Light-years behind the records of Eddy Merckx and nowhere as famous as the three other five-time winners of the Tour de France, Jacques Anquetil, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain, a total of 67 riders have worn the yellow jersey for just one day (or even less) in their careers and exemplified the pursuit of excellence from a humble start. In the last Tour de France before the war, surprise guest Amédée Fournier brought his experience as a track cyclist to bear to claim the first yellow jersey.

Photo: @Presse Sports
Although dark clouds loomed on the horizon as the 1939 Tour de France rolled out onto the roads, no-one even suspected it would be eight years before the peloton flocked to Paris again for the great July celebration. The French team was banking on Victor Cosson, René Vietto and Maurice Archambaud to fill the vacuum left by André Leducq and Antonin Magne. No-one had even thought of inviting Amédée Fournier to either the big national team or any of the four regional ones, but a last-minute withdrawal opened up a spot, resulting in Fournier’s hasty conscription into the blue-and-yellow North-East–Île-de-France team. It was not the first time that Amédée Fournier was going to take part, as he had already started the race as a touriste-routier in 1936, when a crash in stage 4 had left him with a broken wrist and out of the Tour.

This time round, the protégé of the newly retired Charles Pélissier went into the Tour with hunger tempered with smarts. Sparks flew in the opening stage, with riders launching one rash attack after another but going nowhere, while Fournier bode his time. „Did you, at any point during the day, see our young ‚Médoche‘ chase the yellow jersey like all the bird-brained youngsters I just wrote about? Nay. He was as quiet as a mouse and thus managed to fly under the radar“, gushed Henri Desgrange in his column in L’Auto to salute his cunning strategy. Fournier had waited until the peloton was just a few kilometres from Caen to go on the offensive, joining another seven gutsy riders in a counter-attack determined to catch defending champion Romain Maes, who was chugging along on his own at the front of the race. Once in the velodrome, the track cycling medallist in the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics simply had to let his raw speed do the talking: „It was like an hallucination. I immediately realised I could be the one to start in yellow in Caen tomorrow. It was galvanising. I pushed forward like a madman and, when I looked up, I’d won“, explained Fournier as the magnitude of his exploit started to sink in at the hotel.

Brimming with confidence ahead of the time trial scheduled for the next morning, especially after pocketing a 30″ time bonus along with his stage win, the first yellow jersey of the 1939 Tour ended up yielding the lead to… Romain Maes! A few days later, Fournier plummeted down the general classification (54th), but he still managed to take another stage after a rough sprint in Nantes Velodrome. It was to be his final success in the Grande Boucle.
@ASO

@Presse Sports
Light-years behind the records of Eddy Merckx and nowhere near as famous as the three other five-time winners of the Tour de France, Jacques Anquetil, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain, a total of 67 riders have worn the yellow jersey for just one day (or even less) in their careers and exemplified the pursuit of excellence from a humble start. In the 1931 Tour, Max Bulla snatched the overall lead at the end of stage 2, becoming the first —and only— touriste-routier to get his hands on the coveted yellow jersey. A monster performance.
Back then, the Tour had „aces“… and touristes-routiers („tourists of the road“). Just the names of these categories speak volumes about the low opinion people had of these unglamorous cyclists, who were only invited to the Grande Boucle to make up the numbers but still represented about half of the peloton at the start of the 1931 edition. As well as being excluded from national teams, these riders received no mechanical support and had to settle for participating in the Tour with little hope of shining at the front. While most of these „individual“ competitors were indeed a step or two below the champions, the main reason Max Bulla had to race in this category was that his country, Austria, lacked enough riders to field a team capable of rubbing shoulders with the elite.

The rouleur from Vienna had already shown his talent in the 1930 Deutschland Tour, as well as proving to be a serious contender in the 1929 Worlds until an ill-fated choice of gear left him unable to follow Ronsse and Binda. Despite these top-notch performances, Bulla started the second stage of the 1931 Tour in Caen as part of the „shadow peloton“, which was furthermore required to start 10 minutes after the stars to avoid getting in the way of the big men. However, the three strongest and bravest touristes-routiers managed to come close enough to the first peloton to post the fastest times at the finish in Dinan. Their performance catapulted Max Bulla from Austria, René Bernard from Paris and Adrien Van Vierst from Reims to the top of the general classification, with Bulla clad in yellow at the end of the day.

The next day, Henri Desgrange, who again poured scorn on the prima donnas in his column in L’Auto, had nothing but praise for Bulla: „We had the opportunity to follow Bulla throughout his endeavour. This harmonious lad who stays balanced and well seated on his saddle without letting his effort spoil the beauty of his movements looks like a real class act. He may not speak a single word of French, but his lithe figure and eyes sparkling with ingenuity, if not intelligence, leave nothing to be said. His unwavering cordiality, with a cheerful demeanour like Leducq’s, completes the delightful appearance of the new wearer of the yellow jersey.“ However, even the alluring maillot jaune did not save Bulla from having to start the next stage to Brest with the other touristes-routiers. The Austrian was unable to repeat the exploit of the previous day and slipped down the general classification. He went on to claim another two stages and finish the Tour in 15th place overall, first among the „individual“ riders. 84 years later, Austria has yet to see another one of its cyclists in yellow in the Tour.
@ASO