The yellow jersey, the most prestigious racing footwear in the world, does not go unnoticed by many Brazilians. Stuffed with technology, yellow is a powerfully suited to our rain and scrubby climate. We love it, and our yellow-grooved bodies are willing to follow its adventures and embrace its errors.
So it is with great ambivalence that we take stock of the Tour de France, one of the crown jewels of world sport and one of the sport’s least-represented countries in the stage-racing Tour. When 50,000 Brazilian fans travel to France each year for the summer Olympic games in Rio, yellow is their one option. Brazilians sport yellow outfits to mark the historic occasion and they are proud of their countrymen at every stage of the event. A Tour de France yellow jersey holds a different kind of respect — it is a status symbol, a pinnacle of the achievement sportswomen can make, and a symbol of what is possible when everyone is on the same page.
But when race director Christian Prudhomme announced earlier this month that the race route would pit a yellow jersey sprinter from a lowly-ranked country against a yellow jersey sprinter from a higher-ranked country, the relationship was tested like never before.
When the Tour de France 2018 route was announced, it offered some intriguing anomalies. There was no clear starting point. Races took place over three weeks, rather than the traditional two, and the second stage was potentially treacherous and narrow. Inflatable boats powered the pace group, making it almost impossible to race hard through the day. All of these considerations created an ongoing debate for those in France about how to allocate the top female riders across the three stages, but what made the debate so fevered was that a man-for-man race was taking place. The yellow jersey and the yellow jersey sprinter are two sides of the same coin.
As a Brazilian, the prospect that a yellow jersey – a coveted and appropriate symbol for a race’s top male athlete in a country with an even more revered female athlete – could possibly be straddled by a male cyclist created more confusion than it would normally be. Was it equitable that to win the top white jersey a male sprinter would have to beat a woman? It certainly seemed so on the face of it, but in Brazil it was a different issue altogether.
Each yellow jersey has represented someone with a specific role in the race, and any other yellow jersey wearer had his or her own title or defining features. When an all-male race takes place, this view of the four-week cycling race is lost. There are people who pride themselves on the ideal gender equity of the Tour de France and others who won’t see a problem with a yellow jersey being wielded by a man at a time when women are being nominated for even more prominent, more prestigious races, like the Tour of California or the Tour of Utah. When the Tour began in 1903, only men were eligible to race, hence a requirement for French nationality, an increase in bike racing from single competitors to this famed event.
The 2018 Tour route only speaks to larger social and economic inequalities. Women are competing with more races than ever before, including, of course, the WCT, an Olympic women’s cycling race that has never had a notable winner. Propelling the push for equality in bicycle racing is the momentum from the Women’s March movement in the U.S. and the “Faster, Higher, Stronger” Olympic motto. A more demanding, audacious road is waiting for the 100th Tour de France and the yellow jersey will not be standing still to pave its way.