The Other Yellow Jersey

- Herbie Sykes

On March 19 this year, 76-year-old Roger Pingeon, the winner of the 1967 Tour de France, suffered a heart attack. Following the recent deaths of Ferdi Kübler and Roger Walkowiak, he became the third maillot jaune to pass away within three short months. It reduced the number of surviving Tour winners to 22 (or 23, depending on your interpretation of the list), whilst conversely no fewer than 37 separate Giro winners remain.

The specifics of Pingeon’s yellow jersey – and by extension his entire stage-racing career – have been overlooked and overshadowed. The 1967 Tour remains synonymous with, and infamous for, Tom Simpson having ridden himself to death on Mont Ventoux. The sensationalised, amphetamine-obsessed reporting which followed ensured it couldn’t be otherwise and still today, 50 years on, Simpson’s martyrdom remains a potent symbol. Pingeon, a surprise winner of the Tour in only his third professional season, has largely been obscured by the mists of time. That’s a great pity because his Tour win was a masterpiece of ability and cycling intelligence.

Roger Pingeon was the fourth of five brothers born into farming stock in Ain. He hailed from HautevilleLompnes, the same village as one Joseph Carrara, the cycling son of Italian émigré parents. Carrara, two years older than Pingeon, was very good and the two of them became friends and training partners. Pingeon applied for a racing license aged 17, but an irregular heartbeat threatened to put paid to his aspirations. Eventually they gave him the go-ahead and he supplemented his wages as a pipe fitter with the bits and pieces he earned from racing. From there he followed Carrara into the independent category. They were given jerseys and bikes by Liberia, a team built around the despot Henri Anglade, and raced for expenses and such prize money as they could cobble together. Then military service and the war in Algeria intervened.