Ned Boulting

ponders the value of mementos

Ned is the main commentator for ITV’s Tour de France coverage. In 2018, he toured the UK with his one-man stage show, Tour de Ned.

“A banana is just a banana, and a jersey is simply a jersey. And they’re both yellow”

I’ve never been a hoarder. I’m not into stuff, particularly. In fact, on our household insurance, there is nothing itemised, since I own nothing which needs itemising. Admittedly, there are one or two things I prize, but their value is notional. Since I started to commentate on the Tour, I have made sure to buy a little touristy keepsake from each Grand Départ. Hence I have a small collection on my desk, which includes a model of the Atomium from Brussels and a tin of sardines from the Vendée; but to be honest, in the unlikely event of a burglar shoving half a dozen oily fish in his swag bag, I would hardly notice they’d gone.

So, I am unsentimental about stuff; including cycling memorabilia. Even though I wrote a book about the meaning of the yellow jersey (or jumper as I managed to mis-call it), I don’t actually buy into the myth with any particular enthusiasm, at least not when it comes to parting with money.

Maybe I’m just tight. Occasionally, these treasured items are put up for sale at charity auctions and I am staggered by the sums of money they raise. So, it was with fascination and bewilderment that I read recently about the sale in an Italian auction house of a yellow jersey worn by the great Fausto Coppi in the 1952 Tour, the second of his two victories in France. An anonymous buyer coughed up 20,000 for the tiny woollen garment. I hope it’s worth it.

A jersey is a jersey. They are worn and they are taken off and they reflect in some people’s eyes the nature of the wearer and the scope of their achievement. I remember interviewing the late Graham Webb for my book about the character of British cyclists, On The Road Bike. Graham, who died in 2017, struggled after his racing career with depression. At one point he deliberately incinerated his own rainbow jersey that he won at the 1967 World Amateur Road Race Championships. He had a difficult relationship with his past, but his troubles didn’t go away after he took his prized jersey off the wall and threw it on the fire. They remained unchanged, he was simply one jersey poorer.

Of course, Webb’s and Coppi’s jerseys were at least actually worn. So to that extent there is a tentative connection to the skin of the actual wearer, whose legs and lungs and heart won the race.

These days, this is not the case. If you’ve ever seen a signed Chris Froome jersey in a cafe, the chances are it will never have been worn. Each wearer of a leader’s jersey at most bike races is called upon to sign replicas of the jersey in full view of the cameras, instantly debasing the coinage by revealing the means of production. Add to that haul the constant trickle of jerseys that pass through the corporate lives of Tour de France champions, and you have quite a number. As I say, they’re just jerseys.

Which makes it all the funnier that James Murdoch, son of Rupert, never realised this. When Team Sky (which his company bankrolled) took their first leader’s jersey at a Grand Tour (the 2010 Giro), Murdoch was presented with a maglia rosa, signed by Bradley Wiggins. Murdoch, a keen but very recent convert to cycling, was thrilled to be given such a unique and iconic item. His evident pride and delight at owning such exclusivity led to senior members of Team Sky having to hide from him the fact that half a dozen of these “unique” jerseys were already in circulation, framed, and hanging in the boardrooms of sponsors. Murdoch never knew any different.

It’s all a question, I guess, of what the market will bear. And if Coppi’s knitwear is worth paying

20,000 for, rather than, say, funding a nurse through full-time training, then that is what it is worth. It’s a bit like that banana gaffer-taped to the wall which was sold (in the name of art) for $120,000, and then eaten a few days later by another ‘artist’.

A banana is just a banana, and a jersey is simply a jersey. And they’re both yellow.