Tour de France
General classification

The oldest and most sought-after classification in the Tour de France is the general classification. All of the stages are timed to the finish. The riders' times are compounded with their previous stage times; so the rider with the lowest aggregate time is the leader of the race. The leader is determined after each stage's conclusion: he gains the privilege to wear the yellow jersey, presented on a podium in the stage's finishing town, for the next stage. If he is leading more than one classification that awards a jersey, he wears the yellow one, since the general classification is the most important one in the race. Between 1905 and 1912 inclusive, in response to concerns about rider cheating in the 1904 race, the general classification was awarded according to a point-based system based on their placings in each stage, and the rider with the lowest total of points after the Tour's conclusion was the winner.

The leader in the first Tour de France was awarded a green armband. The yellow jersey (the color was chosen as the newspaper that created the Tour, L'Auto, was printed on yellow paper), was added to the race in the 1919 edition and it has since become a symbol of the Tour de France. The first rider to wear the yellow jersey was Eugène Christophe. Riders usually try to make the extra effort to keep the jersey for as long as possible in order to get more publicity for the team and its sponsors. Eddy Merckx wore the yellow jersey for 96 stages, which is more than any other rider in the history of the Tour. Four riders have won the general classification five times in their career: Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault, and Miguel Induráin.
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