Bookworm
Tour de France - 1986, 2013
One of the best looking books on my shelf is The Yellow Jersey by Peter Cossins. It was released in 2019 to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the creation of the yellow jersey.
It could have easily worked as an orthodox book, like many others that Peter has written. Instead, they made the decision to have a fancy squashy cover, one of those nice ribbon bookmark things and they filled it with colour photos. It elevates it to something altogether different and better. It’s one of those things of beauty that’s very pleasant to pick up and browse through - and I do, quite regularly.
Although there was a few years there where I couldn’t read it at all because this had happened by accident:
I am happy to report that I have since upgraded my bookshelves and these unfortunate books have now been retrieved. The shelves are now configured so that this travesty cannot happen again.
Last week I picked up The Yellow Jersey again and it fell open on a page recounting occasions where the jersey had been swapped between members of the same team.
One of those moments was in 2013. This was the Tour where the Orica bus got stuck under the 1km to go banner. What a fantastic sport this is, honestly. So many amazing sporting feats happened in that race. Current professional cyclist Chris Froome won his first Tour de France, Mark Cavendish equalled Andre Leducq’s record of 24 road stage wins at the Tour, Nairo Quintana announced himself on the world stage by winning two of the jerseys and Daryl Impey became the first African cyclist to wear the yellow jersey.
But what we most remember is the bus getting stuck under the 1km to go banner.
It’s the Daryl Impey bit that Cossins was referring to in his book and specifically the fact that his teammate Simon Gerrans willingly gave Impey the yellow jersey.
The main reason I remember this is because of some punditry that Chris Boardman did on the ITV coverage. The scenario was this. Gerrans had taken the jersey after a team time trial in Nice. There were no time bonuses at all in that Tour so the GC was all very tight. Naturally, after a TTT win, there was a pile of riders from the same team at the top of the GC. Gerrans was in yellow, but Impey and Michael Albasini were second and third - both equal on time with Gerrans.
The next day, Stage 5, was a bunch sprint won by Cavendish, where he equalled that record. A record which isn’t even a record, not really - that was just something the British media latched on to as something great Cavendish had done, in the days before he really start to approach the actual record of 34. Anyway, bunch sprint, no time bonuses, no change on GC. Gerrans was still in yellow.
The next day seemed likely that a bunch sprint would happen again. Gerrans and Impey were equal on time which meant that Gerrans had the jersey based on the sum of their stage placings so far. Whoever had the lowest total got to wear the jersey. Both riders had been right up there in all the stages so far:
Gerrans: 15th, 16th, 1st, 1st, 15th = 48
Impey: 11th, 8th, 22nd, 1st, 13th = 55
A difference of seven. This meant that if it was indeed a bunch sprint finish and all the riders were given the same time, if Impey finished eight places ahead of Gerrans in the bunch, Impey would take the jersey.
My memory is that this scenario was put to Chris Boardman before the stage, that Gerrans might willingly hang back in the bunch and allow Impey to take over the lead of the Tour de France. Boardman poo-pood this idea as absolute nonsense. He declared that no professional rider would purposely let go of the yellow jersey, even to a teammate. To Boardman, the idea did not compute.
