Why does the Tour de France leader wear a yellow jersey?

The maillot jaune, the yellow jersey, is one of the most famous garments in sport. Pulling it on means you lead the Tour de France. You might assume yellow was picked to look like gold, the colour of winners. The real reason is more like a piece of marketing, and the first man to wear it rather hated it.

The short answer

The Tour was founded and run by a sports newspaper, L’Auto, which was printed on yellow paper. The yellow jersey is most likely a nod to it. The official first wearer was Eugène Christophe, who put it on for the Grenoble to Geneva stage on 19 July 1919.

The real story

The Tour de France began in 1903 as a way to sell newspapers, and L’Auto’s editor Henri Desgrange ran it. In the early years, the race leader did not wear a special jersey at all. The first winners wore a green armband instead, which was not much use to roadside fans trying to spot who was in front.

The 1919 Tour was the first after World War I, and Desgrange wanted the leader to stand out. Christophe was given his yellow jersey the night before the stage and tried it on in his hotel, with no ceremony at all. He was not delighted. Spectators reportedly mocked him by making canary noises as he rode past.

As for why yellow, there are two explanations. The most widely accepted is the link to L’Auto’s yellow pages. Desgrange’s own write-up of the moment, in which he described giving Christophe a superb yellow jersey, reads like a proud bit of branding for his paper. The second theory is practical: yellow was an unusual colour, so it may have been the only one a supplier could produce at short notice. The newspaper connection is generally considered the more likely.

There is also a disputed claim that it happened earlier. Belgian rider Philippe Thys, the 1913 winner, later said Desgrange had asked him to wear a coloured jersey that year, and that he eventually wore a yellow one bought from a local shop. Historians have been unable to confirm this, pointing out that no newspaper mentions a yellow jersey before the war, so 1919 remains the official date.

Why people get it wrong

Gold means first place in almost every sport, so a bright yellow jersey for the leader looks like an obvious medal reference. Most fans today have never seen a copy of L’Auto, so the clue that explains it all has quietly disappeared. The colour outlived the paper that inspired it.

“First bloke to wear it got called a canary. I know the feeling. Kids used to call me ‘stinky’ under those desks, and I can’t even argue with that one.”