July 19, 2016

Yellow and Green – The old one-two

Stage 15 - 1972. Merckx celebrates prematurely as Guimard takes another win.

On Stage 11 of this year’s Tour de France we witnessed something on the streets of Montpellier which is extremely rare in the history of this great race. We were treated to the sight of Peter Sagan winning the stage in the Green Jersey ahead of Chris Froome in second place wearing the Yellow Jersey. The leaders of the two most important classifications finishing first and second on a stage of the Tour de France is something which has only happened on six previous occasions.

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July 15, 2011

A hat-trick of domestique success

Christophe

In the early years of the Tour de France at the beginning of the 20th century, riders were forbidden from receiving help of any kind. The most famous and extreme example of this came in 1913 when Eugène Christophe was penalised three minutes for allowing a boy to work the bellows as he attempted to fix his own broken forks at a local forge.

On a more day to day basis, receiving no help meant that taking advantage of another rider’s slipstream was also forbidden. This rule was an attempt by the Tour organisers to ensure that truly the strongest rider ended up winning the Tour and not the rider who had received the most help.

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