The Man Who Refused The Yellow Jersey
The yellow jersey was made for decades, like all other cycling jerseys, from wool. No synthetic fibres existed which had both the warmth and the absorption of wool. Embroidery was expensive and so the only lettering to appear on the jersey was the H.D. of Desgrange's initials. Riders added the name of the team for which they were riding or the professional team for which they normally rode (in the years when the Tour was for national rather than sponsored teams) by attaching a panel of printed cloth to the front of the jersey by pins.
While synthetic material didn't exist in a way to create whole jerseys, synthetic thread or blends were added in 1947, following the arrival of Sofil as a sponsor. Sofil made artificial yarn. Riders believed in the pureness of wool, and especially the Frenchman Louison Bobet, or Louis Bobet as he was still known.
Bobet insisted that cyclists needed wool for their long days of sweating in the heat and dust. It was a matter of hygiene. Artificial fabrics made riders sweat too much. And, in his first Tour de France, he refused to wear the jersey with which he had been presented.
Goddet recalled:
- "It produced a real drama. Our contract with Sofil was crumbling away. If the news had got out, the commercial effect would have been disastrous for the manufacturer. I remember debating it with him a good part of the night. Louison was always exquisitely courteous but his principles were as hard as the granite blocks of his native Brittany coast."
No compromise was possible. Goddet had to get Sofil to produce another jersey overnight, its logo still visible but artificial fabric absent.
Read more about this topic: General Classification In The Tour De France
Famous quotes containing the words the man, man, refused, yellow and/or jersey:
“But as these angels, the only halted ones
among the many who passed and repassed,
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on the angelic wings of the other,
the intelligence proper to great angels flew into their wings,
the intelligence called intellectual love....”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)
“Nor does the man sitting by the hearth beneath his roof better escape his fated doom.”
—Aeschylus (525–456 B.C.)
“If I have been the source of pain, O God;
If to the weak I have refused my strength;
If, in rebellion, I have strayed away;
Forgive me, God.”
—Janet W. May (20th century)
“Tom’s great yellow bronze mask all draped upon an iron framework. An inhibited, nerve-drawn; dropped face—as if hung on a scaffold of heavy private brooding; & thought.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a trail of ambiguous
picture postcards of Atlantic City Hall,”
—Allen Ginsberg (b. 1926)