It is July again and like every year some lycra-clad men are riding around France and for some reason the stage winner doesn’t get that yellow shirt everyone’s always making a big fuss about? Or maybe you watched the recent Netflix series “Unchained” and thought to give the real thing a try.
Not to worry, here’s a short explainer about the different classifications during the Tour de France.
The yellow jersey
Won by the greats like Eddie Merckx and Bernard Hinault, it’s the most famous and prestigious classification during the Tour, also the easiest to explain.
Whoever rides the least time to complete all 21 stages during the Tour de France wins it. Time is taken at the start and end of each stage for every participant. Those times are accumulated and Mesdames et Messieurs we have a victor.
Most recent winners are Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Pogačar who will also take part in the race this year.
The green jersey
It is commonly known as the sprinter’s jersey since it’s usually won by a sprinter in modern times but that is now a bit of a misnomer.
Each stage offers points from place 1-15 and the amount of points differs depending on the stage profile with flat stages – which usually means a bunch sprint – offering the most points. The winner gets a whopping total of 50 points.
To make it more difficult there’s a bunch of intermediate sprints in the stage that also offer points, but way fewer than a stage win. The points jersey is often highly contested until the last stage.
Last year’s winner Wout van Aert also participates in this years Tour de France.
Polka Dot jersey/King of the Mountain jersey
The name already implies it, this one is for the climbers.
Besides regular stage points there are also KOM points, where they are completely independent from stage points and can be collected at the top of a mountain or hill.
For simplicity’s sake imagine the stage points in green and the KOM points red. A rider can gain both but they are two seperate competitions.
Mountains – just like stages – offer up different amounts of points depending on the classification of the mountain. You can roughly say the more difficult the mountain, the more points on offer.
The polka dot jersey is often won by the rider who wins the yellow jersey. The reason for this is, you can gain most time on your rivals during a difficult mountain stage and the KOM jersey serves as collateral.
However sometimes whole teams try to protect this jersey and give it their all until the last mountain stage like Simon Gescke tried to do last year with team Cofidis.
White jersey/Young riders jersey
Do you still remember how the yellow jersey is won? Well the rider with the least amount of accumulated time over 21 stages wins the maillot jaune but for the young riders jersey, it’s the same rule but the caveat is it’s only for riders younger than 25.
Recent winner of this classification was Tadej Pogačar.
It is possible for one rider to win multiple classifications. However during the race he can only wear one jersey with yellow being the most important one. The second rider in the other classification will wear the green jersey during the race in his stead.
Featured image courtesey of Dario Belingheri/Getty Images
