Ruban Jaune
cycling title created in 1936 by Henri Desgrange
The Ruban Jaune (English; Yellow Ribbon) is a cycling title created in 1936 by Henri Desgrange, awarded to the rider recording the fastest average speed in a professional cycling race or stage longer than 200 km. The name is thought to have come from comparison with the Blue Riband accolade awarded to the passenger liner crossing the Atlantic Ocean in record time. Desgrange changed the colour to yellow to reflect the newsprint of L'Auto, the sports newspaper he edited. The current holder of the Ruban Jaune is Philippe Gilbert.
History
The first holder of the Ruban Jaune was Gustave Danneels of Belgium, who won the 1936 Paris–Tours in 41.455 km/h. Paris–Tours was long associated with the Ruban Jaune because its flat course, often coupled with a tailwind, makes for a fast speed; changes to the course from 2018, introducing gravel sections and hills in the latter stages, make it less favourable now. Jules Rossi of Italy took the record in 1938 when covering 251 km at an average of 42.1 km/h in Paris–Tours.
The suspension of professional cycling during World War II meant Rossi’s record stood for ten years until April 4, 1948, when Rik Van Steenbergen won Paris–Roubaix with an average speed of 43.6 km/h. The race had a violent tailwind. Van Steenbergen attacked at Hem 6 km from the finish, caught Emile Idée and Fiorenzo Magni and then beat Idée in a sprint in Roubaix Velodrome.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Ruban Jaune” is cycling title created in 1936 by Henri Desgrange. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Ruban, Jaune and cycling, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 17, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q428987. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1936, 2018, 1938 and 1948.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ruban Jaune” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.