The mountains of the Tour de France are polka dots

It’s not all yellow al Tour de France. Of course there is nothing more important, prestigious, coveted than the yellow jersey, the one that gives access to the top step of the podium in Paris with the Arc de Triomphe as a backdrop – more majestic and imposing than beautiful, but anyhow – at sunset . The yellow Tour is grandeur, the rest is a caravan that goes around the streets of France and gives those on the roadside a chromatic mix that becomes almost psychedelic as the group passes. One is always amazed when one sees the group pass by the side of the road for the first time. It is a whirlwind, a rapidly moving, colorful spot.

The group is more colorful than it used to be. Cycling has gradually abandoned its history of monochrome jerseys, at most two-tone, it has embraced abundance. However, he has not completely given up on the monochrome: the leader’s badge has remained. Yellow or pink or red jersey, green or cyclamen or blue jersey, always white for the young, that the young remember the purity. It’s not always like this, it hasn’t always been, but the attempt went, went, made.

Then there’s the polka dot shirt: red dots on a white background. The polka dot one has nothing to do with all the other shirts. She is liked for this, she is loved for this. The most popular in general, said a survey by the Équipe a few years ago. It will be because wearing yellow is for sboroni, for those who believe it a little too much; it will be because she is bit funny, good to joke about; it will be because represents the mountain, dresses it, or at least should dress it, the strongest climber and we know how much mountain bikers love it. Whoever pedals always ends up going uphill, even if it drains his legs and breath, even if as he goes up there are blasphemies and uselessly existential questions: but who makes me do it? Nobody. And that’s the beauty of it.

And it’s also nice to see the effect that the mountains dotted with polka dots have. There is nothing more urban than polka dots, more modern than polka dots. They began to be liked in the 19th century, before they were considered in bad taste: they resembled skin imperfections, buboes. They were disliked, except by Bohemians and women of the Prussian nobility. From Bohemia they reached the European capitals following the spread of the fashion of dancing the polka. They were exotic, they became French. To such an extent that they have become the symbol of the French mountains since 1975. Cycling took care of taking them to the mountains, no one had ever dared so much up there. They have become their hallmark. They have added meaning to the mountain buck. Before that, for whoever got the most points in the mountain Grands Prix there was only one final prize and a handshake. The Giro d’Italia arrived a year earlier to understand that giving a jersey to the best climber could be a winning idea. Vincenzo Torriani wanted it green like the woods of the mountains. It is now Mediolaum blue.

Beyond the Alps, Félix Lévitan created it, the then director of the Tour de France. He wanted the shirt with polka dots that made it clear who won the most Gpm, not always the best grimpeur, but sometimes, often, he got it right. He wanted it like this perhaps to go back in time, to go back to the era in which cycling for him was just a child’s falling in love. He was sixty-four in 1975, had survived a difficult winter, badly quarreled with the French sports minister and the mayor of Paris over his idea of ​​moving the finish line of the Grande Boucle from the Parc des Princes to the Avenue des Champs-Élysées. They wanted to kick him out, they said it was a silly idea. He fell into nostalgia for the time when he was at home at the Vélodrome d’Hiver, the home of track cycling in Paris, the temple of speed razed because a fire had damaged it and because it was 1959, mass motorization was advancing and people cared a little less about bikes in velodromes.

He thought about this Félix Lévitan and thought about his great childhood love, a Henri Lemoine, to his exceptional stretches in the medium distance, to the hundred victories in a row at the Vel d’Hiv, to the fights with Adolph Verschueren from which he often came out defeated. He thought above all of his white shirt with red circles. He had been a huge fan of that rider who always wore a white jersey with red circles. Then they had become friends, they would stop and chat at the Bois de Boulogne for hours. One day Lévitan asked Lemoine: “But what if the Tour instituted a polka dot jersey to reward the best climber?”. Lemoine replied, “I would be honored. It would be beautiful.”