eyes last year, after a surprise victory in the opening time trial of the race. “I am just a farmer’s son from Belgium.”
The mystique of the maillot jaune, as the jersey is known in French, is so universally understood that it is not even necessary to specify the color when referring to it. It’s just, The Jersey. And at an event where the color yellow is inescapable – fluttering flags, clinging to sweaty spectators and chosen for the lanyards hanging around the necks of journalists, organizers, VIPs and even police officers – it’s actually less common in the race itself. There, the signature hue, Pantone Yellow 1000, is meant to be seen in only one place: on the race leader’s back. (Race leaders have been known to ride a yellow bike or wear other yellow gear as well.)
“The fries are ready!” shouts a voice as an urgent beeping interrupts the bustle around the trailers and trucks scattered outside the Moulins press center after stage 11. Fabrice Pierrot chuckles and releases the press in front of him. After sliding a small block of wood into the mechanism to hold it open, he gingerly pulls off a yellow jersey with the still-steaming logo of Vingegaard’s team, Jumbo-Visma.
Pierrot is the Tour’s jersey printer, who has to produce special jerseys every day for the podium, but also for the next day’s race. Backstage on the podium, Pierrot takes notes on the riders, though after 20 years on the job he can usually judge them by sight. “This generation, like Pogacar, never uttered a word,” he said. “I enjoy working with them.” On this day, by the time Vingegaard finishes, almost exactly an hour after he crossed the line, his team bus and every other team’s bus is long gone. Barriers are broken down and the stage is folded back into a trailer. He is as he has been for days: dressed in yellow and proud of it.
“It doesn’t fit very well, but it fits fine,” Vingegaard said, a faint smile creeping onto his normally stoic face. “I’d rather be in The Jersey than my normal jersey.”
